Date: Fri, 29 Jul 2011 12:02:12 -0500
From: Jonothan Wolf <jwolf24450@gmail.com>
Subject: The Funny Thing Is... Chapter 4

**Standard disclaimer applies. All rights to this story belong to the
author. This is purely fiction (if based only slightly on actual
events). Don't read if you shouldn't because you're under 18 or live in a
backwards area. This is a continuation of The List. It isn't necessary to
read The List, but it would help in understanding characters and
references. I appreciate any and all feedback, so please email me at
jwolf24450@gmail.com. Enjoy the story!

       The Funny Thing Is... At the end of the day, I only had myself to blame.

       I've heard it said once, and I've heard it said a million times: you
made your bed, now lie in it. When I sat there and watched everything I'd
ever built crumble around me, I couldn't help but realize that it was
true. When all was said and done, I had only myself to blame.

       I closed my eyes for a second, just one brief second, trying to keep
the tears from rolling down my face. The last thing I wanted to do for this
bastard was cry.

       In that second, I flashed back to the second to last time Chase and
I fought. One instant and I remembered the whole thing.

       "What about school?"

       "What about it?"

       "Are you going to finish?"

       "Cooper, this is the Olympics. A degree I can get any time. Any
time, really. This happens once a lifetime."

       "Let's hope," I caught myself saying.

       "Listen, you've known this is what I do. This is who I am. This, for
me, this is... everything. It's the largest stage for my career and I have
a solid shot at going."

       "And I couldn't be prouder," I replied, faking the words. I couldn't
have been sadder. And that's where my anger had come from. It wasn't the
fact that Chase had kept his decision from me all summer long. It wasn't
the fact that I had given up an internship with Northwestern for the
summer, and all the while he'd spent hours and hours at the gym, leaving me
to twiddle my thumbs. It wasn't the fact that I wasn't consulted, not one
time, when this opportunity came up. I came home to his apartment one night
and he was packing.

       And that made me really sad.

       "Then be proud of me, gamin," Chase said. He stood over me, his head
tilted down, and he kissed me.

       Twenty years before, he could stop a fight with a kiss. Twenty years
later, a fist did the trick.

       I peeled myself off the floor, gaining my balance slowly. I tried to
adjust my jaw, but the pain shot through my head and down my spine. I
clutched the countertop, my hand turning white, and I finally cried.

       By the time I took a pain killer and had an ice pack glued to my
face, I was certain I didn't want to spend the night alone. I couldn't
sleep there by myself, not after everything I'd imagined that house
being. I had imagined never having to sleep alone again.

       When I knocked on his door, I was well aware that he probably didn't
want to see me. I was well aware the door might get slammed in my face. I
might get left out in the warm rainfall that pelted behind me. The slow
walk up to the lobby had already soaked me. Valet service didn't work that
late, so I was forced to park and take the elevator up.

       He opened the door and there was a look on his face like he'd seen a
ghost. And then he saw the ice pack and the blood shot eyes and the bottle
of wine in my left hand and he opened the door wider.

       "Cooper," Kyle said in a sympathetic voice. "What happened to you?"

       "I realize I'm the last person you want to see right now," I
said. "But can I please come in?" I lifted my head and sniffed in, catching
a little bit of snot and feeling like a complete and total chump.

       "Of course," he said, not missing a beat.

       I followed Kyle inside. He disappeared into his bedroom and closed
the door behind him. I heard the bathwater run and then a couple of muffled
voices. Great, I thought. Kyle had company and I had just interrupted
that. I stood in the kitchen, sort of away from view, trying to open the
bottle of wine without taking the cold compress off my face.

       A minute later, a robed Kyle was followed out of the bedroom by a
clothed Winston who looked less than happy to see me. They walked towards
the front door.

       "I'm sorry, he just... he's been in some sort of a fight," Kyle
whispered. "You understand, right?"

       "Yeah, I totally get it, Kyle," Winston said. "We finally... we
finally work things out, and you bail on us the first night."

       "No," Kyle replied, his voice slightly louder. "I am not
bailing. I'm being a good friend."

       "To the guy that broke your heart a million times. And he breaks it
again," Winston said, much louder this time. "Give him a fucking medal; he
sure deserves it."

