I deliver a hard pat to his suit covered shoulder. “First rounds on me, bud.”
Polite condolences are awkwardly offered as much as they’re expected during our attempted exiting.
Dubs – which is what most of us who grew up with him have called him our whole lives – takes them in stride.
Per usual.
And like the tendy I am, I’m instinctively right by his side.
Blocking the snide remarks.
Catching the conversational strays.
Keeping points off the board until we successfully make it a couple blocks over to Wally’s Wild West, the best place to be in Middlebrook on a Saturday night.
Especially when you’re newly single.
Or in my case…always single.
Alright.
Notalways.
But close.
We’re talkin’ horseshoes and hand grenades close.
We’re talkin’ spentsignificantlymore periods on the ice than in the sheets close.
We’re talkin’ Hank Williams “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” close.
You might as well say “fuck it” and light a damn cigar close.
GettingintoWally’s is easy – regardless of its packed nature – however getting attention – any type of attention – feels fucking impossible despite the fact I tower over all the other patrons.
I’m six-five, two hundred twenty-nine pounds, and wearing a seafoam green suit for Fleury’s sake.
You can’t miss me even if you intend to.
“Aw, Dubs,” Sonali Vee, the deep cinnamon brown shaded female that Iknowhas been in love with him since I was forehead high to a cow’s asshole, sympathetically coos at the same time she grasps both his hands with hers. “I’m sorry about what happened at the church.”
No, she’s not.
She never is.
Why should she be?
Notseeing the person you’re meant to be with marrying another person isn’t something to apologize for.
“Yeah,” Dubs’s slender shoulders slightly bounce, “guess it jus’ wasn’t meant to be.”
Of course, it wasn’t meant to be.
He’s meant to marryher– who he has been in love with since he was making chalk murals on the side of Gramps’s barn after Sunday dinner.
They’ve basically been a fucking Marvin Gaye duet our entire lives.
How or why, they don’t see being together is the play that I don’t understand.
