“You’re an idiot,” Caroline said, her voice layered with disappointed as she filled Davis’s coffee mug “You couldn’t have handled that any worse. Complete incompetence of all things involving the heart. Is that what you’re going for, first place in failure?”

“Are you done?” Davis asked, spooning some sugar into his mug and mixing it as though he were creating an elixir that might heal him.

“Like a squirrel trying to do math. Or a rock trying to run a marathon. You are hopeless, and every time you look like maybe you’re going to get out of your own way . . . boom. You do something like this. I don’t know what to do with you.”

“Give him a break,” Dallas said, strolling through the door, looking a little ragged. His T-shirt was wrinkled and his baseball hat was pulled low over his eyes. “It’s been a long night.”

“I haven’t even begun with you yet,” Caroline scolded, gesturing for her son to sit as though the booth was a time out chair for a toddler. “But let me finish with him first. You don’t get to tell a girl what she should be doing. If she’s got something to work out, you need to trust her.” Caroline was pacing around wiping already clean tables and pushing in chairs another fraction of an inch. “Who do you think you are?”

“I love her,” Davis replied flatly. “Maybe I’m an idiot. Maybe I’m screwing it all up. I’m not sure. But what I do know is I’m not getting involved with another woman who doesn’t know what she wants in life. I know where I want to be and what kind of life I want. Maybe I figured it out earlier than most. If she’s in a state of flux, I’m not going through it again. If she needs time to figure out her stuff, then she can take that time. But she can do it on her own.”

“You’re stubborn as a mule,” Dallas said, stealing away the bowl of sugar packets and looking pitifully at his mother for a cup of coffee. “But I admire your dedication to your own foolishness. It’s impressive.”

“Thanks,” Davis said, taking a long sip of his coffee to rub in the fact that at least he’d been given that. “I knew I could count on you two to make me feel better.”

“We’re your friends,” Caroline sighed, tossing the towel in her hand over her shoulder and propping her hands on her hips. “We’re not meant to make you feel better. We’re meant to help you be better. And for the last few years we’ve been failing you. I want you to think long and hard about this opportunity you have with Elaine. Stop pretending the ball is in her court and start realizing you’ve both got the control in this situation. No one is perfectly right or perfectly wrong. And don’t compare this to what happened with Julie. It’s light years different. You’re different. Dallas and I, along with loads of other people in this town, want to see you happy. Quit making that so hard.”

“What do you propose I do?” Davis asked, genuinely unsure of how Caroline saw this thing turning out well. “She’s going to go to New York, to this charity event just to help a guy who doesn’t deserve it. Her flight already took off. There’s no running through the airport and chasing her down.”

“What a terribly generous thing for her to do,” Dallas laughed cynically. “I’ve always hated that quality in people. Loyalty. Selflessness. It’s exhausting to be around people willing to do something nice even when it puts their own life in turmoil.”

“When you put it that way,” Davis grunted, sliding out of the booth and heading for the door. “I need some time to think. Caroline give this poor guy a cup of coffee, he’s fresh out of jail.”

Caroline hummed her disappointment. “He’s on punishment.” She closed in on Davis before he could reach the door and whispered her last bit of advice “The happiest I’ve seen you in a long time was sitting across from Elaine every morning. Laughing and sipping your coffee. Go think. Go be alone. But when you close your eyes if she’s the one you see, if she’s what makes your heart smile, then fix this fast.”

“Night,” Davis said, halfway out the door as her words chased him out. He’d been in moments like this before. And one thing he’d learned about loving a woman who needed room to run was that his selfishness had been far more of a factor than the circumstances he’d kept blaming. It was time for him to either tame the beast within, or come to terms with the fact that his life would always bring him to this very moment. Like a book you had to keep reading until you understood what you were meant to learn, his eyes were finally starting to open.