       The front door clicked shut with Winston on the other side. I could
tell Kyle was trying to get his composure before he came back inside the
apartment, because when he finally did, his face looked like it had been
carved from stone. I knew what upset Kyle looked like: tense, stoic, and
desperately trying to conceal any emotion.

       "Kyle, I'm really sorry about that," I said when he finally
returned. The bottle of wine was open and I had poured myself a glass over
one ice cube. That habit bothered a million people, but I detested the
taste of room temperature white wine almost as much as I detested red wine
altogether. But in my haste to grab essentials when I left my apartment,
making sure the wine was chilled hadn't crossed my mind.

       "Don't worry about it," Kyle replied. "If he can't handle a
crisis..." he didn't finish the sentence, but I got the urge that I had
just supplied the final nail on the coffin of that relationship as well. I
was on a streak of ending relationships over the past few weeks, why stop
at just mine?

       "Are you going to tell me what happened?" he asked, deliberately
changing the subject.

       "It's a long story," I replied. I wasn't sure I was ready to face
the humiliation of telling it.

       "Why'd you come here, Cooper?" Kyle asked. "Of all the places?"

       I shrugged my shoulders and gave him a look I can't begin to
describe. I knew my eyes would fail me at any minute and I just let every
ounce of vulnerability show.

       "I should have come here the last time," I said. I crossed behind
Kyle and walked towards his bathroom. The water in the tub was high. I
turned it off. He'd put some sort of southing liquid in to make the water
murky and inviting. The place smelled like lavender and vanilla.

       "You hop in," Kyle said, clearing his throat and trying to remain
casual. "You wanna play chess? Checkers?" He paused for a second. "I figure
you don't really want to be alone."

       "Checkers," I replied. I couldn't have underestimated Kyle's
resilience enough. For a second, I thought maybe I was being cruel showing
up there in my crisis when he was still trying to remember how not to hate
me. But if there was anyone who could read my emotions and know what I was
thinking, it was Kyle. And he knew I wouldn't have showed up if I didn't
need him.

       I got undressed and slipped into the bathtub he'd had custom
built. Kyle returned with a chair, a table and a box of checkers. He set up
the game quietly and then made the first move.

       "Remember when you had this built, just like the one in your house,"
I smiled.

       "Just like the one in Pretty Woman? Yeah," he replied.

       "For 88..."

       "88 inches of therapy," he said, moving a piece.

       "This does seem to be the therapy tub." I moved a piece and looked
up to see Kyle glaring at me.

       "Cooper, did he punch you?"

       I took in a deep breath. "It's a long story."

       "No, that's not the question. Did he hit you in the face?" Kyle
asked more deliberately. "Is that why you didn't go to Spencer's?"

       "Spencer would have hunted him down and strangled him," I
replied. "But then again, he's probably on a flight back to LA by now."

       Kyle glared at me, trying to understand. I moved one of my red
pieces and shifted in the tub. I had to tell him. He deserved to know why I
was running back to him like that.

       "He was married," I said quietly. "He was married in California
after the Rio games to one of his teammates I guess."

       "How did that..."

       "I dunno. I never heard a thing about it and apparently they kept it
really quiet. But he told me that the whole relationship was nothing. That
Morgan was a closet case and that they broke up. He never told me he'd made
such a huge commitment to someone. So I got upset and threw him out, I said
something stupid about his dad and he punched me in the face," I
said. Saying the words out loud, trying to minimize the situation had a
cleansing effect on me. I smiled at Kyle, and then without any control, I
let out a chuckle.

       Kyle smiled back.

       "He punched me in the face," I laughed. Unable to help it, I started
laughing. Kyle looked down at me like I was on fire, and I just put my head
back and laughed. It wasn't funny, but I couldn't help it. Sometimes you
just have to laugh.

       I stopped chuckling when I noticed Kyle's face hadn't turned. To
him, it was still serious. A hit was a hit was a hit.

       "So he's gone? For good?"

       I shrugged my shoulders. I had no intention of him coming back, but
I knew better than to speak in absolutions. I hadn't really thought passed
that night.

       "King me," Kyle said, putting one of his pieces on my line. He
smiled at me. I held his gaze, smiled back and then shook it off. I put one
of his discarded pieces on top of his king. At this point the game would be
over in a couple of moves.

       "So you and Winston are back on?" I observed, realizing I'd missed a
lot in the couple of days since the fight between Kyle and me.

