That made me chuckle. Jerry Springer was notorious for getting the worst sorts on and exposing them on national TV. It was entertaining to watch the poor knuckleheads make fools of themselves. If it wouldn’t be so emotionally draining, it might be fun to let the fur fly on this one. Brook could play the poor naïve girlfriend who had no idea what a horndog I was. I suspected Frank would take a dim view of it, though. He was trying to figure out how to spin this so I didn’t look like a typical out-of-control celebrity. Not even Justin Bieber had four babies before he was twenty-one. I might want to stop making fun of him.
Then again, maybe not. How can anyone
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We walked downstairs and had dinner at my restaurant. Scarlet and Carol joined us. Mom had called Greg, so he and his family showed up. Kyle and Mac wanted to see the baby, while Nate wanted to sit on his uncle’s lap. Scarlet fit in with everyone. She seemed happy to get out of Alabama before her pappy had a shotgun wedding for her.
Mary Dole just sent out food on platters. She was trying to clean out the walk-in of everything that hadn’t sold over the weekend. I’m sure Greg and I each ate a whole chicken. Nate spilled about half his dinner on me. Next time, he was going to eat in his high chair.
I never got a chance to speak with Brook. She and Ian left before I could get free. I guessed we would talk when we talked. I was just a little irritated about it all.
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Chapter 32 – Tell Me a Secret Monday October 24
I opened the back door and found Precious waiting for us. She seemed to glare at Duke, and he gave her a wide berth as he moved around her and then hurried off to do his business. She got up and pushed her way past me to go up the stairs to my apartment. For some reason, I decided that it wouldn’t be worth it to try to stop her. I didn’t feel like bleeding this morning.
Doc Grog had told me I could start walking and working with the training staff this week to stretch and exercise. The plan was for me to get past the pain. Today, Duke and I were going for a walk. I showed Duke his leash, and he ran over and sat. He knew this meant he would get off the property, so he was on his best behavior. Apparently, my hound missed our morning runs.
I brought my Bo staff, having had the bright idea I might use it to exercise. I quickly figured out that twisting it was not in the cards. By the time I’d gone a couple of blocks, I was glad I’d brought it, though, because it made an excellent walking stick. I had a bad feeling that if I didn’t get better quickly, I might not be ready for the game on Friday. That made me determined to keep going, even though I felt like hell.
I thought about all that had happened over the weekend. Something Uncle John had taught me was that I was responsible for my own happiness. Some of the stuff he told me had a new-age feel to it that didn’t appeal to the teenager in me. He’d said that it was up to me to decide how something affected me. What bothered me most wasn’t the discovery that I had three more children by two different mothers, though that was a game-changer, without a doubt. What troubled me was how Brook had effectively bailed on me.
I’d been thinking in terms of the two of us against the world. Brook and I were a good fit, and I cared about her more than I wanted to admit at this very moment. My first impulse was that I had to fix this. The problem was, there was nothing I could fix right now. I wasn’t even sure yet if the three new babies were mine. I wanted to come up with some brilliant plan that would put Brook’s mind at ease and make it okay for her to put up with my drama.
Uncle John would have teased me because he’d taught me about people’s success strategies. People had different ways to get others to accept and like them. Some were the teacher’s pet, others the class clown, and so on. It was easy for guys to fall into the role of the one who figured out what was wrong and then solved it. We thought it made us indispensable.
The flip side of being in charge of your own happiness was that you had to accept that you didn’t have control over anyone else’s. You can’t make someone love you. If Brook didn’t want to go out with me, there was nothing I could do about it. I realize that sounds like a defeatist approach, but my uncle tried to teach me that I was in control of my happiness. If that was the case, then I shouldn’t have to rely on Brook, and our relationship, to create my well-being. The pitfall of depending on Brook to make me happy was that if I tied my happiness to her actions, my emotions would be in constant flux. There was a saying that fit here: you had to like yourself before you could like others.
