It was the most normal we'd been with each other in days. This was us. A lifetime of friendship crammed into a bench seat with a ridiculous bear and nowhere else we'd rather be, going to tell a woman that we were in love with her.
"I keep thinking about when she gets that look," I said, not meaning to say it out loud. "The one when she's trying not to laugh and her nose does that thing."
"The crinkle," Ben said immediately.
"The crinkle," I agreed.
"It's not just the crinkle," Cole said. "It's her laugh. I'd burn the world down for that woman's laugh. Noah heard it and lit up like a kid who actually remembers how to be one."
The truck was quiet a second after that, because we were clearly all pussy whipped.
"Less than twenty-four hours," Ben said, shaking his head. "We are so embarrassingly gone for this woman. All three of us, completely cooked. It's pathetic."
"Thoroughly pathetic," I said.
"I pulled up her Instagram this morning," Ben said.
"I looked at the picture Emma took of her at the goat farm," I said.
We both looked at Cole.
"I drove past her house last night," Cole said. "Just wanted to make sure she was safe."
"You drove past her house," Ben said.
"Yyyyyuppp," Cole said.
"Cole Ramirez," Ben said, in the voice of a man witnessing history. "Scary tattooed military man. Drove past her house like a sixteen-year-old stalker. I need you to know that I am going to be telling this story."
"No you're not."
Her street came into view and I sat up a little, which jostled the bear, which jostled Ben, and Cole turned the corner and there was the little yellow house with her car in the driveway and my heart did the stupid lurching thing that I'd spent years forgetting I was capable of.
"Okay," I said. "We go in, we apologize first. We tell her she doesn't have to choose. Whatever she wants, however she wants it, we're in. And we tell her the truth about how gone we are."
"Agreed," Ben said, already moving the bear so he could get the door.
"Agreed," Cole said, pulling to the curb.
"She's going to think we're insane," I said.
"She's going to be right," Ben said. "Okay, everybody out. Somebody grab the bear."
The bear came with me because of course it did, and I was halfway up the driveway with the bear blocking roughly eighty percent of my field of vision, roses under my arm, ready to tell this woman everything, when Cole stopped walking.
"Oh, Jesus Christ."
I moved the bear.
There was a man in her driveway. A big man, big as Cole, bigger maybe, beard down his chest, leather vest, and his arms were wrapped all the way around Callie. Our Callie. Her face was buried in his chest. Her hands were fisted in his vest. Her whole body shaking. And all around them, like a frame neither of them had noticed, sat a row of moving boxes.
The roses slipped first, four dozen stems hitting the driveway in a wet red splat, and the bear followed an undignified second later, face-down on the asphalt like he'd been shot.
I've spent good money on therapy learning to name what I feel. What came up first was confusion, half a second of it. Then the bottom dropped out, and up came the certain voice that said:of course. Of course she was just as heartless as all the other women in your life.
I was walking before I decided to. Ben said something behind me, I don't know what, and then all three of us were moving, and Callie's head came up off the stranger's chest and she saw us and she had tears all over her face. This was the face of a woman who had just been caught. The way I had caught Michelle cheating on me years ago.
"Are you kidding me." It came out quiet, which was worse than yelling. "Are you actually kidding me right now."
