Page 8 of Letting Go at 40

I collapse back to the couch beside Zack and glare at the bottle I hold in one hand, balancing it on my thigh.

Glass half full or glass half empty?

Silence fills the air around us as I pour another drink for myself.

“This is stupid,” I finally blurt. I chug my drink. I’ve lost count of what number I’m on for the day. “You want a better quality of life at the end of your time, so be it.”

My eyes meet Ben’s. Zack shifts beside me but I don’t look away from our friend. The one who brought us all together.

Zack and I once argued over who knew Ben first. Was it me, the other lawn boy for Kulis Landscaping, or Zack, Anna’s childhood friend?

The chicken or the egg? Which came first?

Inside my head, I’m a wizard of philosophy this evening. Or maybe I’m just getting drunk.

“If things get really bad, promise me you’ll get medical attention. You won’t just let yourself suffer in pain but do something to aid yourself. Do something to lessen it,” Zack says to Ben.

He’s been talking while I’ve been psychologic— . . . nope, philosophic . . . no, philosophizing. My tongue, pasty and thick, rolls over the difficult word although I haven’t spoken it aloud.

“Maryjane for medicinal purposes. She’s my kind of woman,” I joke, lifting my glass. I could use a hit, or a woman named Maryjane. Either will do to drown out everything in my head.

Best life. Makes me happy. Home.

Because I’m feeling grandiose, or just plain full of myself this evening, I speak about something that’s been weighing on my mind since Ben told me about his condition.

“Remember when we were young . . . er . . . younger, and we had a plan.” I pause. “We were going to make our own business. No dads. No bosses. We’d be in charge. Logan would design houses. I’d build them. Benny would make them pretty outside, and Zack would make sure we stayed out of trouble. At least, legally.”

Screw the Man. Fuck my dad. Weakly, I lift my glass with my silent thoughts in an empowering salute to screw over my father. In my younger years, I idolized the man only to one day realize he was nothing but a tyrant, not a parent.

I promised myself I’d be better than him.

I hadn’t been.

What happened to that dream?

I hadn’t realized I’d asked the question aloud until Ben says, “I married Anna.”

“Yes, women. How fickle they can be,” I mutter to the glass in my hand and down the rest of the scorching alcohol. My insides burn with a combination of anger at the universe and hatred for my father, the dream-stealer. I should be irritated by the truth in Ben’s answer, but I’m not. Anna picked the better person. There never really was a choice, though. It’s become a joke between Ben and me.

She would have picked me if I’d gotten to her first, I’d teased.

Ben often replied how he considered himself a lucky man. He sensed I might be right. If only I’d met her first . . .

“We were the four seasons,” I mumble aloud. Or was it the four amigos? We couldn’t have been The Three Musketeers, there are four of us. I twist the glass in my hand where a drizzle remains in the bottom and dances over the crystal.

“The four points,” Ben corrects.

Ah yes. I was from Up North, as the lower half of Michigan calls the upper half which isn’t the official Upper Peninsula. Ben was from the west side of the state. Zack was east for some reason, and Logan came from the south, in Indiana. Four points on a compass.

“Why didn’t we do it?” The question is still legitimate. The answer is more than Ben marrying Anna. Why hadn’t we formed our company? What happened to those four young college men, scrappy and eager for life to begin, to take over the world, or at least forge our own path in it?

No one answers my question which isn’t rhetorical.

“To Four Points,” Logan says, lifting his glass

“To Four Points,” I reply, raising my glass as well, smiling for some reason.

“To the future,” Ben whispers.