The drive out to Jake’s garage had already calmed Todd’s nerves. This was familiar to him, he thought. How many nights had he driven out there and sat with his brother while he fixed up his car for a race? There were a lot of fond memories in that garage.
Missy had seen him first and walked toward him, a wrench in her hand and a greasy smudge on her cheek.
“Where’s your lady? I thought your days of coming out here solo were over,” she teased as he pulled his bag from the passenger seat and shut the door.
“She’s working. Just needed a few minutes and a few beers with my brother,” Todd said as he kissed Missy on her clean cheek. “Here, Jessie wanted me to show you this.”
He handed her the small album.
“Pearl wants me to do this,” she said looking at the photos of pregnant women embracing their stomachs. “I don’t know if this is me.”
“So do it with your twist. Wear your racing suit and pose next to your car.”
Her eyes lit up with that suggestion. “You’re good at this too.”
“No, Jessie has the eye. I just know you.”
She smiled widely at him. “He’s in with his car in the back. He’s had a hard day. I think he’ll be glad to see you.”
Missy headed toward the office and Todd walked to the back garage where he heard his brother cussing at the engine he was working on.
“You must have gotten the same email I got this morning. Your mood sucks too,” Todd called and Jake lifted his head to watch him walk closer. “I brought beer.”
“Thank God.” Jake tossed the wrench on the bench behind him and pulled over a turned over bucket and a stool for them to sit on as Todd pulled a beer for each of them from his bag. “She freaking ran away and got married? Again?”
“Yep, you got the same email.”
Jake twisted off the top to the beer and drank down half of it before taking a breath. “She gives the sanctity of marriage a bad name. I’ve lost count. How many is this?”
“I don’t know. One of them only lasted a month.”
“That was number three,” Jake confirmed.
“Right. Did you hear from Dad?”
Jake let out a grunt. “I try to avoid that with all my might. Anyone who makes bets against his own son in a race, doesn’t deserve my time.”
Todd wondered if they could get a discount if they went to counseling together for their combined daddy issues.
He twisted off the cap to his beer and took a long sip. “I suppose he’ll call wanting to know all the details, or worse yet, he’ll run off and get married just to one up her.”
Jake shook his head. “Except he’ll steal the money from someone, make it seem as if it’s owed to him, and then call again when he divorces whoever he conned into marrying him.”
Todd thought he should laugh at his brother’s assumption of the situation, but unfortunately he knew he was probably spot on.
In silence they finished their beers and Todd opened them each a second one.
“I’m moving in with Jessie,” Todd announced his plans and watched as his brother smiled behind his beer.
“Sucker.”
“Can’t help it. I think she’s the one.”
“Missy told me that the day she met her.”
“No kidding?”
Jake shook his head. “She doesn’t get all girly on me often, but when she’d met Jessie, she came home all giddy, talking about you and your new woman.”
“I don’t think when she met Jessie we were an item yet.”
“Oh, she just knew.”
Hearing that made him want to run home to Jessie and plan a long future with her. And then he thought about his reason for sitting in his brother’s garage drinking beer. There was a lot at stake when he thought about getting married. Sure, his brother was making it work, but maybe that was a fluke. They just didn’t come from good stock, and that worried him.
Then he thought about Jessie’s family. Her parents were happily married, and they’d gone through tremendous loss and still stayed together. Todd’s parents hadn’t together since he was a child, they still couldn’t have a civil conversation, and they hadn’t been through anything like Jessie’s parents.
He watched his brother take another drink of his beer and he wondered if Jake pondered these kinds of things when he’d fallen in love with Missy. Her family was equally unstable as theirs had been, and again, they were making it work.
“How do you guys make it work? The marriage thing?” he asked and Jake lifted his head.
“She makes good coffee.”
Todd laughed. “I mean it. Her family is messed up. Our family is messed up. How do either of you know what a solid marriage is supposed to be like?”
Jake narrowed his eyes on Todd. “Look at our aunt and uncle. Look at our grandparents. Sure, we come from the crazy side of the family, but we don’t have to buy into it. I think if you love someone, you make it work.”
And that was simple enough advice that Todd absolutely believed his brother. So their parents didn’t believe in marriage. Hell, their mother didn’t even care enough to have introduced her sons to the man she ran off and married. But that didn’t have to reflect on him and Jessie.
He loved her, and in his mind he was sure he was headed toward asking her to marry him.
But they’d agreed. They’d move in together first and then they could talk marriage, and he’d be ready.
Todd sat with his brother just a little longer and when he left, he thought maybe he’d call his mother and congratulate her on her marriage. He was sure that it would be over by the time they met her husband, but he could be the bigger person.