by Sean Kennedy
“Where’s breakfast?” I asked.
“You know, if I didn’t actually know the both of you so well, your phone conversations could almost be mistaken for flirting.”
“Oh, gross. You want me to have nightmares tonight?”
“The time it is, you may as well stay in bed.”
“Don’t tempt me.”
He made to leave, but I stopped him.
“Hey,” I said.
“What?”
“I just realised I didn’t even get to say good morning to you.”
“Technically we’ve just gone past morning. But good morning.” He leant down to kiss me, but I grabbed him and pulled him into bed with me.
“We can’t become one of those couples who barely even dispense social niceties to each other without prompting,” I said, his nose now pressed against mine.
“I think that’s the least of our worries.”
“Good morning,” I said, and kissed him.
Home is meant to be a place, but for me Dec was my home. He was where I felt secure and loved, and time did nothing to diminish that. No matter what.
DEC ONCE again had another early morning training session with the GetOut kids but would be free until the afternoon, so he promised to meet me for lunch to deconstruct whatever happened with Coby.
Coby was already waiting for me by the time I got to the office. Now that he had decided he was going to talk to me properly, he looked nervous.
“Let’s stop the melodrama,” I said, turning my computer on and propping my feet up on my desk. “Spit it out, Cobes.”
He slid the coffee tray across the desk. As promised, it wasn’t Starbucks.
“I know I’ve been acting a bit weird around you lately—”
“Never noticed,” I lied.
“C’mon, I know you did.”
“Okay, and?”
“You’re not going to make this easy on me, are you?”
“Coby, I’ve put up with you acting strangely for a while now, so if you’d like to tell me why, just tell me.”
“It’s hard.”
“Why on earth would it be hard?”
Coby finally sat down. “Because you’re not going to like it.”
I was by now even more annoyed. I had never known Coby to be so reticent, which really should have warned me of the enormity of what was coming.
“I’ve been seeing somebody for a while now—”
“I knew it!” I cried. “So, what are you so worried about?”
“A lot of things, actually—”
“Is it someone here? Because, you know, it’s not like there haven’t been people who have hooked up, as long as it doesn’t interfere with your work like it did Sam and Josef—”
“But—”
“Remember what happened at the Christmas party? You can still see the stains in the carpet.”
“I—”
“It’s just lucky Josef got that job with Channel Nine, or I guess we would have come in to work one morning to find his body displayed like the Vitruvian Man.”
“Simon—”
“Is it a woman?”
Coby looked at me in disbelief. “Seriously?”
“Well….”
“I like dick.”
“I believe that’s the office motto.”
“Will you just let me tell you, instead of interrupting—”
“Okay, okay—”
“It’s Jasper Brunswick, okay? It’s Jasper Brunswick.”
There was a nuclear explosion in my head. I swear everything went white, and then reality faded back and I realised I hadn’t been reduced to a pile of ash.
“Simon?” Coby looked at me anxiously.
“It’s funny,” I said, finding my voice again. “I think I just heard you say you’re seeing Jasper Brunswick. But that wouldn’t be right, would it?”
“Um” was Coby’s response.
“Because you honestly wouldn’t be seeing the lowest, most contemptuous troublemaker who has gone out of his way to fuck over me and Declan on a consistent basis?”
Coby straightened up. “I am, actually.”
There was another nuclear explosion. I was sure I was now a bomb shadow against the office wall. “This has to be a joke. A really bad one!”
“My love life is not a joke.”
“It is if you’re seeing Jasper Brunswick. Are you that desperate, Coby?”
Far from looking chastened and apologetic, Coby looked angry. “Calm down, Simon. And I’ll let that last comment go, but I won’t again.”
“Don’t you dare tell me to calm down. This is… beyond everything. Unnatural! In fact, it’s heresy!” I would have stormed out, if I didn’t feel like my legs wouldn’t support me. Coby had stunned me; I felt like I had been kicked in the guts.
“And you’re being melodramatic. It’s just my boyfriend.” There was a slight stumble over that, as if deep down even he knew it was being disingenuous given Jasper’s history and mine.
“Boyfriend?” I hissed. “Ugh, don’t make me vomit.”
Coby threw his hands up in the air. “I can’t talk to you when you’re like this.”
“And I can’t even look at you. What did you think was going to happen? Jasper Brunswick, Coby? Jasper fucking Brunswick?”
“Yes, Jasper fucking Brunswick. Or, as I like to call him, Jon.”
