Nick wasn’t sure where he was going to go but he knew he had to get out of the house. He had every intention of going back, so long as Peggy wanted him to, but driving around had always been something that he’d done to help him clear his head. He was still relatively unfamiliar with the area apart from their street and the main roads leading to it so he used the opportunity to get himself lost and try to find his way back home.

He drove through at least a half dozen suburban neighbourhoods, all of them a broad range of prices from wealthy right down to low income and he resisted the urge to turn on his GPS to find out where he was. After heading back in the direction that he believed his home was Nick realized that he recognized the area he was in. He kept driving along until he found himself in front of a strangely familiar modest middle class home and he pulled into the driveway behind two vehicles that were parked side by side in front of the open garage door.

As soon as he shut the car door he watched Allen amble out of the garage to see who was in their driveway. It felt strange to be there without Peggy. It felt strange to be there at all. He couldn’t deny that some sort of cosmic force had led him there even though he otherwise would never have been able to find the house on his own so he didn’t feel like he could just keep driving by.

“Nick?” Allen asked, looking confused as he walked around the other vehicles in the driveway while wiping his hands on an oil covered rag.

“Hey,” Nick said nervously, sticking his hands in his pockets since it didn’t seem like an appropriate time to reach out to shake the other man’s hands. “What are you doing?”

“I could ask you the same,” Allen chuckled then motioned back to the garage. “I’m just working on my bike.”

“You have a motorcycle?” Nick wondered, his interest piqued.

“Dirt bike, really. I fix them up and sell them,” Allen clarified, leading the other man back into the garage where a red Honda motocross bike was laying in pieces around the floor. The two men got caught up in talking about manly things like engines, exhausts and clean burning oils but the mysterious visit from a man he hardly knew wasn’t totally lost on Allen.

He tossed a wrench from one hand to the other, eyeing Nick carefully, “Not that I don’t appreciate the visit but I don’t feel like this is a social call. Where’s Peggy?”

Nick was quiet for a long time, but Allen didn’t prod him for information. He understood that sometimes it was hard to verbalize what you wanted to say. He watched as the blonde took a seat on the lawn chair Allen had been sitting in when Nick arrived and continued messing with the parts that were scattered on a sheet on the floor.

“I think...” Nick finally looked up, meeting Allen’s eyes. “I think we might be breaking up.”

Allen frowned regretfully then reached into the bar fridge behind him and pulled out two bottles of beer, handing one to Nick. He didn’t need to ask to know that the other man likely needed it.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” he said honestly. “Are you sure it has to come to that?”

Nick immediately launched into the story of what had happened with Peggy, telling him about his hesitation to make any kind of long term commitment or even keep their options open because of his strong opposing beliefs.

“How did you know when you wanted all of this?” Nick asked, motioning to the garage around him though he meant everything that came along with it.

Allen nodded knowingly, getting the big picture right away. He wondered why Nick hadn’t talked to one of his friends or his father but took it as a compliment that he felt comfortable enough to talk with him about his relationship for the second time since they’d met.

“I just knew,” he shrugged. “Everything just kind of came together that way.”

“But the whole getting married and having kids and sitting in your garage fixing up bikes... it all just seems so normal. I’ve never been very good at normal.”

“We didn’t really do things the normal way,” Allen admitted. He and Marilyn had dated for a long time before they got engaged but without a lot of money to have a wedding they had stayed engaged for nearly a decade. During that time both of their children had been born and it was after they were settled as a family that they finally decided to make it official and tie the knot.

“Why did you wait so long? Why bother at that point?”

Allen looked down at the floor, putting the wrench down so he could wring his hands together. “Marilyn got really sick. She couldn’t work, couldn’t take care of the kids... being engaged doesn’t mean a whole lot when you’re trying to take care of someone’s medical issues. If something were to happen to her then they would deal with her parents, not me and I couldn’t handle that. We got married so that I could better take care of her. Ultimately that’s what it’s about. You marry someone so that you can take care of them and they you in whatever form that takes. It’s what it means to you in the end, Nick. If the words are important to you then don’t say them if you don’t mean them, but don’t assume that they don’t mean anything at all.”

For a fleeting moment Allen was sure he saw Nick’s eyes well up with tears but the blonde clenched his jaw, fighting back the moment of emotion.

“I want her to have all the things that she wants. She wants to get married and she wants kids. I just don't know...” Nick told the other man before taking a long drink from the cold bottle of beer in his hands. The garage was chilly and he wished he had a warmer sweater but still the cold brew was warming him up from the inside.

Allen followed suit, bringing the bottle to his lips before responding, “Well, from what I can tell, she also wants you.”

“I guess I feel like I’m getting too old to start just now considering these things.”

Allen chuckled, “You’re what? 25?”

Nick looked at the other man in surprise, almost feeling relief that there was finally a member of Peggy’s family that hadn’t looked him up online. It made sense though because Allen had a lot of bigger things to deal with in his life so stalking his sister-in-law’s boyfriend probably wasn’t high on the list.

“I’m 32,” he corrected. “I have a baby face.”

This time it was Allen’s turn to look surprised. “Shit,” he muttered. “You’re only a couple years younger than me.”

Nick chuckled and nodded with the bottle against his lips. He polished off what was left the set the glass bottle down on the floor, careful not to knock it over. “You and most of my friends. You’re all so much further along in life. Years of marriage already behind you, kids that are growing up so fast they’re practically their own people already. Then there’s me... I can’t even maintain a relationship.”

“I have to ask,” Allen said, eyeing Nick curiously. “Why Peggy? Why not someone older? Wouldn’t a woman our age who is single with no kids be more likely to be open to not having them?”

