What Follows After: A Novel by Dan Walsh

Author:Dan Walsh [Walsh, Dan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC042040, FIC027020
ISBN: 9781441234582
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2014-04-01T00:00:00+00:00

33

Scott wasn’t too sure about this walk on the beach idea.

If anything, the thought of him and Mike, alone, doing nothing but walking and talking on the beach for thirty minutes, made him feel more tense. What was relaxing about that? If Mike wanted to help him unwind, they should head down to one of the arcades at the boardwalk and play pinball. He and Mike hadn’t talked about anything, other than the necessary chitchat when planning family visits . . . well, ever.

They were on the beach now, after crossing A1A and heading down the approach. It was a beautiful day, nice and sunny, very uncrowded. Pretty much just them, the seagulls, and after a few blocks, some sand dunes, at least on this stretch of the beach.

“How about here?” Mike said.

“Good a place as any,” Scott said.

Mike turned left, pulled the car into a spot just before the line where the sand became soft. Both men got out.

“I’m guessing you weren’t thinking about the two of us building a sand castle,” Scott said.

“Not exactly.”

“You want to talk about me and Gina?”

“Ouch . . . am I that predictable?” Mike said.

“Well,” Scott said, as they made their way across the flat sand toward the waterline, “how long have we known each other, Mike?”

“A little over five years, I guess.”

“Two things we’ve never done in that time . . . talk about anything meaningful and take a walk on the beach. Put that together with the fact that I screwed up my marriage in a major way and that I’ve been expecting God to appoint someone to take me out to the woodshed for quite some time, I guess it might as well be you.”

Mike smiled. “I forgot I’m talking to an engineer. You’re close, but you’re wrong on one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“I have no plans to take you out to the woodshed. Seriously, that’s not what this is about.”

Scott looked out to the water. “Well, somebody better do it.”

“Maybe somebody will. But it’s not gonna be me.”

They walked a few steps in silence.

“I just figured with all you’re going through, you might need a friend. I know guys don’t typically have friendships like that, unless they’ve been fighting in a foxhole together for a while. I thought I’d take a chance and just jump in, see what happens.”

Scott took a deep breath, like he was bracing for something. “Guess you better just jump in then. What’s on your mind?”

“Well, not sure exactly where to start,” Mike said. “Obviously, it came as a bit of a shock that you and Gina were separated. We could kind of tell, for at least the last year or two, that you guys were having problems. We just didn’t know things had gotten this bad.”

“If you knew that,” Scott said, “you knew more than I did. Until that Christmas party last December, I thought Gina and I were doing fine. At least as good as we’ve been doing all along.”

A slightly bigger wave than the rest rolled in, forcing the two men to scamper out of its way like a pair of sandpipers.

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