       "I guess so," he replied, moving his king across the board and
beginning his carnage. "Although, you heard him storm out of here. I guess
you still complicate things for him."

       "Ya'll have been on again off again since law school," I
replied. "At some point, I think your problems became bigger than just me."

       Kyle didn't look up from the board, but I knew he got it. The two of
them had met when Kyle was a 3L and a recruiter for SMU law. Winston was a
senior at TCU with great grades and a decent LSAT. He could have gone a
million places, but he went to SMU with Kyle's glowing interview
report. The rest, as they say, was up and down, rocky road, history.

       We played the rest of the game in silence, only sharing glances at
each other. At some point, the water's murkiness faded and I added a little
more soap and a run of hot water. Kyle looked at me as if he knew what I
was thinking when I turned the water off. I read in his eyes that he was
thinking the exact same thing.

       After he got the king, I didn't stand a chance. Kyle raced around
the board, knocking my pieces off one by one.

       "You're out," he said, looking up and smiling at me. He ran his hand
across the water and splashed me in the face. I held his gaze again. This
time I didn't shake it off.

       "Get in," I said quietly. The silence surrounding us had mounted the
tension to an unbearable level.

       "Cooper," Kyle said standing.

       "Fine, I'll get out," I interrupted. I stood up and let the water
run over me. I watched Kyle trace my body with his eyes. When he finally
met my face, he had an unmistakable gaze.

       "This would be a huge mistake," he said.

       "It doesn't have to be," I replied.

       I stepped out of the water and grabbed the towel hanging off the
side. I wrapped it around me, low on my waist. I felt Kyle lean in and I
did nothing to move away. I let his head come the majority of the way and
then I leaned down and met his lips with mine. I felt a release, a
desperately needed release, escape my body. It was like I had been tense
for hours and I was finally able to compress.

       "I should have come here last time," I repeated in a whisper,
thinking of the first fight a million years ago.

       Kyle breathed in, took a step forward, and kissed me harder. At
first, the force of his kiss hurt my jaw, but after a second, I didn't even
think about it. He pulled my head down to his and stuck his tongue deep
into my mouth.

       I took my hand off my towel and pulled Kyle's body close to mine. I
felt immediately that he was growing harder in his loose fitting cotton
sleep pants. That thin layer of cotton was the only thing separating the
two of us and a second after stepped out of the bathtub, the pants were
down.

       We tongue wrestled our way out of Kyle's bathroom and into his
bedroom, flopping on the bed like little school boys. His body, so many
years later, was still compact and tight, with unbelievably hard muscles
nestled in all the right nooks, that runner's V pointing straight to his
cock piece. Kyle's body was like that of a Grecian statue. He was hard and
angular, but soft. He fit perfectly inside my legs as we writhed around,
like nothing had changed in twenty years.

       Making love to Kyle was more than an exercise in reliving the
past. It was, in fact, recreating it. From every flip flop, him climbing on
top of me to me rolling us over, to every neck lick, it felt like I was
eighteen again, lying in a dorm room and waiting for Spencer to come home.

       I rolled Kyle over so that I was on top of him and moaned deeply
into his mouth. He bucked into me and wrapped his legs completely around my
torso, digging our cocks into each other roughly. I pulled up, undid his
legs around me and fiddled between us.

       I gave him a look that asked a million questions at once. Were we
really about to do this? What would this change? Why the fuck had we waited
such a long time to try again? Should I just stick it in or do we need any
more ceremony?

       Kyle sensed my hesitation and nodded at me. He did a sit up, grabbed
the back of my neck and pulled me down into him. In one seamless motion, I
pulled down on top of Kyle and slipped my throbbing pecker into his ass. He
sighed at the feeling of it, and then returned to my lips.

       There are more pros than cons in sleeping with someone smaller than
you. With Kyle, I was almost always the top. It was a special day when Kyle
Wriggs fucked me. A good day, but a special one. Knowing that off the top
was a definite pro. It gave way to very little confusion.

       An even bigger pro was the fact that he could move his body around
in seriously erotic ways. I started fucking him missionary with his legs
wrapped around me. Before long, his entire body was rolled over in a sort
of spiral and I was plowing him quickly from above, supporting the intense
angle by holding on to his headboard and crashing it against his wall.

