Damnit! The bus had stopped.
Cris uncurled from his seat all the way at the back of the bus and tucked his phone into his back pocket as he stood up to scan the road through the windshield, to see what was going on. He'd been on his way back to the lake house, on a bus out of town, when out of nowhere the driver stopped the bus and turned off the ignition.
Outside, it was a clear and sunny day. There was a small line of cars outside that had also stopped, and drivers had already begun to emerge from their vehicles, hoping to see what the obstruction was ahead.
Unable to see much from his current position, he let out a small noise of frustration. The bus driver was outside now too, peering ahead. Cris gently tapped the shoulder of the person in front and asked, in his broken English tinged heavily in a Spanish accent, "Excuse me. Why the bus has stopped?"
@open
Huh. Cris wasn't exaggerating. As Edel slipped his phone into his back pocket, he could see that there was some kind of traffic jam up ahead. There was a bus, too, which he had to assume was the one Cris was currently aboard. And drinking on... like an idiot. He didn't know whether to smile or frown, so his mouth made a sort of odd twisting motion, half amused, half annoyed.
Ah, well. At least he found him. The suburbs were out of the way but Edel just took one of those rides from the apps up to town. He probably should have had the guy on standby but he was gruff and seemed irritated by Edel's presence (even though Edel literally only said hello and thank you to him).
They could always call a new one. If anybody could get through the weird jam. Not usual to see in a town of this size. As he curiously stepped closer, Edel could see that up ahead, there was some kind of commotion. Somebody was shouting in panicked tones about an attack. Edel glanced at the bus where Cris was surely waiting but he moved past it. Cris could wait a couple more minutes.
To his shock, there was... something odd definitely going on. Before the line of cars was a bunch of road workers setting up a barrier around what appeared to be a sinkhole. Edel's eyes widened at the sight of it. But more distressing was the hysterical guy standing near the edge with blood running down the side of his head.
"I'm telling you! It was a monster, it came at me and it chased me and my friend--he got sucked into that hole by the thing! It was made of shadows or or or smoke or something!"
"Come on, Emilio," said a woman in uniform, lightly reached out and touching the man's upper arm. "Let's get you over to my car..."
Monster? Edel furrowed his brow and then turned back to the bus, too far back to see what was going on up here. Jogging back, he hurried over to the bus and went to the door and slammed on it a couple of times.
"Cris? Cris, are you in there?!"
As it turned out, nobody didn't like a good drink and Cris had several bottles of good drinks at his disposal. Since someone disapproved of him having many bottles of good drinks, he shared some with the rest of the bus' passengers. Everyone became considerably less stressed out after that, which in turn made Cris less stressed out.
He sat in his seat with the frozen pizza wedged against the window, gazing soulfully--drunkenly--outside at the nice, warm, sunny day. The line of cars stretched out behind him, and also in front of him. All he could see were irritated people and cars with their engines turned off. A while ago some service vehicles and emergency vehicles ran past on the shoulder, but other than that, there was nothing exciting happening.
That was, until someone began to bang on the bus doors and shout his name. Cris leapt up with a start. "That's me!" he declared to the bus at large, which was foolish because no one else was named Cris. A moment later he was out onto the aisle and tottering unsteadily towards the front of the bus.
The driver opened the door for him with a mystified look and he leapt down the stairs--okay, fell down--and into Edel's arms. "Edel!"
"Oh my god," Edel said as he caught Cris. "How drunk are you?"
Did he even need to ask? He could still smell it on him--the scent of alcohol and a whiff of something else. Why was Cris' side so cold and slightly damp? Weird. Attempting to right his friend so that he could stand more steadily on his own two feet, he couldn't help letting out a sigh of relief.
It wasn't as if he expected that Cris would vanish into a sinkhole or anything. And he didn't believe in monsters, even if he read a lot of stories about them in his line of work. Monsters were a huge selling point now, in every kind of story--romance, fantasy, etc. They weren't just for horror anymore.
Still, the distressed looking man bothered him and he was beyond happy to find Cris as he had last seen him. Even if he was a little drunk, he was all in one piece and nobody had absconded with him while he wasn't looking.
