“I need your advice, Ray. I fucked up.”
“With Ruthie?”
“Yeah, she caught me fooling around with someone. Not live, but a picture.”
Ray sighs. “Why? Didn’t she give you everything she wanted?”
“Yeah. Thing is…she’s pregnant.”
“Boy, when you fuck up, you do it royally, don’t you?”
“Apparently so.”
“You going to do right by her?” Ray asks.
“I want to, but right now she is not open to making that happen anytime soon.”
“Can’t say I blame her, boy.”
“Yeah.” I glance down, ashamed.
“Everyone makes mistakes. It’s what you do afterward that counts. You got to show her you’re in this for the long run and for the right reasons. She’s going to be thinking you’re trying to change your stripes because of that babe she’s carrying. I’ve never met her, but from what you tell me she’s strong, independent, and sassy. She won’t be a consolation prize.”
“She isn’t one.”
“How are you going to show her that?” Ray asks.
“I don’t know, Ray. That’s why I’m here to see you.”
“Romance her. Be steady, consistent, and patient. Be willing to bend a little. It’s a concept you’re not used to in that world you live in. Real love requires us to meet in the middle.”
“It sounds like you’re telling me I’m her bitch, Ray.”
He laughed. “Hey, we all are for someone.”
“That ain’t happening, old man. Not in this lifetime.”
“I’m not saying become another person. Do this in your own way for her. You know her, use everything you’ve learned to sway her. Show her you’re capable of being what she needs.”
“I don’t know the first thing about being what somebody needs. Look at how it ended for my father.”
“Look at how it ended for your grandparents,” Ray reminds me. “Happy until the end. You focus so much on the darkness, you can’t see the light.”
“Easier to stay sane and avoid disappointment that way.”
“You lost your chance to stay aloof when you made a baby and fell in love,” Ray says.
“No one said anything about love.” The four letter label makes me uncomfortable.
“You think not saying it, makes it less true?” he asks as he peers over his glasses.
“I’m not going there with you.”
“Ain’t me you need to be worried about, now is it? Think on what I said. You have to find the way you communicate the way you feel. Why don’t you tell me your plan?”
“I’m going to move in with her.”
“She agreed to that? Maybe she’s not as upset as you think?”