       After that, Kyle saw fit to hang off my body as I kneeled on all
fours and drilled him. He wrapped his arms around my neck like it was a
tree branch and let me swing us back and forth.

       Finally, in a moment of true intimacy, unseen by the two of us since
we were eighteen, young, and hopelessly in love, we both sat up and faced
each other. I sat with my legs outstretched and Kyle nestled into the small
nest my lap formed. We were closer and deeper than I could have imagined.

       Our lips parted and our eyes locked. After a couple hours of
marathon level fucking, our eyes finally locked and I watched Kyle's orgasm
develop from deep down through the portal that was his deep chocolate
gaze. His head reeled back and his back caught in my arms, creating a
tension that caused me to lose my wad at the exact same moment.

       Like well-trained lovers, Kyle and I finished at the exact same
moment, his seed coating our torsos, and mine filling up his ass.

       Within minutes, Kyle was yawning, pressed up against my nook, facing
away from me and playing with my fingers. I knew he was smiling and
although he hadn't said anything, I felt like I could sense what he was
thinking.

       In the silence, I was forced to sense what I was thinking as well.

       If someone had asked me why I came to Kyle's, I wouldn't have been
able to answer the question. It felt right, plain and simple. After all
we'd been through, it just felt like the right thing to do. After Chase
left the first time, it had been a major decision and I'd picked
Devon's. This time, my body led me through the rain to Kyle's downtown
loft. No discussion necessary.

       If someone had asked me why I slept with him that night, I would
have had even less to say. I wasn't in the market for a new relationship. I
had just ended two back to back. My goal wasn't to lead Kyle on or reignite
something that we'd buried twenty years before. My actions were driven by
necessity. I needed to be close to someone, and Kyle was there. I was
thankful for that. It was more than a rebound and less than an invitation.

       "This was a mistake," Kyle said just as I was trying to analyze what
it was. My body tensed up, but I didn't feel his do the same. He kept
twiddling my fingers. His head stayed buried in my shoulder nook.

       "Um... okay?" I asked.

       "I don't mean that I didn't enjoy it or that we shouldn't have done
it, but come on," he said. "Cooper, you said it yourself. It's not me."

       "It could be you," I whispered wrapping my arm around his waist. He
scooted over.

       He chuckled. "No, it can't," Kyle said. He sat up and put his hands
on his head. I hadn't thought this part through.

       "Kyle, there's no need to overreact on this," I said, leaning up on
my elbow.

       "You're right," he said. "And I won't. But I'm not going to let
myself get sucked into the clusterfuck that is your life. You should know
that right now, before this gets any more complicated."

       I heard the words and they pinched me. My life as a clusterfuck
seemed to be a recurring theme and Kyle was right to want to stay far, far
away. But he'd opened his legs up to me, and if I knew Kyle, his emotions
were soon to follow. He was talking to me almost as much as he was talking
to himself.

       "Okay," I replied. "This is what it was. A friend in need of comfort
and another friend with a very seductive bathtub."

       Kyle lifted his head and turned to face me. He smiled weakly, dove
for my face and settled back into my nook. Ten minutes of making out, and
he was asleep.

       When I woke up the next morning, Kyle was already up. I looked
around, taking a second to reacclimatize myself. I hadn't woken up at
Kyle's apartment in ages, and certainly never in his bed. There was a glass
of water on the nightstand next to me and I sipped it. I noticed the note
underneath a second later.

       To Cooper: I woke up for a run. I'm meeting Bass and Spencer for
brunch at Nuevo at 12. If you're up, come meet us. If not, I'll see you
when I get back.

       I looked at my cell phone. It was 11:50. I rolled out of bed, pulled
on my jeans and a polo shirt from Kyle's closet that was a size too small
for me. Fifteen minutes later, I was in line at the Bloody Mary bar at
Nuevo.

       "You're alive," Kyle said, standing and giving me a hug.

       "Okay, I'm still weirded out by this sudden turn," Spencer said as I
pulled a seat and sat down. They each already had a Sunday Funday cocktail,
but the menus were still there, so I assumed they hadn't ordered. "The last
time I talked to you, you were ready to slit Cooper's throat."

       "Slit his throat is a little dramatic," Kyle said.

       "And dramatic is your middle name, Kyle," Bass chimed in. I smiled,
my jaw twitching slightly, but altogether feeling a lot better than it had
the night before. The aspirin I popped in the morning would kick in any
minute, followed by the cocktail. In two shakes, I wouldn't even think
about my jaw.