Keeping an arm around Cris, he smiled at him. "C'mon dummy. Let's get back to the lake house." He tried not to look back in the direction of the sinkhole, not wanting to alarm Cris. Even just the sinkhole part was creepy enough.
"By the way... what happened to whatever you went to the shop for? I thought you were going to bribe the neighbors or whatever."
"Mmm you're so warm," Cris sighed as he clung long and hard to Edel. One side was nearly frozen numb from the pizza but seeing Edel made everything okay. He wasn't even freaking out about the police cars and the sirens and that huge crowd gathered around something up ahead!
"I'm just drunk enough to be interesting!" He'd heard someone say that before, that he only drank to be interesting. Maybe they were right. Or at least, they weren't wrong... Cris spoke to one of Edel's heads. Suddenly he had three of them... and then they all merged into one. Letting himself be carted away, he threw a troubled look back onto the bus but it seemed too late to rescue that frozen pizza now...
"I gave it away." He hiccupped. "You were so mad... I didn't want to make you mad so I drank it with the people on the bus. And it's all gone now! All gone!"
"Okay..."
What an odd thing to say. Drunk enough to be interesting? Like what, he wasn't normally interesting enough without a couple drinks in him? Edel sighed. He could see the way Cris was looking at him--or around him, more like. He was drunk, not tipsy. Asshole! He drank more than he let on. How did Edel not catch it? How did he even text so well when he was stumbling and slurring?
"I can see that," he said. That the alcohol was all gone, although he had his suspicions about which of the passengers aboard drank the most. He sent a glare at the driver, fully blaming him for letting his passengers get drunk on his watch. As if he didn't know! For shame!
The sirens were getting louder and there were more people surging forward to get a better look at the odd sinkhole. Even now, Edel felt his hands go sweaty at the image of it. The fact that the ground could swallow up people and cars like that so suddenly...
"Let's get out of here," Edel reiterated in an urgent tone. "I don't think we want to be here anymore. I'll call..." He trailed off. "Actually, you know what? Maybe we can just stay in a hotel or B&B here tonight, huh? That'd be nice, right?"
"Oh but you're mad now anyway!" Cris threw up a hand in exasperation--the other was holding on to Edel for dear life. "I can't do anything right!" Should he have thrown the bottles away? Poured the alcohol out of the window? It seemed like such a waste... And there had been a couple of people on the bus who didn't mind sharing a drink with him...
Staggering away from the line of cars and their impatient drivers, Cris nodded. Then he felt nauseous from the motion--or maybe from the alcohol in his system--and stopped abruptly. "You wanna get a room with me?" His grin was equal parts drunk and suggestive. Edel probably didn't mean that kind of room. Or did he?
Or did he?
"What?" Edel looked over Cris and his indignation. "I'm not mad."
Did he seem mad? Maybe. Mostly he was just agitated by what was happening at the intersection. Some part of him was afraid that the sinkhole would keep opening up. Those things were the stuff of nightmares to him. When did they end? How did they collapse in like that? Were there explosives involved? Maybe that's what the guy back there saw when said he saw some smoke like visage.
The fright in the guy's voice, though. It sounded so real.
"I do," he said, a little distractedly, because he did want to get a room with Cris but he was also still thinking about the disaster they were leaving behind. Then he made the mistake of looking back at Cris again, focusing in on him and that grin. He let out a sigh.
"Not for that!" he added. "I just think... getting back to the lake house might be hard right now, is all."
"Oh." And that was that--because the memory of a drunk was on par with the memory of a goldfish. Plus, Cris had a hard time working himself up into any kind of indignation and staying there when there was so much of a commotion all around them. He was almost starting to think that something catastrophic had happened. These people were acting like a hole had opened up in the earth to swallow them whole!
Edel was right though; they weren't getting back to the lake house anytime soon. "The neighbors will be there anyway," he whispered, as if the neighbors could hear them. "They'll all be judging. Let's go to a... a nice B&B! They'll serve us eggs in bed!"
Cris teared up a little. Because he was drunk. Because he couldn't remember the last time he had eggs brought to him in bed, or anyone who cared enough about him to do that for him. Mostly, because he was drunk. Still leaning heavily on Edel, he began to move off in what he imagined was a direction leading to a bed and breakfast.
