Exercises In Cohabitation
There are the kind of guys you can fall in love with, and the kind of guys you can’t, and there was just no doubt that Louis was one of the latter. There were never going to be odes composed about his paunch and his greying hair and his clothes that looked like he ran into a thrift shop in the middle of a high speed chase and grabbed the first things that came to hand. No one was going to wax poetic about the way he puffed when he ran, the way he grunted when he ate, the way all his stupid jokes fell flat because he told them at the worst possible times.
Louie and romance just didn’t fit into the same thought; even his ex-wife had probably just put up with him until she couldn’t anymore and took off with the first sweet-smile sweet-eyes sweet-words guy she saw. That was what you did with Louie, you put up with him, you tolerated him, you let him hang around while you ignored the smell and the jokes and the coffee stains on everything he touched and hoped he didn’t know you were waiting for him to leave.
You didn’t look forward to seeing him every day. You didn’t invite him over for hockey and beer just so you could spend a few more hours in his company. And you damn sure didn’t fall in love with him, because he just wasn’t the kind of guy anyone would fall in love with.
That’s what Jack Huey keeps telling himself, anyway.