Page 90 of 3 Daddies to Go

“No, we haven’t—” Tanner says, but he stops himself. “Shit, you’re right. We have.”

“Except for the falling-in-love-with-her part.”

“Except for that. But think about it. How is she supposed to know we really love her? All she knows is that we sleep around a lot. Trudy and Herbie probably told her that we buy the girl a gift before we leave. How do you think that looks to her? We bought her a gift and got ready to go back to New York. We haven’t done anything to make her think she’s different.”

“We spilled our guts to her!” Tanner shouts.

I shake my head. “I don’t think that’s enough.”

“Should we take back the non-profit?”

“No, absolutely not. I mean, I don’t know if she’ll take it now, but I hope she does. I think she wants to help people more than she hates us.”

“That doesn’t make me feel better,” mutters Tanner.

I roll my eyes. “Whatever. The point is, we need to show her that we’re serious. We need to prove we’re in this for the long haul. We didn’t say anything about the future. We didn’t make her think this could be permanent. We just expected her to fall at our feet after saying, ‘We love you.’”

“So again, how do we fix this?” asks Tag. “We can talk about it all night, but that doesn’t change anything. She’ll never trust us again. Besides, how would this relationship even work? We haven’t thought this through.”

He’s right, of course. How would a relationship between the four of us work? We haven’t considered the logistics. It’s fine when it’s sex, but how does one have a relationship with three other people?

I sink back into the couch, feeling defeated. “Maybe we should let it go,” I say. “Even if Kendall talks to us again, we have no clue how to make this relationship work. Our lives are in New York. Are we supposed to be long-distance? That just makes it even more complicated.”

Tanner sits up suddenly. “Fuck, guys. There’s our answer!”

“Giving up?”

“No,” Tanner says. “We have to leave New York.”

The words settle between us.

The solution seems so obvious. We can’t keep living the life we’re living, fucking chicks and leaving them high and dry.

I guess we’ve been changing this whole time. “Maybe we didn’t tell Kendall we were leaving because we wanted an excuse to stay.”

Tanner and Tag nod in agreement. The realization washes over us. We fell in love with Kendall that first night, it just took us a while to figure it out. We were never going back to New York.

Staying here is the only solution. We can’t ask Kendall to come to New York with us. She belongs in Boone, making a difference in this community. Even if she were to start up a Sunshine Program in New York, it wouldn’t be the same. She has a home here, which is something we never really set up in New York. The only option is for us to come to her.

“Are we doing this?” I ask them after a long silence. “Are we moving back to Georgia?”

Tanner nods, but Tag is unsure. “We’ve worked so hard to get to where we are.”

“We could open up new branches here. Most of our work has been remote, anyway. We could move our headquarters to Boone and keep going the way we have.”

“Okay,” Tag says. “Then I’m in. But we can’t just go knocking down Kendall’s door again. We have to do this right.”

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“We need to make real, solid plans. We’ll find a house down here and get serious about moving our companies to Boone. Then we’ll tell her.”

“That’ll take forever,” I groan.

Tag laughs. “Seriously? I can find us a house in less than an hour. And if your employees know you’re serious about moving your company headquarters here, they’ll get it done quicker than you think.”

His confidence is contagious. I didn’t want to believe this could work, because I didn’t want to get my hopes up. Tanner is already on the phone with a banking executive. I call my assistant.

This is really happening. We’re going to move to Boone, Georgia to be with the woman we love.