"...I wanna be able to look our neighbors in the eyes again, Edel." He leaned his head onto Edel's shoulder. "Can you get me that for... Christmas?"
Personally, Edel wasn't big on seeing the neighbors, either, after what they did in front of them. Just thinking about it brought a flush of embarrassment to his face but he did his best to calmly talk himself out of it. If they were going to judge them, like Cris said, they would... they would... actually, Edel couldn't think of any reason why they wouldn't judge them after that spectacle.
Yeah... even if there was no sinkhole and weird stories of smoke monsters, Edel thought he might have chosen to stay here in town. Was it safer, though? The sinkhole was here. And whatever that guy was talking about, too.
Edel sighed. Why was he even giving that any merit, anyway? Pft... as if something like that existed. But as he took another step, he felt something cold in the wind. It was the middle of summer but it felt as if the temperature was dropping at an alarming rate.
"Yeah," he said to Cris with a worried expression. He had intended to make some snarky remark about Christmas being off by quite a few months but now? Now he muttered mostly to himself: "Seems like Christmas is coming earlier this year..."
He tried not to shiver.
"I love Christmas!" Cris continued whispering. "It starts with Chris! That's my name! And--remember when we made out at Jaime's Christmas party that one year?" He was almost sure it was last year... Or was it the year before? At some point, they'd made out at a party. That happened a lot, in their defense.
The chilly gust of wind didn't go unnoticed by Cris, who shivered and held on to Edel even more tightly. It sobered him up a little. His gaze shifted to the other side of the road which was lined by a ditch and some woods beyond it. A few more police cars ran past on the shoulder, followed by an ambulance.
"Hey... is that guy checking us out?" Cris gently pushed off from Edel so that he could stagger closer, waving to the figure hovering just by the treeline. "He's been staring at us since I got off the bus. Maybe he wants to go to the B&B with us!"
"Ehh...." He looked away in embarrassment. Did he remember making out at Jaime's party? Yes, but he hadn't acknowledged it before and he sort of didn't want to now, either. In the back of his mind, he kept having to remind himself that there was still a boyfriend in his life. And he... loved Rey, he thought. But maybe just... maybe not the same way as he loved Cris. How could Rey even compete with somebody that had been in Edel's life for so much longer?
No wonder Rey was so insecure.
Sighing, Edel continued to edge Cris down the street, although his heartbeat kicked up a notch at the sound of the ambulance siren. Somebody really did get hurt badly back there. He wondered how many had fallen into the sinkhole. Again, he thought of the weird, frantic guy talking about smokey monsters. Biting his lower lip, he held Edel a little tighter--only to have Cris suddenly, push away, occupied with some guy allegedly checking them out.
"Huh?" Edel asked, turning to see the guy that Cris was waving at in the nearby trees. "What? No! We don't know him. Stop waving at him."
"Technically we don't know anybody here!" Cris protested, though he did stop waving. "Fine," he mumbled, starting to turn away, "I wasn't going to invite him into our room or anything." For a moment he looked over his shoulder to see if the guy was waving back but there was nothing by the treeline. Huh. How'd that guy disappear so fast? Maybe he was a camper and came out to see what the commotion was...
Still walking a touch unsteadily, he leaned closer to Edel. "Anywayyyy..." Cris smiled that particular drunk smile at him. "I seem to remember... somebody having something... important... to say..."
Was it Edel that had to say it first, or Cris? What were the rules? Cris didn't know the rules with men--this was his first man. Not his first man-crush, obviously, but his first... man. The first man he had serious feelings for. And with another man, it wasn't apparent who did what in the normal sequence of things. With Jen, it was easy to take the lead but here Cris was lost.
Throwing caution to the winds, he whispered, "Iloveyou," smiled that same particular drunk smile again, and veered off.
"Oh, did I?"
Something important to say? Like Edel didn't know what Cris was talking about. It was Edel himself that said he wasn't comfortable saying it over the phone. Even if it was incriminating enough to text it, saying those kinds of things when they weren't face to face just felt... wrong. More wrong, he supposed, then cheating on his own boyfriend.
Inwardly, he sighed at the reminder. Sliding his gaze aside, he could feel the guilt eating at his chest. Edel never thought he'd end up like this, the type of person who apparently wasn't as happy with his partner as he thought. He never thought about cheating on Rey before; this was new. Or it wasn't...
