Let me get this out of the way.
I have some friends for sale.
Mostly all of them, okay all of them wonderful, loving, caring, slightly undomesticated males who can't manage to clean a dish or a shirt but have the art of barbecuing and women down to a science, save for one.
Me.
I love them, I really do. But I don't like to be second-guessed. Especially now.
All of them anxious for caution, for hesitancy. All of them also dealing with not knowing how bad things were for me at home. They kick themselves for not stepping in, for not doing something. For tearing Jake down instead of backing him up when he pressured me to leave Cole. Romantic rival, indeed. Don't think it isn't lost on them now that he was the only one who knew, and he couldn't help me, but maybe if they had backed him up it would have been easier.
And now Jake falls under their microscope. Jacob, the good guy. The minister, for heaven's sake. The one guy who could rip up a block of concrete with his bare hands but doesn't and won't, earning him the Friendly Giant/Preacher Boy nicknames. He would never ever hurt me. But still they're skittish. If we argue now they crowd in and attempt to do damage control, offering time away, space, moral support. Poor Jake. More eyes are on him then ever before and it's Cole's fault. Because they refuse to ever let things get so quietly out of control ever again. And now, of course telling them all that we're growing our family leads to judgments and comments and flack that I don't appreciate because it PUTS DOUBTS IN MY HEAD. The speed at which we've tried to find a routine, a normal family life after a monster of a miserable season leaves them gasping for air and I can't help that. I have to do what I want to do. For the first time it gives me a little control back and I like that. I don't frankly care how many heads are left spinning in our tiny, rippling wake. Don't fucking question me now. I'm only beginning to find happiness I should have had before and they're hellbent on wrecking it all.
Jacob is thrilled with the scrutiny. He's an open book, ready to share his own life, his philosophies, his loves with anyone who asks or ventures an enquiry. He doesn't mind the guys pressuring him to stay the straight and narrow because he will, he does. He only finds it ironic in this new day's light. He wants me to be surrounded by good people that I can count on. He believes that if people are accountable for their actions then they do better and he loves the fact that even good people always have room for improvement, himself included.
What he doesn't like, is the queue of guys standing in a line behind him ready to step in to his shoes should he (and he won't) fall. Oh no. Haven't we been through this already? Two separate occasions recently found me on the wrong end of deep conversations, ones that ended with lofty goals, promises I didn't ask to be made. Feelings I never wanted to know existed.
Bridge...if things don't work out with Jake...well, you don't have to be alone.
Oh my God. How noble, honorable, and really above and beyond the call of duty. Assurances from me that I won't be alone, and I won't be - I have my friends. My family, my kids. I wouldn't touch another friend if my life depended on it. I love these guys like brothers. I loved Jacob like nothing else. Can't they see the difference? And if they think it's easy to fall in love with and try to make a new life with a friend who knows every moment of your history then they are sorely mistaken, it's so much harder than we expected.
We didn't understand how much time we would spend re-examining old wounds, fighting old fights and forgetting that we're supposed to be lovers now, saying things you can say to friends, but should never say to people you have to go to bed with. And Jacob, standing in Cole's shoes, now knowing exactly how people view me. Seeing how people think about his wife, what sort of things they imagine and ways they try to get close to me and it's harder than he thought it would be, but still a place he would trade with no one, ever again.
I'm apparently a blessing, an ego trip and a curse all at once.
It's really fucking hard. And made harder, unintentionally by well-meaning friends who wind up with the harsh lights on them, too.
What the fuck? Were you my friend or are you just here because you want to get into my pants too? There's no fucking lineup! Go away! And take your fucking opinions with you.
I feel disillusioned, chaotic, betrayed in a totally different way. Then everyone steps back but it's too fucking late for that. It's out there and you can't stuff this one back in. Oh no. You let it out and it grew and now it's too big to hide it anywhere but in plain sight and I can never look at them the same way ever again and that hurts very badly.
It does.
I am not flattered.
What appeared to be such a proper, normal average life out here in cowboyland has become nothing more than a sordid, deceitful soap opera and it features me, the reluctant starlet. The lights are so hot. I'm shaken by what all these revelations have meant to my life as it stands now. Honest, pure love, personal safety, security and the price is that I'm brutally restrained into an insular environment in which I am always safe because I'm never out of reach and the numbers of people I have access to are now limited, a small number, because of the damn trust.
This is a price I can pay because I've lived both sides now and I would choose this in a heartbeat over the way things were before. The funny part is I expected it to feel claustrophobic and it doesn't. It doesn't at all.
When my friends learn how to deal with their feelings, I'll welcome them back into my world but until they do, I can't handle it. Jacob thinks I'm being harsh, surprisingly. No, I'm just exercising some long-overdue self-preservation. The icing on the cake, only this time I didn't ask for dessert. So I have to push away the beloved plate of cake and politely refuse, for now.
Have you ever needed someone so bad,
Have you ever wanted someone
You just couldn't have
Did you ever try so hard
That your world just fell apart
Have you ever needed someone so bad
And you're the girl I gotta have
