“Oh,” I said. “You’re right, that was easy.” I paused. “Why don’t you want one?”
“I’m like you,” he answered. “I enjoy being on my own and living however I choose. For example, I don’t want someone bothering me to wash my hands when I come in from the garage.”
“You always wash your hands anyway. And wouldn’t that be someone like your mother, not a girlfriend?”
“My mother never told me to wash or to do anything else. She rarely noticed what I did.” He thought. “Ok, here’s another example,” he told me. “I was dating a woman who thought we should get a practice dog.”
“What would it practice?” I asked.
“That’s exactly what I said. She meant that we would practice being parents with it,” he explained. “It was a tryout for children.”
“But you didn’t want that,” I clarified. “You don’t want a dog or a kid, either.”
“No, and she was aware of that,” he said. “She wanted to break me into the idea, like what she did when she got a new pair of tennis shoes so that she wouldn’t get blisters.”
“But some people don’t want to break in their shoes because that creases them. And you’re the same way about relationships,” I interpreted, and he was nodding.
“I like things clean and unblemished, like a new pair of shoes,” Ronan agreed. “I think about having a life like my parents, thatchaos and calamity all the damn time. I don’t want it. They didn’t mind it, though.”
“I would. I don’t like chaos or calamity either, and I’m better off the way I am, too.” If Kiya or the other women ever asked me again why I didn’t have a boyfriend, that would be my answer. Who would want chaos and calamity? “I totally understand your feelings about children. I was basically a millstone around my dad’s neck,” I mentioned.
“Shit,” he swore again, but now he sounded incredulous. “Did your father really feel that way about you?”
“I really was,” I said. “He took me with him, but he couldn’t live the way that he wanted while I was around. He had chosen a traveling job so that he could have a free and easy existence, then it wasn’t possible when he had to drag his daughter along. We fought all the time.” I suddenly had a revelation. “Judas Priest. You’re right.”
“I am? I mean, of course I am, but about what?”
“I did nag him to do stuff like wash his hands and get clean,” I said. “I did it all the time.”
“You’re not a nag. And if he wasn’t washing himself after working as a welder, he was as dumb as a box of rocks.”
“But that’s what I mean about living the way he wanted. He could have gone around filthy and been happy with that, but I was there complaining to him about staining the motel sheets and making marks on the walls.” I had hated arguing with management about extra charges.
“Your dad sounds like a pig. That’s the God’s honest truth of it.”
He wasn’t wrong, but the other truth was that my dad had been happy that way. I was happy my way, too, and Ronan was happy in his. Kiya and Channing were happy together. We were all happy, damn it.
“I don’t know about Chan and your friend,” he said suddenly.
“What do you mean? She’s really nice.” I remembered her trying to help me in the bathroom. “I like her.”
“Yeah, I do, too. But he’s never been a one-woman guy,” he explained.
“Like, he cheats?”
“More like he doesn’t stay with one person,” Ronan explained. “He never wanted to, before.”
“Maybe he changed. That could happen, too,” I suggested.
“Yeah, I remember someone saying that to me. She told me I’d settle down when I met the right woman, and I think she was hoping that the right woman was herself. I don’t believe that, though. We are who we are, as people.” He offered an example. “You’ll never stop washing your hands after working on your car. I don’t see Chan being with one woman.”
That made me mad. “Well, Kiya definitely thinks that he’s with her, and only her! I hope he’s not playing some game.”
“He’s not a total asshole, or I wouldn’t want to hang out with the guy,” he told me. “I don’t think he’s playing a game but I don’t know what he’s doing.”
“Why don’t you ask him?”
“Like the two of us would light scented candles, open a bottle of wine, and have a heart-to-heart? I’ve never done that with any of my friends. Imagine me and Eddie, wearing fuzzy socks and curled up on my couch under a throw—”