       "So is either of you going to tell us what happened?"

       I looked at Kyle. "Chase and I got into a huge fight last
night. Words were exchanged and he bolted. I sort of asked him to."

       Sebastian nodded. Spencer narrowed his eyes at me.

       "He bolted? Just like that? In the middle of you two painting the
town gay together, you just up and asked him to leave?" Spencer asked,
sipping his drink, clearly not believing me.

       "I found out that he was married and he'd neglected to share that
little nugget of information," I said. Now was the moment of truth. My
friends would tell me whether or not I'd overreacted at the news. Three
strong opinions that would surely make themselves heard.

       "Is that such a big deal?" Spencer asked after a pause. "I mean, you
were married before."

       "But I told him. When I asked him about the picture, he said the guy
was nothing. When I saw the divorce papers, nothing was apparently the
equivalent to 14 years of California sanctioned marriage."

       I saw `the oh' shit look on Sebastian's face and I knew he got why I
did what I did. For a second, I felt like a hypocrite getting mad at Chase
for lying to me about his marriage to Morgan, but then I pushed that
feeling aside. Our situations had been completely different. I was upfront
about my life changing decisions. He wasn't.

       "The thing that irks me is that I was ready to start a life with
him. I laid it all out on the table, you know? And he didn't lay any of it
out. He knew exactly what I was giving up, and he lied to me. How do I
start over with someone like that?" I explained to the guys.

       "Well Karma is certainly a bitch of a bitch, isn't she?" Sebastian
said, leaning back and giving me a smug gaze.

       "What's that supposed to mean?"

       "It means I really hope you didn't come here asking for sympathy
from us," he said. His eyes were narrow and his lips were pert. "You're
still the same douche lord you were yesterday. Our friend, yes. But a
douche lord none the less."

       "Who says douche lord anymore?" Kyle whispered. That little bit of
slang had been left behind in 2010 along with Miley Cyrus and cargo pants.

       "I get your frustration with me, Sebastian, I really do. And this is
the last table I would come to for sympathy, but it's good to know there's
none anyway," I said with more attitude than I intended.

       "I'm just saying..."

       "I get what you're saying," I cut him off. "I don't need to hear it
again. This is what I deserve for being the world's worst father and
husband. I get it, thanks." I felt a hand pat my thigh twice under the
table in a small gesture of support.

       "Can we order please?" I asked, embarrassed I'd raised my voice.

       "Cooper, it's not completely like that," Spencer said. "But you
threw your trust into someone you hadn't seen in twenty years. Sort of
irresponsible. And stupid."

       I shrugged my shoulders. He was right. Spot on. Mean, but right. I
was the idiot, the dunce in the corner with the funny hat and egg on his
face.

       "I think in light of recent events, we should cut Coop some slack,"
Kyle said. My eye traveled to Spencer's reaction. His was face smeared with
surprise, but his eyes were moving back and forth between Kyle and me.

       "Oh my god," Spencer blurted. "Oh my god! You slept with him. That's
what this is about. The hug and the support and the slack. You two slept
together."

       Sebastian put his hand to his head and shook it. I hadn't planned on
telling them at all, but even if I had, this wasn't the way I wanted the
news to go down.

       "We didn't sleep together," Kyle responded more confidently than I
would have been able to. He leaned into the table and flat out lied to his
best friend.

       The stare down between Kyle and Spencer was classic. Spence would
have hopped over the table and punched me in the throat if he knew I'd
slept with Kyle. He was of the firm mind that I'd screwed his best friend
up for life, and what had happened last night would have been billed my
fault.

       "You didn't?" Spencer asked quietly.

       "Would I sleep with Cooper? Really?"

       "Wait a second," I interjected.

       "Shut up, Coop," Spencer cut me off. He drilled into Kyle again and
then backed off. "Okay. Maybe you didn't sleep together, but something
weird is happening."

       "Cooper came over last night to apologize after Chase left and we
talked about it," Kyle said, softening and sitting back. I sipped my drink
to avoid reacting to his blatant lie. "When I saw how pathetic he looked,
even I had to give him a break."

       Kyle looked at Bass and I saw him physically drop his shoulders and
soften his look towards me. If someone had said Kyle would be coming to my
defense a day earlier, I wouldn't have believed them.