This piqued my interest momentarily, against my will. “He lets you call him that?”
“It’s his name, isn’t it?” Coby leaned in, as if divulging a secret. “Sometimes, he lets me call him darling.”
Ugh, that little fucker.
My stomach rolled. “Now I’m really going to be sick.”
“Oh, stop clutching your pearls.”
“How did this even happen?”
“You know the story, boy meets boy….”
“And you know what I mean.”
“You want details?”
“Just, how did you even cross paths?”
“It was that opening you gave me tickets for, that you didn’t want to go to.”
We got so many; I couldn’t even guess which one.
“The exhibition about the feet.”
I shuddered involuntarily. An exhibition about feet. I couldn’t imagine anything worse. “Jasper Brunswick was at that?”
“Obviously.” Coby rolled his eyes. “Or else we wouldn’t be here having this conversation.”
“If only.”
“Anyway, we bumped into each other, we started talking—”
“You fraternised with the enemy, then you slept with him.”
Coby ignored that sally. “We laughed about how gross the exhibition was, and we went for coffee.”
“Why?”
“He was being nice.”
“That’s not possible.”
“Simon!”
“Just saying. I love how you keep forgetting what he did to Dec.”
“I’m not. But there’s… complications. He’s not the same guy you know. So, yes, I’m seeing Jasper Brunswick. No, I didn’t think I would ever fall in love with him—” Panicked, he brought his hands to his mouth.
“Love?” I demanded. “Love? This couldn’t get any worse. How long have you been at rock bottom, anyway?”
He didn’t fight me for that, even though it was a pretty low blow. “Four months.”
“You’ve kept this secret for four months?” He had been acting odd for a while, but had it been that long?
“Because I knew how you’d act!”
“Can you blame me?”
“You felt sorry for him once upon a time, and don’t even pretend you didn’t.”
“Doesn’t mean I want to see you married to him!”
“Nobody said anything about marriage, you drama queen.”
I snorted. “Bit of the old pot and kettle there. If you love him so much you would have told me as soon as you started seeing him. Doing it this way, you know deep down it’s fucked.”
Coby stood ramrod stra
ight, apparently determined to sort his boss/friend/me out for once and for all. “I know you and Jon have had your problems—”
“Problems? He’s sought to create them every time he had an opportunity!”
“And you broke his arm!”
Before I could even reply to that, and believe me, there were plenty of things I could say, he took a deep breath and apologised. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. I know you didn’t break it deliberately—”
For the sake of my own sanity, and probably also his balls (which needed a good kicking), I decided to let that one go.
“Just, I’m looking at it from his perspective. It’s easier for him to look back and blame you than Greg.”
I had to try and be calmer, and rise above the rage I felt at being placed on the same level as Greg Heyward, ex to both Dec and Jasper (at different times, thank the goddess), and who Jasper had collaborated with to write a fanciful autobiography that painted his relationship with Dec very differently to how it actually was. Oh, and blamed me for their breakup even though I didn’t meet Dec until a year and a half later.
“Well, isn’t it about time he got over that? Especially if he’s with you now? It’s not like you could be worse than Heyward.”
“Oh, that’s nice, Simon.”
“I didn’t mean it like that.” And I actually hadn’t. It was true, though. “But if you’re both so happy with each other, why does Heyward even come into it?”
Coby sat back down, looking defeated. “I know. But Dec said that Greg fucked him up for a long time, so he wouldn’t be surprised if Jasper was the same.”
As if it wasn’t bad enough to compare me to Greg, I didn’t like Jasper being compared to Dec at all.
But wait—
“Dec said that? Dec knows about this?”
Coby at least had the grace to look chastened. “He does. I told him everything.”
Two betrayals in one day. This was unfuckingbelievable. “When?”
“About a month ago.”
“A month?”
“Okay, it was more like six weeks,” Coby admitted.
“Six weeks?” There was an echo in the room, and my words came back to me in a strangled yelp.
“Two months!” Coby cried, even with a lack of an interrogation to break him.
I stopped myself from saying two months and realised the kick in my gut was now genuine hurt. Declan had known this for two months, and he had never said a word to me.
“It’s not his fault! I made him promise,” Coby said, miserable as all sin. “Please don’t be mad at him.”
I wasn’t mad. I was gutted.
“Simon? I like it better when you yell at me.”
What was yelling going to achieve? In the end, I would just be proving them right by being the monster they obviously thought I would be.
“Simon?” Coby asked again.
