Late to the Party ✔

13. Marry in haste, repent in leisure

George Cooper loved his wife. He just wasn't sure if he liked her at all.

She was a looker, of course, anyone could see. While he had let himself go a little, downing yet another beer after work and grilling another nice brisket on the barbecue, time had been kinder to her, and he honestly didn't see that much of a difference with the first time he'd laid eyes on her.

He had been young then, ready for all the good things life was surely going to throw at him. His football career was on the rise; the strength of his body full of promise. Freshly dumped by his on-off girlfriend, Ruth Bates, his buddies had dragged him to the campus bar, where they bombarded him with cheap booze and cheaper comments about women — the bitches never knew what they wanted, did they? The trick was, they said, to go for the younger ones. Less of a big mouth on them.

Boy, were they barking up the wrong tree.

She was already drunk when he strode over to her. By the time they'd clambered into his truck, they were both downright wasted. It was a wonder they'd even managed to make that baby at all, to be honest.

All those years of marriage, and he'd never once asked what the hell she'd been doing at a college bar all by her lonesome, drinking herself into oblivion. She probably wouldn't have given him an answer, and if she did, well, he wasn't a hundred percent sure he wanted to hear it. He knew she'd turn back the clock if she could. She knew he felt the same. Their unspoken agreement ordered that they couldn't ever utter these thoughts aloud — so, every night, he flicked off the lights, settled into bed, and let his beer-buzzed brain lull him to sleep.

Hell, he had tried. Bent over backward, he had. But it was one step forward, two steps back with her. When Georgie was finally old enough to let his parents sleep in on a Saturday morning, he'd thought they might patch up their fragile marriage and build something nice out of it. And for a while, they did. Until she announced with a brilliant smile that she was eating for three, and all the late-night sweet-talking and enticing giggles fizzled out as quickly as they'd started. He felt like a damn breeding bull.

There were a lot of things he wasn't proud of. He hadn't been a very hands-on father in the beginning. She made parenthood look so goddamn easy. She breathed mother from every pore in her skin: all that soft love and devotion poured into those two little tykes, like they were her whole world and she was fine with that. He was in competition with his own children, green-eyed with envy when they received a kiss and a lullaby and he some tired snark. It wasn't like he didn't love his kids. As far as he was concerned, his daughter, his cheeky golden-haired angel, had hung the moon, and his son — well, that was another story. Georgie had been so easy to get along with. Sheldon, he still expected to be claimed by aliens from Mars someday.

George didn't have his wife's patience. She diligently cut Sheldon's sausages in the exact length he wanted them, woke him up at exactly the same time every morning, lined up his outfits in the order he'd specified and didn't sigh once through the whole ordeal. It drove him up the wall. What the hell did it matter what shape your food was in? Any clean clothes should be good enough to wear for a boy. Before Sheldon turned out to be a genius, he was pretty sure his son was a sissy.

Mary hovered over the twins like a hen protecting her eggs. He felt like an intruder in his own home, a side character who was only there to fatten up their shared bank account. Some nights, he heard her cry, and he thought they might finally get somewhere. But her cheeks were always dry when he went in to comfort her. She was fickle, those days, quick to explode. Sheldon's tantrums were taking their toll on all of them, though she bore the brunt of it, being at home with him all day.

So, he'd bolted. He wasn't proud of it, really wasn't. Though he didn't regret it either. Only after a few weeks in that motel room did he finally find a sliver of his sanity again. He'd needed the break.