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Chapter Thirty-Nine

"Okay, tell me again - exactly what happened?"

Nick looked up from the table top, where he'd rested his cheek. Brian uncapped a beer and put it at his hand. He'd been laying there mumbling and moaning after bursting through the door and hurriedly announcing that Lauren had just broken up with him. Now, he was in the wallowing stages. He grabbed his beer and chugged it. When he drew it away from his mouth, it foamed and he quickly inhaled the foam from the bottle neck. "She dumped my ass and left the pieces of my broken heart scattered on the floor..."

Brian sat down across from Nick with his own beer. Normally, they would've been outside under the stars on the deck, but the air had grown chilly. Brian took a pull off his beer. "But what happened? What did she say? What did you say?"

Nick swirled his beer around a little. "Well I carried her bags into the airport for her and we were by gate security and I was saying bye and went to kiss her and she pulled back and she looked at me in the face, you know? With those big green eyes..." Nick sighed, "I love her eyes, man."

"I know. Keep going."

"Well then she was like asking me if I ever planned to get married to her or if our relationship was just like going nowhere and we'd reached the peak, you know? And I told her that I don't really believe in marriage. You know how I feel about marriage."

"Uh huh..." Brian's eyebrow was raised. "And then?"

"Well then she said that she didn't want to be in a relationship that wasn't going anywhere, and she brought up..." Nick took a deep breath, then said slowly on the exhale, "She mentioned children."

Brian bit his lip.

"And I said I'd gladly have kids --"

"Did you say kids or sex?"

Nick paused. "Okay so I said that sounded fun and I was definitely up for the sex. But that's besides the point. Anyways, she got pissed and said that I needed to grow up and realize that she wasn't gonna just be here and that I took her for granted and never listen to her and yadda-yadda-shit-like-that."

Brian stared into the beer. "Then what?"

"I dunno, then she said good-bye, hugged me, and told me to call her. Then she got on the plane." Nick shook his head, "She totally broke up with me."

"It sounds like she wants you to commit to her," Brian pointed out.

"Marriage is shit," Nick replied quickly, "More people divorce than get married, seriously."

"That's physically impossible, Nick," Brian said, "You have to be married to get a divorce. If more people had divorces than got married nobody would be married at all and there'd be people that had never been married that had gotten divorced."

Nick rubbed his nose. "Shut up, you know what I mean."

"I think you're chicken shit," Brian said, swallowing beer.

Nick raised an eyebrow, "You wanna talk about chicken shit, let's talk about you. Dude, you just married a woman -speaking of marriage- and you don't even have the balls to tell her you love her. What the hell is that about?"

Brian picked at the label on his beer bottle. "She doesn't feel the same way, Nick, it's not like I don't want to tell her it's just I already know she's going to be like 'oh you're so sweet but yeah no'."

"Chicken shit."

Brian sighed and leaned back in his chair as Nick took a sip of his beer. "I guess we're both just a couple of chicken shits then," Brian muttered, looking up at the light on the ceiling.

"Yep."

Brian looked at Nick thoughtfully for a long moment. He sat up. He reached across the table and took Nick's beer away from him. "Nick?"

"What? Gimme my beer back, you bastard." Nick reached for the beer.

Brian held it out of Nick's reach. "Listen to me...and listen good, 'cos this is important, ok?"

"Um... ok."

"Twenty years ago, I fell in love with Emma and I threw it away... and then eleven years ago, I fell in love with Leighanne and it got taken away." Brian took a deep breath, "And now... now I can't love either of them because they're either gone... or they just don't feel the way that I do anymore. And I miss that. I yearn for that feeling, that feeling of being loved and cherished and cared about like every man needs to be.... Love isn't something you get do-overs in, Nick. Don't throw away what you have with Lauren because you're chicken shit to get a divorce. What's so scary about a divorce? Really? I mean, so you try and you fuck up and you end up signing papers to undo it if it's a mistake. But Nick, what if it's a mistake to not get married? What if it's a mistake to let her walk out of your life?"

Nick was chewing the inside of his lip.

"What if you were taking her for granted and she's the most important thing in your life? What happens when you figure out that she was not only the woman who loved you but your only source of oxygen or joy? What if when she's gone you feel your heart crushing itself within you?"

Nick's eyes met Brian's. "Are you describing how I could feel or how you do feel?"

"Both, if you lose Lauren," Brian replied.

Nick drew a deep breath and released it. It came out shaking. He stared at his hands.

Brian put the beer back down on the table, "Now, you can finish that beer up, or you can get in the car and go to the airport and get your ass on a plane and fix this before it's too late and you're standing in a kitchen, twenty years later, drinking beer, and realizing that she is everything - everything - you need... and that you can't ever have her."