Page 65 of The Love Haters

“Huh,” I said. “I thought you just really loved pennies.”

“Naw,” Hutch said. “I just really loved my mom.”

ONE THING WASfor sure: Cole Hutcheson could not have been more wrong about his older brother. He wasn’t a love hater. Or an empty machine. Or a strong silent type. He wasn’t empty of thoughts, or devoid of feelings.

And he wasn’t hard to talk to at all.

He was almost too easy.

He was so easy that I had to make a rule for myself never to ask him about rescue-swimmer things in the off-hours, or military things, orjobthings—lest I waste material that should go in the video.

So we talked on our commutes about favorite music, and favorite movies, and favorite foods. We talked about old friends and places we’d lived. We talked about bucket lists, and mistakes we’d made, and things we still hoped to get right.

It turned out, Hutch was a mad fan of nature shows—though he called themwildlife podcaststo make them sound more exciting. He was a fountain of trivia about the natural world, happily explaining how most insects taste with their feet, and how dogs have two compartments in their noses—one for breathing and one for holding smells—and how ducks have wraparound vision and can see the entirety of the sky without having to turn their heads.

If we ever had a quiet moment on our commute, I could just say, “Tell me about bats,” and off he’d go.

But it wasn’t just Hutch talking on those drives.

Good listeners make it easy to overshare, and Hutch was a shockingly good listener. Before I knew it, I was saying all kinds of things that mattered. Sentence after sentence would just burble up andhappen. I told him about my mom leaving us when I was a kid and running off with her dentist. “Herdentist,” I said. I told him about Beanie’s self-help obsession. I told him about Lucas getting famous, and how things fell apart. I even told him about the way I’d proposed to Lucas—almost a month before he had proposed to me.

“You proposed to him first? And then he proposed to you again later?”

I nodded. “We had these four bridges that went over this stretch of freeway near our house, and they had cyclone fences on them. You know those ones with the twisted wires?”

“Yeah.”

“People used to stick Styrofoam cups in the holes between the wires to spell out team names and stuff. Or like, ‘Go to the prom with me, Stella!’”

“Got it.”

“And one day I started thinking I might do a Burma-Shave proposal on those bridges.”

“What’s Burma-Shave?”

“It’s an old-timey shaving cream. And back when highways were first becoming a thing, they used to put rhyming signs by the side of the road to advertise. So, have you ever heard the rhyme, ‘Don’t stick your arm out too far. It might go home in another car’?”

“Yeah. We said that as kids.”

“That’s Burma-Shave! Each phrase was on a different sign, so you’d pass them in real time as you drove.”

“Huh.”

“There were tons of them—brilliant ones. Like: ‘Special seats—reserved in Hades—for whiskered guys—who scratch their ladies.’ Or ‘If your peach—keeps out of reach—you better practice—what we preach.’ Or—this is my favorite: ‘Soap may do—for lads with fuzz—but sir, you ain’t—the kid you wuz.’”

“These are brilliant.”

“I was freelancing for a documentary about the company, so I had those rhymes in my head all the time. And then one day I just heard one in my head, proposing to him, and I decided to write it in cups on those four bridges—and then drive underneath them with Lucas.”

“What was the rhyme?”

“‘Make you happy?—Yes I can!—Lucas won’t you—be my man?’”

Hutch nodded, impressed. “Genius.”

“Right? But it didn’t work.”

Hutch frowned and glanced over.

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