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The echo thrummed throughout the concrete garage, the slamming of the car door that was meant to be a full stop on an argument, but instead a pause.
“Tao, you cannot walk away and expect me to drop this!!” shouted Elle as she followed him through the internal door to their home. She made a point of closing the garage door quietly, as though to show him that she could be upset and still respectful of their space and those around them.
“Well, I am walking off and this is the end of it. You can pick up your phone and argue with someone else for all I care. I’m fucking done with this shit tonight, Elle. You and Charlie can fuck all the way off with your thoughts and opinions and share them with someone who agrees with you. Because I certainly fucking don’t agree with either of you.” He glared at her as he draped his coat over the chair in their kitchen, daring her to comment about the fact that he was doing so; despite her having asked him repeatedly to hang it on the hanger in the hall cupboard, and not leave it on the chair.
“Tao,” she said, her voice simmering in that quiet pitch that she used as though she were trying to corner and rescue an injured tiger cub, “we can’t leave this here tonight. You upset Charlie a great deal, and you need to apologise.”
“Me?! What the fuck do I have to apologise for?” Tao’s grip on the back of the chair was probably the tightest he had ever held anything, including his arsehole at his last doctor’s exam when they discussed him being close to the age of needing his prostate checked.
“You told him his latest story was a rip off of one you read as a child, Tao. You told him it was shit!” Elle rarely got angry, she rarely yelled. She didn’t see the point in it. She would much more likely to be found using a seething tone that would rip the paint off a metal fence with how cutting it was. She’d moved on from the calm voice very quickly - somewhere a fence had just lost a sheet of paint as her tone drifted through the wind of the storm that had been brewing on their drive home and had followed them inside.
Tao glared at her. He knew she was just repeating things that had been said earlier, but he did briefly reflect on how relevant the phrase “shoot the messenger” really was right now. He released some of the hold he had on the chair and opened his mouth, before closing it again. His eyebrows moved closer together and he briefly missed the days where he had a beanie to hide behind. He was several shots on the right side of drunk, or maybe it was the wrong side. He was three shots past being able to tell the difference. But, in his alcohol soaked mind he was clear enough to know that he had said such things, that he had accused his best friend of copying someone else’s work. He had then turned on his other two friends and argued with them when they told him he was wrong.
“Fuck.”
Elle watched as her husband (for now, she thought briefly as she ran through their vows to see if she had agreed to deal with a ‘drunk and obnoxious arsehole’) as he pulled out the chair and sank his body into it. She watched as his body rippled as the thoughts travelled throughout, as his mind and body made the connection of everything that had happened and acknowledged that he had fucked up in a glorious way.
“Yeah, fuck indeed Tao Xu. I know you are as drunk as shit right now, but what you did was inexcusable. You yelled at Charlie, and then you yelled at Nick and Isaac as well. What the fuck did you think would happen?”
“Well, it just reminded me of a story I remember hearing and I am sure they are very similar so I just told him.” He wasn’t even sounding convincing to himself at this point. He sighed and looked at his wife.
“What if we google it, what if I can find the story and prove I’m right? What if….?” One look at his wife and he knew it was in his best interest to stop right there.
“Good choice,” said Elle with an eye roll that would impress the most eye rolling of people around, “You are not fucking googling to find out if your friend has plagiarised a story you may or may not remember from 35 fucking years ago. He has an agent, he has a literary adviser, he has an editor. He has seven other books that he has fucking published. He has awards for his writing, and he is celebrated by other authors, educators and many people in the world. Including those that live in this fucking house.”
She leaned against their kitchen bench and glared at her husband. She could almost see the workers in his brain using the quick dry towels to dry up the alcohol that had puddled up there and created this mess to begin with. Usually, she would plan a quiet morning after nights like this. Fuck that, she thought, I’m going to be up and dancing to Sam Smith as I bang every fucking pan we own at 6am tomorrow, I’ve been meaning to clean out that cupboard for a while now.
“I really fucked up, didn’t I?” Tao said from his chair. He was so slumped down in it that he was surprised he hadn’t slid off onto the floor yet. He was pretty sure he had never sobered up this quickly, how could he still be drunk and have a hangover at the same time? His head was fucking pounding and he would love a kebab, but the thought of a kebab also made him want to clear his body of everything that he had ever put into it. He looked up at Elle and she nodded at him.
“Yeah, you have. Big fucking time. There is no point in being right just for the sake of being right, you know? Especially when you’re fucking wrong. You’re forty two years old and you lost a fucking board game, and a card game and this is the tantrum you decide to throw. Barbing with Charlie and then somehow making it into something so ridiculous I never even thought you would be able to come up with. You basically told someone who you have loved for almost your entire life that they are a fraud, and you don’t trust them.”
They looked at each other and neither spoke for several minutes as they both took some time to process everything that had happened. They could both hear the faint buzzing of phones going off in their pockets, but they didn’t reach for them. Tao knew it was messages calling him out, Issac probably as Nick would be dealing with a sad and drunk Charlie. Elle knew there was nothing in those messages that she hadn’t said to Tao since she had dragged him into the car less than an hour earlier.
“I think I need to go to bed. Then, in the morning, I need to go and talk to Charlie. To apologise.”
