A/N: I can't tell you how much I love getting your feedback. After fights with my co-workers and roommate this week,your great reactionsreally helped lift my spirits. So, I felt like you guys deserved a little bit of brevity after the last couple of chapters. And, unfortunately, this one didn't turn out quite as light-hearted as I planned, but I hope you like it anyway. The next chapter is the last, and I promise you some smiles. I mean, if you've read this whole story, I think you've earned them. Please keep the reviews coming - I love them.
Loving a child was the purest and most wonderful thing that Ryan had ever experienced. And yet, sometimes he was tired of being Dad. He loved listening to Jada sing along with The Lion King in the bathtub, but there was something inside of him that still longed for adults singing about love and loss. And he would never tire of watching her drink cherry Kool-Aid from a crazy straw while he read her stories by Dr. Seuss, but part of him still wanted to be around a bunch of twenty-somethings, drinking foreign beer and discussing over-rated, pretentious literature. He wanted a Guys' Night Out.
Between his dating Marissa and Seth helping Summer with the wedding, their time alone had started to take a backseat, and he was finding that he missed it. So when Seth showed up at his office Friday afternoon, he found himself smiling more than he probably should have. "What's up, man?" he asked, shuffling a few folders out of the way while Seth dawdled in the doorway.
"This place freaks me out," Seth cringed, looking around the office with an expression of contempt.
"Seth, your office is, like, three times this size," Ryan argued.
But his friend shook his head. "Yeah, but people in my office wear jeans, draw pictures for a living, and have water fights in the hallways. Your people," he looked into the hall and then turned back to his friend, "they wear ties and carry briefcases and gather around a water cooler."
Ryan smiled and stood, fishing his car keys out of the desk drawer. "You wanna go get some crab cakes?" he asked.
Seth nodded and followed him to the parking lot. Conversation was light and simple on the drive to the restaurant, but once they were seated, Ryan noticed the uncomfortable look on his friends. "What is wrong with you?"
With a nervous look, Seth drank from his water glass and let out a sigh. "I'm going out of my mind, Ryan," he stated. "Last night, Summer wouldn't let me sleep until I picked out my favorite napkin rings. Napkin rings, Ryan. I spent twenty minutes listening to the benefits of pewter versus brushed nickel. Do you know what the differences is?" Ryan shook his head. "Neither do I. Because I don't fuckin' care. I'm going insane."
Ryan laughed and accepted the beer bottle from the waitress. "I guess it's a good thing you didn't have far to go, huh?"
With a withering laugh, Seth leaned back in his chair. "I'm going to remember your compassion when you're suffering through the same hellish fate, my friend. And you will get no sympathy from me," he promised.
"What can I get you guys?" the waitress asked, her eyes growing wide as they rested on her customers. "Ryan?"
He looked up and a slow smile spread over his face. "Hey, Beth. How are you?"
Beth was a girl he had dated briefly the previous year, more out of boredom than any real attraction. He had always assumed that she kind of liked his daughter more than him.
"I'm really great," she nodded. "How's Jada?"
"She's good. She's gonna be starting kindergarten in the fall," he smiled proudly.
"Kindergarten?" Beth asked in surprise. "Time sure does fly by, right?" There was a long, awkward silence. "So, what about lunch? Can I get you guys something?"
They ordered and Seth narrowed his gaze at his friend when she left. "So, you're smiling. Any old feelings creeping back in?" Ryan shook his head. "Really? Wow," he sounded impressed. "Things must be pretty serious with you and Marissa, huh?"
"Um, yeah, I think so," he said, reaching for a potato chip from the complimentary bowl in the middle of the table. "I mean, I was trying to take it slow," he started.
Seth shook his head and took a drink of the beer at his side. "Dude, it's been almost two months since she got back into town. That's, like, a snail's pace in your book, isn't it?"
Ryan smiled. It was true. In the old days, back in high school, they had always raced forward, skipping most of the natural "relationship" steps in an attempt to arrive at a location neither of them would recognize once they got there. Now they were taking their time, enjoying the road, never addressing the destination. They focused on building a family, the foundation of a life they could share eventually, should it come to that.
"So, we gonna hang out tonight or what?" Ryan asked as their food arrived.
Seth shook his head. "I can't. I have to go with Summer to scout locations for the wedding," he grunted, digging into his first crab cake. "Trust me, though, I would much rather catch a movie with you."
"Maybe it's a bad sign when you'd rather hang with your best friend than your fiancée," Ryan suggested.
"It's not that. I love Summer more than anything, you know that. It's just that we have shared a house for almost a year, man. We're already half-married. So I ask you, my friend, why the hell do we have to spend an," his eyes bulged, "ungodly amount of cash on one day that is not going to change anything between us."
There was something uneasy about Seth's mannerisms, about the way his words hung heavy with a confused sadness. "Dude," Ryan sighed, tossing his napkin onto the table. "Why would you even ask her to marry you if you don't want to go through with this thing."
"It's not that I don't want to marry her," Seth's voice climbed at the accusation and he slumped back in his seat. "Dude, I have wanted to marry Summer Roberts since we were ten. But not because I want to see her in a dress walking down some aisle, man. I just wanna be with her. I just want some Rabbi to tell us that God's cool with us being together, and we'll get on with our lives."
Ryan sighed and bit into another one of the fried crab cakes on his plate. He understood what Seth was saying. It was all the same things he and Marissa had discussed a week ago when talking about their theoretic wedding. They had agreed that an intimate affair on the beach would be best, sometime in the fall, so as not to steal any of Seth and Summer's thunder. Neither of them had a lot of friends and family, so as long as the Cohens, her dad, and Jada were there, they would be thrilled. Of course, they weren't getting too serious too fast or anything.