       The rest of brunch continued with nary a hitch. I faded as the topic
of conversation and the guys and I all caught up on our lives before
Sebastian retreated to the suburbs, Spencer went back to the high rise
bachelor pads of downtown and I followed Kyle the short distance to his
Historic Downtown flat.

       "That was an interesting meal," I said as I followed him into his
apartment. He put our to-go boxes in the fridge.

       "Yeah," he replied. "I should know better than the two of them that
we can't stay disappointed in you forever."

       "Because of last night?" I asked, trying my best to sound serious
and not flirtatious.

       "Your performance last night had a lot to do with changing my mind,"
Kyle said. "But like I already said, you're carefully filed away,
Sir. Emotionally."

       "So, what you're saying is... you, Mr. Wriggs, are using me for my
body?"

       "When you put it like that..." Kyle trailed off as his lips met
mine. The whole time we kissed our way to his bedroom, I wondered what Kyle
was actually thinking. There was no way he could separate what was
happening from his feelings towards me. He wasn't wired that way and we
both knew it.

       And in my mind, I thought that maybe I was the one making the
mistake here. Maybe I should have put the brakes on. But he was a big boy,
just like I was. In a moment of sheer weakness, I caved and he came
crashing down with me. He didn't want to be a part of my clusterfuck, but
as he slipped our clothes off and pushed us down on his Egyptian cotton, I
couldn't help but feel like he was clustering me up even more.

       It didn't stop me from grinding against him, rubbing my hands across
his hard chest, and kissing his soft lips. It didn't stop me from slipping
my dick into his ass as he ground his on our torsos from above. It didn't
stop me from fucking him upwards, harder and harder, or from tasting his
tongue and letting his sweat fall down onto mine.  It certainly didn't stop
me from coming inside of him, filling him up with wave after wave of hot
and sticky.

       When we were back inside Kyle's sheets after a substantial afternoon
delight, he started playing with my fingers again, and my mind, once again,
began to race.

       "I noticed you didn't tell the guys about Winston," I
whispered. Kyle yawned.

       "I didn't think I needed to," he replied. "I didn't tell them about
this."

       "Which was curious," I whispered. "Was it not good?" I bit down on
his ear and he squirmed backwards.

       "Besides the fact that they wouldn't understand," Kyle said, sitting
up and pulling a pair of shorts on. "I didn't want to explain to them how
we both fell into a weak trap last night."

       "And this afternoon?" I asked.

       "What the fuck are you trying to do, Cooper?" I was taken aback by
his sudden raised voice. "I forgive you for our spat the other night. I
said I understand the whole Chase divorce thing and I comforted you when
you needed someone. Why are you trying to make this bigger than it is?"

       "Kyle, you can't..."

       "I can't what, Cooper? Pretend like this isn't just you falling into
your pattern of quick rebounds and uncalculated consequences? I think I
can. I'm too old to be left in the wreckage," he said. He walked into his
bathroom and I heard the water to the shower on. He came back out holding
his toothbrush and a tube of paste. "Look, let's label this a
rebound... thing and move on. I don't know what you thought when you got
all sentimental last night."

       I couldn't believe I was hearing these words out of Kyle's mouth. I
knew he'd said he wasn't going to get emotionally tangled in my drama, but
that afternoon, he sounded downright cold. Like I was some sort of one
night stand. Is this what being jaded for twenty years turns someone into?

       "You know what, I don't know what I thought either," I said. I stood
up and pulled my shirt on. My pants and shoes were next, as Kyle watched
me, brushing his teeth as if he needed to get the taste of me out of his
mouth.

       I suddenly felt more alone than I had last night. I hadn't come here
seeking someone to fall into bed with. That impulse happened and Kyle gave
in to it just as much as I did.

       When I went to him, I wanted someone to assure me it would all be
alright. I was starting to think that maybe, quite possibly, it wouldn't.

       "Cooper," Kyle called as I headed for the door holding all of my
things.

       I drove home that afternoon and lounged about, living in the
solitary confinement I'd created for myself and wondering just when and how
it had all gone so very wrong.

       By the time I was ready for bed on Sunday night, a couple of things
were perfectly clear to me. Kyle was totally right. It was irresponsible of
me to tangle someone up in my emotional roller coaster, even if they were
old and wise enough to know better.

