but Paul had been evasive, distracted, morose and probably depressed. Small wonder—Paul had been through a lot with Matt’s death. Joe suspected a pressure cooker. So he did what a good friend does—he pushed. It was time for Paul to let it out, so he could move on.
Joe went to a small, dark, quiet bar and waited for Paul to meet him. Joe had picked the place—somewhere a man could talk privately about the stuff that was eating his gut. He looked at his watch several times, wondering if Paul would be a no-show. Joe had a beer and was thinking about either trying the cell phone or just leaving when Paul finally lumbered in, head down, looking like he’d looked for too long now. The man was hurting all over.
“Beer,” he said to the bartender before he even said hello. “Heineken.”
“So,” Joe said, picking up his almost empty beer. “You’re in lousy shape.”
Paul was quiet for a moment, waiting for his beer. When it came he took a long drink before he said, “Lousy.”
“Listen, I thought maybe if we had a beer together, talked about it…”
“Believe me, you don’t want to talk about this, Joe.”
“Business okay?” Joe asked, nibbling around the edges of this situation. Paul’s family business was a good little company that did quality construction. While Matt might’ve been Paul’s best friend since they were kids, Joe had been closest to him since Desert Storm when they joined the same Marine reserve unit. They’d worked together since then and had gone back to Iraq together.
“Business is fine,” Paul said. “That’s not the problem.”
Joe clamped a strong hand on Paul’s shoulder. “You’re not yourself lately, bud. You’re having trouble moving on after Matt…He wouldn’t want this, you know.”
“I know…”
“Maybe it’s more than Matt,” Joe said. “I get the feeling something’s really eating you.”
“Yeah?” he asked with a somber laugh. “Jesus, you’re psychic.” He took another long drink of his beer.
“Any chance you could just go ahead and get it out where we can look at it? Because if you’re gonna drink that fast, you’ll leave me in your dust pretty quick.”
Paul shook his head. “I fucked things up pretty bad, Joe. I got myself in a mess I’m not gonna get out of.”
Joe stared at him a long moment. Then he banged his glass on the bar and when the bartender came over he said, “Gimme another one of these, huh?” While he was waiting for a new brew, he turned to Paul and asked, “You have any idea how confusing you are right now?”
“Yeah. You should find more stable people to drink with.”
“Well, until I do…”
It was a moment before Paul finally said, “I got someone pregnant…”
“No,” Joe said, stunned. “No, you’re too smart for that…”
Paul laughed. “I guess I’m not. Maybe I should sue Trojan, huh?”
“Oh, Jesus,” Joe said. “Oh God. Someone special? I hope?”
“Nice girl,” Paul said with a shrug. “But it wasn’t…Aw, man. It was…We aren’t…Shit. It was just one of those things. You know? I’ve known her about a year, but I’ve only been out with her a few times. We really didn’t have anything going on except…”
“Oh, Jesus,” Joe said again.
Paul turned toward Joe. “While I was in Virgin River last fall I didn’t talk to her once during that time—that’s how casual. I came back here all the time to check on the company, my dad and brothers, but I never even called her. And she didn’t call me. But…”
“But…?”
“But I came home with my gut in a knot after everything that had happened in Virgin River and I called her. On instinct, probably. And guess what happened?”
“Oh damn,” Joe said. “What are you gonna do?”
“What are my choices?” Paul asked, hanging his head. “I’ll take care of her, of my kid. What else do you do?” He shook his head sadly. “I want it,” he said. “I know—it’s stupid. I should probably try something, like buying her off or something. Get her to make it go away—but if I have a kid coming, I want a part of that. I’m nuts, right?”
Joe smiled patiently. “I don’t know. Maybe you’re not nuts about that—but what about the mother? Is she someone you’re going to be able to work with on that?”
“No telling,” he said. “She wants to get married. I can’t do that. I’m only planning to do this marrying thing once, and then it’s going to be to a girl I love so much I can’t stop myself. If I married this woman, it would really fuck her up, worse than she already is. I can’t fake it—not something like this. I’d be the worst husband. You don’t marry someone that fast.”
“It’s a big, permanent step,” Joe said. “Only you know if you can make something like that work. If you can’t, you do the next best thing,” Joe said. “Man up. Take care of her.”
“It’s just that I slept with her when I love someone else. Why the hell did I do that? What kind of sorry bastard does that? What was I thinking?”
At this point in the conversation Joe was completely lost. Paul loved someone? It wasn’t as though men got together and talked about women they had crushes on—they just didn’t. They rarely said how they felt, period. He’d known Paul a long time and there’d been very few women. He was the quiet one; he kept back. Even when they were abroad together, at war, with a lot of tension to unload, Paul never hustled the women.
The bartender delivered Paul another beer, from which he took a deep drink.
“Love someone else?” Joe repeated.
“I’m such a screwup…”
“You love someone?”
“It’s wrong, that’s all. I had no business…”
“Paul. You love someone?”
“Yeah. I was a real horseshit best friend for years. Vanni. I just couldn’t help it. I didn’t want it to be that way, but—”
Joe drank a big gulp. He was prepared to help Paul through just about anything, but he never saw this coming. And why hadn’t he? Probably because he’d have done for Paul what Paul did for Matt—stay with the widow through everything. “Whoa,” he finally said. “Oh, shit.”
“Oh, shit,” Paul echoed.
“Vanni?”
Paul nodded grimly. “You wanna try to imagine how guilty I feel about that? I tried like hell to talk myself out of it. Sometimes I got damn close. I stayed away from them, you know? Because I could talk to Matt just fine, but if I saw Vanni, my heart wanted to explode…Aw God.” He put his head in
