his phone and noticed the text.
Going home. Headache. Just need to sleep.
He blew out a breath. Well, fuck. The thing he hated the most was when he felt like he didn’t know what to do for someone he cared about. Particularly Jordan, of course.
Thankfully, he knew better than to call her or head home, wake her up, and ask what she needed.
She would be in bed, shades drawn, lights off, door shut, just wanting to be left alone.
Yeah, he’d made the mistake in college of knocking on her dorm room door when she’d had one. It had been with good intentions. He really had been concerned and wanted to help. But she’d looked so miserable, and had begged him to leave her alone, and that had been all she needed to say.
But he’d sat outside her door, doing his homework in the hallway to keep anyone else from knocking or even shouting in the hallways or slamming their own doors.
She’d almost tripped over him the next morning when she’d come out to head to the showers.
That was when she’d asked for a cheeseburger and a Coke.
He’d had to drive several miles to find a twenty-four-hour café that would make a cheeseburger at seven thirty in the morning. But he’d done it. And nothing had made him feel better than delivering exactly what she needed after she’d been so miserable.
So, he could definitely get her a cheeseburger and fries tomorrow morning. He knew that Cora or Ellie would happily make a burger for her while they were frying eggs and hash browns for the rest of their breakfast crowd.
But right now, he had nothing.
“You feeling okay?” Charlie asked.
“Useless,” Fletcher said with a shrug. “But otherwise fine.”
She gave him a sympathetic smile. “It definitely sucks when the person we love is upset or hurt.” She cast a glance at Griffin, who was listening to Zeke tell him about the zebra pen. “And I know it’s hard for you, Fletcher. But you can’t fix everything. She’ll be okay.”
She would. In the overall scheme of things. But knowing she was hurting right now and there was nothing he could do, definitely sucked.
He really just wanted to head home with a cheeseburger. Or balloons. Or ice cream. Or take her for a drive. Or any of the other stuff he’d done for her in the past when she hadn’t felt good.
But see, the timing was off. In the past, he’d known when to show up.
At the end, of course. For the grand finale.
Now…he was the husband. Twenty-four-seven. All the hours were his now. And he needed to figure out what to do in them.
This was the stuff he had to learn.
This was the stuff that Jason had done.
Fuck.
“What happened?” Naomi asked, leaning in.
Fletcher realized he’d said the “fuck” out loud. He shook his head. “Just trying to figure out this marriage thing. Wish there was a handbook.”
“You’ve got a real live handbook right here,” Owen said, stretching his arms out and hugging his wife Maddie to his side. “You’re surrounded by people living in wedded bliss. What do you need to know?”
Fletcher looked around. He had a point. Josh, Owen, Sawyer, and Kennedy were all married. Happily. His mom and dad and several of his aunts and uncles had also been doing the marriage thing for a long time. And then there were Ellie and Leo. His grandparents had been married for fifty some years. They’d even divorced and gotten remarried. To one another. So they definitely knew something about the ups and downs.
“Okay,” he said to his family at large. “What if you’re already married when you figure out that you might not be good at it?”
Owen looked at Sawyer, then at Josh then back to Fletcher. He nodded. “Yup, sounds like you’re about right where you should be.”
Fletcher frowned.
Josh nodded his agreement. “Yeah, if you’re not wondering what the hell you’re doing, and feeling like you’re fucking it up once in a while, you’re either delusional, or you’re just not paying attention.”
Tori leaned in and kissed his cheek. “But it’s so sexy when you work on getting it right.”
“For sure,” Maddie agreed. “And it’s not like I’m getting it right every second either. Working at it is a way to show your love, too.”
“Definitely,” Sawyer agreed. “And if you never mess up, you never get to have make-up sex.”
“Hell, I piss her off sometimes on purpose just for the make-up sex,” Owen said.
Maddie lifted a brow. “And sometimes I pretend I’m pissed off