It was complicated, all right? He was in love with his best friend and his best friend knew it and--and so did Rey. He knew all this time and that was where his insecurity came from. Edel acted stupid or something. How did he not see it? Another inward sigh. Fuck.
"I know," Edel said softly, even though he felt a strange little melancholic clutch in his heart when he said it. And he wanted to say it back. He really did. Except Cris was veering off and teetering away from him so Edel had to pull him back.
"Where are you going now?"
"I'm looking..." Cris shaded a hand over his eyes as though seriously searching for something in the bushes. "For where you hid your words."
I know.
Edel's heart wasn't the only one that squeezed tight at the words. Sometimes it wasn't enough to know. Sometimes the words needed to be said, to be made concrete. Cris knew Edel felt the same way about him too but knowing it and hearing it were worlds apart. And Edel couldn't say it.
This was where alcohol came in, though. This was what made it easier to lurch down the road, grinning foolishly as he turned the topic away from his confession. Cris had been saying it to people for years and he'd been hearing silence back for years, too. His dad--too busy to hear it. His mom--too distant to hear it.
Jen said it back, though. She meant it, too, which explained Cris' devotion to her but as much as he wanted Jen to be enough, she wasn't. And maybe... as much as Edel wanted his words to be enough, they weren't either.
"Hey there's a B&B close by!" They weren't short on these things around this town, Cris noticed. It seemed like the only way the locals could make any money aside from farming or ranching. "C'mon! I need a shower!"
"Inside," he said. "They're in the B&B, okay?"
Although he supposed inside was a good way to describe where his words currently were. Inside his heart, inside his mouth, but not yet outside. And once they were, how could he ever take them back? So he had to be sure. And he was. But he still... He didn't know. He thought it said everything that he dropped his whole life just to chase Cris here, that he would have buried a body if Cris needed him to, that he would accompany him out of the country if it really came down to it.
And if all that didn't say it...
"Yeah..." He felt a modicum of relief at the sight of it. Like most of the B&Bs in the area, it was quaint and cute and maybe on the small side. But it was good enough. Edel took in a deep breath. They could leave the weirdness of the sinkhole behind and focus on... relationship weirdness.
"Come on," he said, tilting his head just so, brushing his cheek affectionately against Cris before he tugged on his hand and pulled him toward the door. There was a sign that said to ring the bell for service and he did. Not long after, a middle aged woman came to the door. She looked them over with a brief sense of hesitation before smiling and greeting them.
"We're here to stay overnight," Edel said in English, smiling back. He reached for his wallet. As long as he had money, they were fine. Edel might not be rolling in it but it couldn't be that much out here in the boonies. And it wasn't. The woman asked for just 85 for the night, and with a price like that, Edel expected the interior to be all rotted wood and mildew but it was really nice.
There was a brick fireplace and the smell of clean linen and pretty, gauzy curtains. The woman said there were booklets about tourism and food in the area in the drawer next to the bed and then she left them alone.
Closing the door behind them, Edel finally let out the sigh he'd been suppressing.
"Bah." Cris tried putting a hand between their cheeks as he saw Edel's curly-haired head lean close in a familiar gesture, but his reaction time was severely lacking. He missed completely and stumbled through the door of the small B&B.
"This is... different," he mused while Edel rang the sharp-sounding bell at the counter, causing him to wince slightly as the noise jabbed into his brain. B&Bs weren't his scene. Spas and resorts and luxury hotels, yes, but B&Bs never made it onto the list of places that Jen wanted to spend her weekends at. It sounded cute in theory though, having someone take care of them, bring them meals, clean their rooms. Like... a mom would. Only they wanted to be paid.
"Oh, this is different!" Cris said again, but this time more cheerfully once they were shown to their room. The bed was soft-looking and inviting but there was only one in the room. Slowly Cris looked over his shoulder at where the woman once stood and blinked. He knew that separate beds existed. They existed in hotels and he expected them to exist in B&Bs. This single bed business set a bad precedent.
"She thinks we're gonna do it." He waved a dramatic hand at the bed.
