“Go away,” I said, mumbling into thepillow.
“Nope. It’s ten o’clock. Let’s go to the beach and find you a hottie. Sun’s out, guns out,brother.”
“Do you really think I could get a hottie in my current condition? Lookatme.”
“Well, I wasn’t going to say anything, but since you brought it up, I have a list of complaints.Holdon.”
“It was a rhetorical question,” I said, mumbling, then turned to my side, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes. Richie was pulling up the notes section on hisiPhone.
“You have anactuallist?”
“Well, you’ve been a Neanderthal for a month now. I have a lot of gripes. Okay, so… Number one: No more ‘No-Shave-Never.’ You have stuff growing in your beard. It’s gross, and the other day something fell out of it and landed in my pasta. Number two: Pick up your beer cans. I’ve provided you with these swanky digs, and I expect you to treat them withrespect.”
As promised, Richie’s heiress divorcée had plopped the first and last month’s rent down on a swanky duplex close to her home in Marina Del Rey. The place was worthy of Richie’s splendor. It all happened a few day after ‘the dump,’ so I blindly followed along, packing my stuff and moving out without even a goodbye to our druggieneighbors.
“I’m paying rent too,asshole.”
“Finn, please, not everything is about you. Number three: You stink. And I don’t mean that like ‘you suck’; I mean like you genuinely stink. After you left for work yesterday, I had the place fumigated. Number four: Well, this really is an extension of three. Deodorant is yourfriend.”
“Okay! I get it.Enough.”
“I’m just gettingstarted.”
“Text me the list and I’ll get rightonit.”
“Come on. I’m tired of whiny, glass-half-empty Finn. I want fun Finn back. Get up and tackle the first twelve items on the list and I’ll reward you with a trip to the beach. Vanessa’s daughter is home from college. She pulled your picture up online and thinks you’re hot – or should I say, she thinks pre-breakup Finn is hot. So get your act together and bang my girlfriend’sdaughter.”
“Just how old exactly is thisdaughter?”
“She’s twenty-one… totallylegal.”
“Twenty-one is seriously pushing the legal limit for me, but fine, I’ll go to the beach with your MILF and her totally legal daughter. But no setting us up. Give me an hour and I’ll beready.”
“I’ll give you two hours, so you can tackle number twenty-three on the list while you’reshaving.”
“Do I even wanttoknow?”
“The 70’s bush, dude. We don’t want it spilling out of your shorts, now,dowe?”
Iwasn’tsure what I found more disturbing – the fact that Richie had been actively chronicling my decline or that he knew I had bushy crotch hairs. Regardless, he wasn’t wrong about anything on his pages-long complaint list. I knew I’d been a miserable jerk after losing Emma, and obsessing over her had become my way of life. What was worse was I understood her reasoning even though it ripped my heart out. The two things I wanted most in this world couldn’t exist together, and as much as I didn’t want to admit it, at some point down the road, I probably would have resented her for not being receptive to having achild.
I knew full well that she’d broken it off for my sake, not hers; but the fact that she was giving me the chance to live the life I wanted while she subjected herself to a life alone hurt me even more. Was I being selfish? Was she? Somewhere, locked deep inside her, was the reason for her decision to never have children, and I feared no amount of charm or patience would ever pull itfromher.
The worst part of it all was that I was in love with Emma and knew without any doubt that she was the one for me. Would it even be possible for me to love another woman like I loved her? Was it worth faking it with someone else just to have kids? Was it better to bring children into a loveless marriage or just not have thematall?
These were the thoughts that consumed me day and night and made functioning in my daily life so incredibly difficult. I was going to work distracted, and the injuries just kept coming. Something had to change. I couldn’t go on like this forever. Maybe I needed to meet this coed today and see if I could form some sort of connection. It might help me decide what to doaboutEmma.
Not that I had much say in the matter anyway. The day after she dumped me, I’d gone back to her, professing my love and promising I could live without being a father. With tears rolling down her face, Emma had pushed me back out the door, and we hadn’t spokensince.
* * *
Rachel wasbeautiful and sweet and friendly. I enjoyed her company and laughed at her jokes. We swam in the ocean together and talked for hours on the beach, mostly about my recent breakup, a detail Richie had generously provided to her before we met. Regardless of the tough conversation, Rachel made it clear she was interested. This was a straightforward, uncomplicated, and easy-to-read girl. If I dated her, there would be no guessing what she was thinking, no worrying I’d lose her attention the minute I left the room. She was what I needed to get over Emma. If only I could figure out a way to giveadamn.
After the beach, I met up with some friends for dinner and a little bar hopping. I hadn’t seen anyone but Richie in over a month, and people were starting to worry. I figured, why waste a shave and a bushwhacking, right? Wrong. I got drunk. Real drunk, and with the inebriation came poor decision-making… so poor that I inexplicably ended up on Emma’s doorstep at one in themorning.
From the time I rang her doorbell to the time she opened the door for me, I’d already fallen asleep slumped up against herplanter.
“Finn?”