“I love Peggy,” Nick shrugged. “It has nothing to with her age. When I met her I knew she was young but she acted so much older so I didn’t realize she was as young as she is. I’m starting to see it a bit more now that she is around all of her college friends but she still has these moments when I realize she is wise well beyond her years. I’ve been with a lot of women and I’ve never felt as comfortable with anyone.”

“Oh and I bet having sex with a 23-year-old is just torture,” Allen teased sarcastically in an effort to lighten the mood.

Nick smirked knowingly. He had been thinking something along those lines before but he wasn’t sure whether or not the other man wanted to hear those things about the woman that was essentially his sister, although he had heard a fair amount about their sex life the last time Nick had visited the house for the first of his many injuries that month.

“I’m not complaining,” he chuckled. “There is a pretty amazing advantage to being with someone so young. She’s insatiable. There’s times when I nearly consider telling her I’m too tired, because I am. Then I realize that men everywhere would exile me from the clan so I take one for the team.”

“We appreciate your sacrifices,” Allen said and the two of them laughed.

“So... do you have a diagnosis for me, doctor?” Nick asked, bringing the conversation back to a more serious note. He didn’t know why but there was something about Allen that he trusted, his words seemed so genuine that he held great value in them. He wondered silently if it wasn’t because Allen didn’t know anything about him and didn’t really care, he was just another guy without all the history that came along with it.

That was one reason why he rarely went to his best friend Brian about issues with women any longer because his bandmate would always give him a recap of all the things he’d done wrong in his life as if it was the root cause of all of his current problems. Allen on the other hand was afraid to say the wrong thing, for Peggy’s sake. He was trying to think of what Marilyn would say in her no-bullshit approach to most issues but knew that either way he was likely going to give Nick an answer that he didn’t necessarily want to hear.

“I think you’re closing yourself off to something that isn’t as big and scary as you think it is,” Allen told the other man honestly, carefully watching his expression. Nick was leaning against the palm of his hand, his fingers covering his mouth, but Allen could tell that he was biting his lip.

“Here’s how I see it,” he continued. “Peggy isn’t looking for any kind of definite answer, she just wants the illusion of an option. Maybe you won’t get married and you’ll have a kid. Maybe you’ll get married and not have any kids. Maybe it’ll be next year or maybe it’ll be ten years from now. I think she ultimately just wants to know that if she came to you one day with a little stick with a pink plus sign on it that you wouldn’t turn and walk away.”

“I wouldn’t do that!”

“What exactly have you told her to make her believe otherwise?” Allen chuckled. “You just told me that you said having kids is pointless, that you don’t want any and that you’re not father material. That says I want to sleep with you but if you get pregnant that’s your problem. I think the prospect of raising a child alone is bigger and scarier than whatever you’re afraid of. I didn’t think I was father material either, Nick. Then I held my daughter for the first time and the only thing I could think of was how I would never let anything happen to her. I made a lot of mistakes along the way but being a parent is a learning process - no one expects you to be perfect.”

“You were prepared for it though. You wanted to have kids!”

“No, I didn’t. Not necessarily,” Allen laughed, shaking his head at the blonde for his ignorance. “I didn’t know what I wanted, just like you. I didn’t not want them but we weren’t trying to have kids. We just stopped trying to not have kids and let it happen.”

Nick sighed, knowing he couldn’t argue his way out of this one because Allen was totally right. His fears about marriage and fatherhood were irrational and he had successfully talked himself into them so well that he didn’t know if his mind could ever truly be changed.

“What am I supposed to do, then? How do I reassure her that I’m not going anywhere and that we have a future - that there are options?”

Allen shrugged, “I can’t tell you that. All I know is that if you love Peggy and you want to be with her forever then you won’t let being afraid of a ring hold you back. If being married meant as little to you as you let on then you wouldn’t care either way, would you?”

“I do like the idea of other guys knowing she’s taken,” Nick admitted sheepishly, “and I would feel terrible if something happened to her and I wasn’t able to do anything because I’m only her boyfriend. But marriage... it ruins people. It ruined my parents.”

“You think if your parents had been together but had never gotten married they would still be together? Was it being married that was the problem or was their relationship with each other the problem?”

Nick had never been asked that question but now that he had he felt a little foolish. In his mind he had separated marriage and relationships - marriages couldn’t work but long term relationships did because there wasn’t the pressure that came with a marriage.

Thinking of his parents though he realized that they still would have had five kids, they still would have been divided over money issues and regardless of their marital status they still would have broken up. All along he had himself convinced that marriage was the poison when in reality his parents individually were the problem.

“Wow....wow. I can't believe I've never thought about it that way. You’re right,” Nick admitted, never having expected that he would say those words aloud. If Allen was right and all Peggy wanted was the option of knowing that someday in the future their relationship could progress then he figured he couldn’t be completely unreasonable to that request.

It didn’t mean they had to get married or have children but maybe someday it would happen for them. He was starting to think of it in terms of his career. He likely would have never continued in music if he had been told from the beginning that he would never move past playing high schools.

“What are you going to do?” Allen wondered, hoping that Nick got something out of their conversation.

“Apologize, grovel, beg for forgiveness for being an ass,” Nick laughed. “My friend Brian always told me that once I found the right girl I would know it instantly and my feelings would change but I always told him he was wrong. He was right though. I don’t want to be without Peggy. I want to take care of her, like you said. I guess she just wants to know that I’m willing to do whatever it takes to do that.”

Allen stood, clapping Nick on the back of the shoulder. “You’re a smart man. By the way, I gotta ask... what the hell happened to your teeth?”

Nick chuckled and gave the other man a big smile, showing off the dark hole where his teeth once were. “It’s a long story,” he laughed. “I’ll tell you the whole thing later but for now I gotta get home.”