At first, it sounded a lot like Cris wasn't pleased. And then it changed when they were shown to their room. Really, it was quite a cute little room... cozy and homey and designed artfully without making Edel want to choke on mothballs. No doilies or weird old lady things. Just a nice room. A nice room with a single bed. Edel sighed.
"No, she doesn't," he said, passing a hand over his face. That woman was not thinking that! And even if she was... Ugh.
Not the the idea in and of itself was a bad one or a disgusting one. More the idea of somebody else thinking about it. Thought the person who had basically fucked around in the middle of a lake with two people right there to watch the entire thing. ...fuck.
"I wish you'd stayed sober..." Edel muttered to himself.
She did. She thought they were together, probably because they entered with Edel practically holding Cris up by the arms. Maybe they looked lovey-dovey that way, like they couldn't take their hands off of one another. How wrong she was! (Or wasn't...)
"I can get sober!" Cris exclaimed indignantly as he pushed off and tested his ability to walk unaided. Bumping ungracefully into a dresser, he cursed but put up a hand to stop Edel from coming over to help. "No. I can get sober. Gimme a second."
Unsteadily Cris walked into the bathroom and up to the sink. "They have free soap!" He ran the water as cold as it would go and then started splashing it onto his own face. It made a lot of noise. And a lot of mess. But when he hauled his face up, gasping for breath and dripping, he felt much more clear-headed.
At least, he remembered how to walk again.
Shaking his head to himself, Edel listened to Cris in the bathroom. He could just imagine what kind of mess he was making in there. He ought to have taken a shower, rather than just splashing around in the sink. Slowly, Edel made his way to the bed and gingerly took a seat on the edge. His hands slid down between his knees. He felt like a teenager again. Weirdly shy. Anticipating... something. Taking in a breath, he caught his lower lip with his teeth.
Was... this... okay? All of this? No. Deep down, he knew it wasn't. Yet at the same time, something kept screaming that he knew Cris long before he knew Rey. Rey is your boyfriend. They were talking marriage. Kids. They lived together. They were family already. Rey's little sister lived with them. They took care of her. Together. Together. They were together.
His fingers clenched inward, half moon crests digging into his palms.
Edel looked up as Cris came back, a little less wobbly. Maybe a little more sober. Swallowing hard, Edel got to his feet. One step, two steps, three. Before he knew it, he was flush against him, his hand grasping the front of Cris' coat as his lips crashed against his. Willful, fervent. With a little bite. His heart hammered in his chest.
"You're..." He licked his lips. He could still taste alcohol. "We're--" he corrected. "--idiots."
Cris mopped his face with a fleecy blue towel from the towel rack and sidled back up to the mirror to look at his own reflection. A bit worse for the wear. That was a high point for him, actually, given the lows to which he had fallen in Edel's absence. His face had a bit more color now and the dark circles under his eyes weren't quite as dark as before.
He ran a hand through his hair to push it out of his eyes and sighed. After dabbing away most of the water from face, neck, shirt and hair, he dropped the soggy towel onto the counter and walked back outside, fully expecting Edel to be somewhere in the room frowning at him. Being disapproving.
What Cris didn't expect was to be grabbed. At first he thought Edel was striding over--with a purpose--to punch him and he had his hands up a little to ward off the blow. Stupid... really. Edel had never hit him before. Well, a few slaps to get him out of a drunken stupor didn't count. They weren't that kind of fighting friends.
"Hmm?" A puzzled noise came out of him as he was kissed, too shocked to do anything but stand there and be kissed. It was a hell of a kiss though. Just when he started to kiss back, Edel pulled away and Cris didn't know how to respond to that.
"Y-yeah," he said much more softly, laying a tentative hand at Edel's hip. "We sort of... already established that..." With the whole lake incident and all. Cris cleared his throat; now he was even more sober. The other tentative hand slid up to touch a stray curl at the side of Edel's face. "But we've always been idiots together... right?"
Together. He just had to use that word. Together. Edel's gaze softened.
"Yeah."
Together. They had been together for a long time. It felt like most of his life. Hadn't it been more than half his life now? Doing dumb shit together since... forever. Watching each other go through the ups and downs that came with life. Every big change was experienced by the both of them. Even this one. With Cris left behind by his father, hiding away in the only place he could stay with all of his father's assets being wrenched out from under him.