       I commended Kyle for knowing that right off the bat. I felt like it
was very mature of him, although slipping right into bed with me with
little to no hesitation was the opposite of mature.

       Still, it was up to me to keep people away, at least until my life
had sorted itself out. And in a way, that meant Chase. I had no business
jumping into his arms after all of these years. I kept telling myself that
my reasons for ending it with Devon were personal and a long time
coming. If I really believed that, I needed to embrace the fact that Chase
was gone and find a way to get out of my marriage without totally
destroying myself and my family in the process.

       At about ten, just when I was about to turn in for my first night
alone in a long, long time, I heard the doorbell ring. I wasn't expecting
someone, and my surprise manifested itself with a quick start. I turned on
the lights in the corridor as I walked to the door.

       A boyish looking guy, about twenty years old or so, wearing a
newsboy hat and a plastic wind breaker was at my door with a box of pizza
that I hadn't ordered.

       "I have a delivery," he said calmly.

       "Uh, I think you have the wrong building, guy," I replied. "I didn't
order anything."

       "Cooper James Carpenter?" he asked.

       "Yeah," I nodded, surprised that he knew my entire name. Hardly
anyone knew my entire name. And just as he opened the box in front of me,
it clicked.

       "You've been served." Inside the box was a stack of legal documents
stapled to a blue legal cover sheet. The whole practice was archaic and
although some places had gone to electronic servings, Dallas County still
wasn't one of them.

       I picked up the papers, signed the receipt and the kid who had just
earned overtime for working on a Sunday hopped down my steps and onto a
skateboard.

       I read the paper as if it were a passage from the Bible, one word at
a time, trying my best to dissect the legal jargon. It listed Devon Tiffany
Ward as the plaintiff and myself as the defendant. I was being sued for
alimony and child support, from what I understood. The part that was
unmistakable was the box she'd checked under the official divorce
statement.

       Irreconcilable differences.

       It was the world's biggest cliché, and here I was a part of
it. Adding to the fifty percent of marriages that ended because of
something as vague and commonplace as irreconcilable differences. Our
issues were reduced to a check box in the center of a page.

       The rest was stuff Kyle could sort through. It listed a notice to
appear on Tuesday afternoon and I immediately transferred the data to my
calendar.

       As I was lying in bed, I wondered how I'd ended up in this
particular state of loneliness. I'd put my entire hand out on the table and
Chase had reamed me for it. I could have killed him for what he'd done, and
yet, in the not so back of my mind I knew I deserved it.

        My family was a million miles away and right then, the idea of a
boring vanilla life seemed a thousand times greater than a life alone.

       The only bright spot in a dark cloud was Kyle. How that had
happened, I still couldn't wrap my fingers around, but it had. And it had
confused things something terrible. His nonchalance about it was fine for
the time being, but eventually he and I would need to sort through the
feelings that were bound to surface from what had happened.

       And just as I was drifting to sleep, my doorbell rang again. It
couldn't be another court runner, I thought as I climbed out of bed,
slipped on some shorts and turned the lights back on as I walked to the
front door. Who the fuck would be here this late at night? What the hell
did they want?

       I opened the door and this time the stranger was dressed in all
black and carrying a bouquet of flowers.

       "Mr. Carpenter?" they asked in a monotone voice, as if I was the
hundredth bouquet they'd delivered that particular Sunday. He handed me the
card first. "I'm instructed to have you open this card immediately, sir."

       I looked at him and then at the flowers. I turned around for a split
second to set the flowers down on the table I usually put mail and my
keys. I opened the envelope, squinting to read the small hand written cards
without my glasses.

       To Cooper: I know I'm the last person you want to see right now, but
I just had to say I'm sorry.

        "Who sent you with..."

       I looked up at the open door, expecting to find the stranger
standing there. Instead, the guy had been replaced by Chase, standing at my
door step and smiling sheepishly at me. He held a small black box in his
right hand.

       It was, without a doubt, the most romantic thing I had ever seen.

       "Cooper," he whispered as I slowly closed the door in his beautiful,
romantic face.


I hope you're enjoying the series so far. More to come soon. As always,
comments and reviews are the only currency for Nifty writers, so your
feedback good or bad would be greatly appreciated. Contact me at
jwolf24450@gmail.com. Thanks again for reading my story!