"So I asked you why you came here and I know that was kind of a stupid question," Taylor admitted apologetically.
"No," Nathan shook his head. "It's a perfectly good one. One that I probably don't even know the real answer to."
"What happened?" she asked.
"It's a long story of…a bar fight, depression, a nanny jumping in the shower with me, and a near drowning incident," Nathan stated.
"Wow." Even Taylor was surprised at what he'd done.
"I guess it doesn't really matter what I did. It matters that it was enough to make her say she wanted a divorce. And I understand that I made some bad choices and mistakes that Haley had to witness…but. What else can I do?"
"Do you remember what I told you last time you came to The Swinging Donkey?"
"Oh yeah. That if I ever came back you'd give me a free lap dance. So whatever happened to that anyway?"
"Seriously. I told you that you just needed to try being on your own. And I think you came back looking for that again. Me telling you that you can be happy without her, you can grow, you can learn, and you can live. But just to change it up a little bit…and really just for your own good, I'm not gonna tell you that today."
Taylor stopped walking and Nathan followed, confused that this girl was practically a walking success story and had nothing to say to the soon-to-be-single man beside her.
"Because if I ever let you think you could live this life alone, I was wrong, Nathan," she admitted. "See I was a person who took a little longer to find the man I wanted to be with. I didn't know my place in the world until that person showed me the way and gave me a purpose. For six years, my sister has been that person for you. And somehow I don't think some…nanny is going to break you two up. Hey, even I didn't. And I know I can be pretty hard to resist, so…"
He smiled faintly and gestured back to The Swinging Donkey parking lot.
"I should…"
"Yeah, you should."
"Thank you," Nathan said, hugging Taylor. "…Again," he added, remembering that she had a strange way of always making him feel better about fights with Haley.
"Don't thank me," she replied.
She decided to let him walk back to the bar alone, even though she eventually had to get back to work anyway. Nathan needed to know that although some people could live just by loving places, ideas, and experiences, others could love people, and once they found it in their hearts to do that, they could never go back to a life of loneliness.
Likewise, he had found basketball, but even more importantly, he had found Haley. Nathan could deal with losing the first, but as he neared his car, he started to revisit the idea that he just wouldn't allow himself to lose the second.