"Um, so... listen," he started, just as his phone started buzzing. Letting out a sigh, he tried to ignore it but it kept going... and just when he thought it had stopped, it started again. Setting his jaw, he stepped away from Cris and pulled the phone from his pocket to find Rey's smiling face staring back at him.
He probably wasn't smiling right now. But when Edel had taken this photo things had been different.
"...it's Rey," he said, looking up at Cris with a pained expression.
'Together' felt like more than just a word lately. It felt like a realization. Like the first rays of sunshine warming the lake in the morning, lifting the fog to reveal crystal-clear waters underneath. Things Cris thought he knew, he didn't. Things he never realized suddenly came to the forefront of his mind, despite the fine job he'd been doing pushing them all away.
They were in this together. Life. The bonds that tethered them to one another transcended time and space and even distance. From Spain to America, Edel found a way to be here with him. To be together with him. And saying it now, Cris felt like maybe he was finally realizing all of the intricate subtleties of what it meant for Edel to have crossed a literal ocean just to find him.
He started to smile, a silly little hopeful feeling lifting his troubled heart. And he opened his mouth to try and tell Edel that... together meant something to him now, emboldened by the softness that stole over Edel's gaze, but Edel's phone went off--once, twice, again and again.
"Oh." Of course it was. Cris didn't know what to make of the look on Edel's face though. He backed up a pace, suddenly unsure of himself. That look was 100% because of him... He could tell... "Aren't you going to... pick up?"
"...I don't want to."
He was torn between doing it just to rip the bandaid off and ignoring the calls. Rey would just keep calling but Edel could turn off his phone. He could turn it off. Whatever Rey had to say, it wasn't going to be anything Edel wanted to hear right now. Lately, they were just... they were always fighting. Where things had been easy at points, they weren't so easy anymore. They fought about what to do with Rey's sister and they fought about Cris. They fought about Cris the most; Rey insisted--insisted--that there was something more to how Edel felt about him.
"You always drop everything for him, Edel! Everything!"
And he said that wasn't true--but it was. It was very true. Because he had very literally crossed an entire ocean... for Cris. Not for Rey. And he wasn't sure he could say that he would or could do that for Rey. He deserves better.
Edel looked back down at the frantically buzzing phone and he finally held his thumb down on the power button to turn it off. Then he casually flung it onto the chair by the fireplace.
"...it can wait."
"I can go outside or something if..." Cris started to say, as their words jumbled together while he talked over Edel. He thought maybe Edel needed some privacy. Maybe some time to think about what they were doing... Whatever it was that they were doing by hiding away at a B&B together...
Everything seemed to come back to that word. Together.
People joked that one was never seen without the other back home. They said he and Edel were joined at the hip. Jaime formed the terrible trio with them but thinking back on it now, it was the terrible duo first. They were friends before Jaime and Jen and Rey came onto the scene.
Cris scrubbed his palms against the side of his jeans. He watched with almost disbelief as Edel turned off his phone. "But... Rey's going to kill you!"
"...yeah," he admitted. "Probably."
Rey would rip his head off. Especially when he realized that Edel had turned off his phone to avoid him. Sooner or later, he was going to have to face up to him. God, he loved him... He thought he did. Or he did, just... not the same way that he loved Cris.
The realization sank in as he stared at Cris, remembering not only the kiss they'd just shared but the craziness that was... whatever they did on that gaudy pool float. Although he knew damn well he should regret everything he did with Cris, he couldn't.
And all those times... all those times when they were drunk. Every excuse... to be near him. Closer to him than a friend. Even now, his heart beat too fast, a little out of guilt for dodging his boyfriend but mostly because they were alone now. Cris. Him.
"We have a real problem here, Cris..."
"You keep saying that!"
There was a real urgency in what Edel was saying but he refused to tell Cris what the real problem was! Or... he had, but Cris didn't see it as a top-level crisis. Rey clearly didn't understand their relationship dynamic.
Granted, neither did Cris... anymore...
But from the start, Rey had been antagonistic. Was Cris a little too friendly with Edel, his best friend? He remembered the suspicious looks that Rey lobbed at him every time they went out. He remembered Rey placing himself physically between them, as though he thought Cris posed an actual threat to their safety. It didn't go down well; Cris never thought that he was doing anything wrong.