“Yeah, you do. You can also sleep on the couch. I don’t care if you find it lumpy.”
“That’s fair.” He mumbled. He’d probably have made himself sleep on the couch too. He had been an absolute jerk and had not only slandered his best friend, but also ruined the one night they had all been able to get together for quite a while.
“I love you, Tao Xu, but you really can be an absolute arsehole sometimes and so fucking stubborn when you refuse to get out of your own way and actually listen to people. I’ve seen you pull this ‘but I’m right’ bullshit before, but never to this extent. I know you’re upset about your budget being cut and missing out on that award, but that is no reason at all to blow up your friend’s good news and make up shit you can’t prove.”
“Yeah, I know. Fuck.”
“Also, just so you know, Nick and I did fucking google it and you’re wrong. The story you mentioned? The one you said he ripped off? They both have ducks, Tao, that’s all they fucking have in common. Are you going to ring every publishing company in the world and ask them to pull all the books about ducks because you read one as a kid in China?” Elle paused as she watched him take in this information. “Sleep well, or not, I don’t really care. I love you but I do not like you right now.” She kissed the top of his head as she walked past, letting the bedroom door close a little louder than usual as she made it very clear he wasn’t welcome in there tonight. As she finally drifted off to sleep she briefly hoped that a cockroach crawled over him while he slept.
**
Nick hadn’t had to nurse a sad and drunk Charlie for quite a few years, it had been a shit night to say the least. He has woken at eight am to a pounding in his head and his husband clinging to him like a koala. That in itself wasn’t unusual, but the puffy eyes from the combination of tears and alcohol wasn’t how they were used to waking up these days. He dragged himself out of bed, being careful not to wake Charlie, and made his way through to the bathroom and then the kitchen.
Over the next couple of hours he cleaned up from their gathering last night, and the mess that followed that. He made pancakes and a yoghurt and berry bowl for when Charlie woke up. He drank coffee and read the messages that had been sent in the last ten hours. Elle reaching out to check on Charlie, Issac letting him know he had left early for a prior commitment. Nothing from Tao. Nick wasn’t surprised really. He had been surprised by Tao’s outburst last night and the strength of his conviction that Charlie had stolen a story, but he wasn’t surprised that he hadn’t reached out yet. Tao Xu was the most stubborn man Nick had ever known, and that’s saying a lot given who he was married to. He had seen Tao use his sparring skills to verbally shred people before, but he had never seen him take to Charlie like he had, or any of their friends for that matter. Elle had mentioned that he had some other things going on, but even she wasn’t making excuses for him. Nick huffed a little to himself when he read that she had made Tao sleep on the lounge last night.
Charlie made his way out to the kitchen just as Nick had refilled the kettled, he looked tired and melted into Nick’s arms as soon as they connected. They stayed like that for several minutes, nothing said between them that couldn’t be communicated by the closeness of their bodies and the intertwining of their souls.
“Did that really happen?” Charlie asked, his head still tucked into Nick’s chest.
“Yeah, sweetheart, it did. Do you want to talk about it?” Nick asked as he tightened his hold with his arms and then kissed the top of the curls he loved so much.
“No? Yes? I don’t know. I want him to show up and look me in the eye and tell me what he thinks without the alcohol fuelling him.” Responded Charlie, leaning his body back so he could look at Nick directly. “I never thought my best friend would talk to me like that. Part of me never wants to see him again, and part of me wants him here right now so he can apologise and we can move on. We have so much history, you know? And he’s been a pain in my arse so many times, but I’ve also been a pain in his. I know he has shit going on, but an apology would be nice I think. That would make me feel a lot better I think.”
Nick nodded and smiled at his husband before saying “sometimes that’s all it takes.”
They both made their way to the table, sharing the food Nick had prepared earlier, drinking their tea quietly as they both let their own thoughts ebb and flow in their own spaces.
There was a sound outside, a car door closing, and then a knock on the door.
“Do you want me to get it?”
“No, I’ll go, I know who it will be.”
Nick watched as Charlie walked towards the door, hoping it was the person they both thought it would be on the other side. He listened to the voices as they carried down the hallway, staying out of their way but ready to jump in if he felt it was necessary.
“Charlie, I am so sorry, I really fucked up and I made a mistake. I can’t believe I said all those things. I am a miserable bastard who is having a shit time at work and I let my jealousy of your success turn me into a horrible arsehole. I really hope you can forgive me?” Tao said as he stood inside the doorway, barely able to look Charlie in the eye.
“Well, to be fair, you’ve always been an arsehole. I feel like cunt might be the better descriptor for your behaviour last night to be honest.” Charlie said, staring at his friend and hoping he understood the message – despite it all this was his best friend standing in front of him.
“Yeah, that’s fair really. Elle pretty much said the same last night to me as well. But, Charlie, I really am so fucking sorry, I don’t even know why I said those things or where they came from. Obviously, I have some issues to work through. But, I’m here and I’m saying I’m sorry and I hope that is okay.”
“Come in, idiot. I appreciate you saying sorry and admitting you were wrong. Come and have a cup of tea, I’m sure Nick would love to glare you a little as well.”