Now those lines were blurred and even he had to admit that maybe Rey was right. Or perhaps by acting the way that he did, Rey drove them together. Was it a self-fulfilling prophecy?
Sighing, Cris looked up at him and then slowly shook his head. Where did they go from here? Edel couldn't seem to move forward without solving the problem of Rey... whom he hung up on and turned off his phone on. He placed both hands firmly on Edel's shoulders. "What's the problem? What. Is the problem. Edel?"
"What do you mean, what's the problem? Really, Cris? We're both dating other people! If we want to be together, we have to break up with Rey and Jen!"
How was that not obvious? Suspiciously, he looked Cris over.
"How drunk are you right now?"
Or did it just not occur to him? Maybe he just didn't care. Edel, though, didn't like being a filthy cheater. He felt dirty even now; that was why he kept hesitating. That was why he kept saying they had a problem. Because they did! He couldn't commit himself to somebody, knowing that Rey was out there, trying to call him over and over again... probably worried. And angry.
Rightfully so, for once...
"Break up?" Cris felt slightly faint at the thought—mostly because. Err. Had Edel met Jen? Did he know how scary she could get? Even with their open relationship, and with the way things were, Jen held him on a tight leash.
And... well... he did still love her. Maybe not as much as he was beginning to love Edel but they'd always talked about marriage and kids and the way she described it all, it sounded like such a rosy, happy future. Cris wondered if there was room in there for Edel. He wondered how big a part each would play in his life, too.
Sighing in mild agitation, he waved a hand impatiently through the air. "I'm not drunk! Look I'll walk a straight line for you!" Cris did so—no stumbles or anything! "I'm fine, quit it with that drunk stuff!" He might feel better if he was drunk, to be honest!
"And—you turned off your phone in the first place! Why didn't you just. Pick up and break up with Rey? Then there wouldn't be a problem!"
Rey wasn't going to budge, Cris suspected, but... with Jen there was always some wiggle room.
"Hm yeah, maybe..." he said dubiously, watching Cris prove that he wasn't that drunk. It seemed like he had sobered up some, since he didn't stumble. Still. That panic in Cris' tone and in his eyes when he said the words break up hadn't failed to catch Edel's attention. Maybe this wasn't as important to Cris as it felt to Edel.
Lowering his gaze, he cleared his throat and ran his hand over his thighs.
"You don't break up with people over the phone. I'll do it when I see him. But what about you?" He looked up, scrutinizing Cris. "You're not saying anything about breaking up with Jen."
"In other words, you're stalling," Cris mumbled to himself, because breaking up in person or over the phone, it was all the same. It was still breaking up. And he had a feeling—juuust a feeling—that Rey wouldn't take it well no matter which way Edel chose to deliver the news to him.
As for Jen...
Cris sat down on the bed and lowered his gaze to the ground. "I can't break up with Jen. She's going to be in my life for good."
"I am not," Edel said stiffly, disliking what it implied for him to be stalling. He just... He didn't think it felt right to break up with a long term boyfriend that he lived with over the phone. It was... It left a bad taste in the back of his throat. And... selfish though it may be, some part of him hoped that they could remain friends.
As if that would ever happen. People broke up all the time, and often said they would stay friends... But there was bad blood, and there would be a lot of it when Rey realized why he was breaking things off.
That was, if Edel was even going to do it. Furrowing his brow, he moved away from Cris, even as Cris was perching on the edge of the bed. Edel couldn't help it; something inside of him recoiled at the way Cris looked at the ground and said that. Those words. It was like a slap in the face. Without even realizing he was doing it, Edel crossed his arms protectively over his chest and turned away. His heart beat in a nasty, sickening staccato and his head spun.
Then what are we doing here?
He didn't say it aloud. Just shook his head, moving away from Cris, as if placing as much distance as possible between them would create a more protective buffer than his arms alone could offer.
"That says it all, then, doesn't it?"
Sighing, he didn't wait for a response. He got up, slipping his phone into his pocket. "I... I have to... I don't know. Take a walk. Don't do anything stupid while I'm gone."
With that, Edel left, still feeling as if nothing had been resolved, heart heavy.