I still couldn’t answer him. And this seemed to flip a switch in Coby, where he went from feeling guilty to full-blown self-justification. “Neither you or Jasper are completely innocent when it comes to each other.”
I didn’t have much of an answer to that, either. I had taken a grim delight in fighting with Jasper Brunswick over the years, but it had been reduced to a mere simmering of discontent after the whole Heyward saga and bridge incident. It was now a strange mix of revulsion and pity. Neither feeling was particularly pretty, and they were even grimmer when combined.
But I still couldn’t believe that Coby, knowing all of that and having been witness to it, was able to put that all out of his head and embark upon a relationship with the guy. Okay, it could have been worse. He could have gotten with Heyward, who as far as I knew was still majorly fucked-up and dealing with years of self-hatred while blaming everyone else for it. But was settling for the less fucked-up dude really any better than going the whole hog and choosing the sociopath?
It’s not like Jasper was any kind of prize.
Then again, maybe none of us were.
“You know what?” Coby asked, having given me enough time to formulate a response but obviously seeing me lacking, “I know, deep down, that Jasper has done worse if you were to tally up all the grievances between the two of you. You’re my boss, and my best friend. And I’ve told Jon that, and he has to deal with that as well.”
I was among his best friends? I refused to let that sway me, but it was what allowed me to finally speak again. “It’s just, as my friend, Coby, I do really want what’s best for you. And Jasper Brunswick, well….”
“Well, what?”
I hesitated, knowing that my words would probably be misconstrued. Or maybe they couldn’t be misconstrued. They would be construed, with their original intent correctly interpreted.
“What, Simon?”
“Well, Jasper Brunswick is really fucked-up!”
Okay, no chance of misconstruing that.
“Really?” Coby asked, folding his arms defensively.
“Well, yeah.”
Coby sneered. I had never seen that kind of expression on his face before. He was the happy-go-lucky sprite who took everything in his stride, the calm sidekick to my histrionic protagonist. I got the feeling that I was in over my head, and that we were going around in circles we’d never escape. And maybe saying things we could never get over.
“More fucked-up than the rest of us?” That sneer was still there, slowly building up to something.
“Just look at his last relationship!” And, unknowingly, I laid the trap and stepped right into it.
“With Greg?” Coby’s tone was the steel of the trap, closing over my leg and cutting mercilessly into my flesh. “That’s really dangerous ground you’re stepping on. Or have you forgotten who else Greg dated?”
Yes, he stooped that low. There were now minefields springing between us, and we were stupidly lobbing grenades along the ground to boot. “That’s different.”
But it wasn’t. Coby could see it in my face.
“Dec admits he was fucked up by Greg. It didn’t stop you from getting with him.”
“I didn’t know all the gory details at that point.”
“Would that have stopped you?”
But it wasn’t Coby saying that. I groaned at the sound of the voice I loved best in the world, and swung around in my chair to see Dec. He was standing against the door, which I didn’t even hear open, and he was in a defensive stance with his hands jammed into his jacket pockets.
“Come on, Simon, answer the question.” Coby had gone beyond cold. He was now spiteful. And I probably deserved it, although I still felt that he had some fault in this as well.
“Not that I want to sound like a shithead—” I began, and was immediately interrupted by a snort from Coby but horribly enough no reaction from Dec, “—but what are you doing here?”
“I called him,” Coby answered for Dec.
“When?”
“Before you got here.”
“I thought you were meant to be at training?” I asked Dec.
“And I came after it,” he said simply.
“You knew that you were going to be coming here when I talked to you?”
“I thought I might be needed.”
“Who for?” I asked. “Me, or Coby?”
“Don’t be an arsehole,” he said gently. “You, of course. I don’t have to be psychic to know the reaction you were going to have.”
Coby spoke up. “I had to get one of the only three people who could actually do something about you chucking a fit. And I knew Fran and Roger wouldn’t be as fair.”
“They know something about loyalty,” I said, pleased.
“More likely they were too busy to deal with your shit,” Coby said.
I wanted to tell him to fuck off, but I was scared by how venomous it might come out.
“It was me who signed up for that job when I got you,” Declan told me.
“Lucky you,” Coby huffed.
“Just one of the perks,” I fired back.
“Am I al
lowed to speak now?” Declan asked of both of us.
“I’m pissed at you,” I told him.
“I know.” He wasn’t putting up much of a defence for himself.
“You’ve known this for six weeks.”
“Two months,” Coby piped up, rubbing it in.
Dec shot him a look, and this time it was Coby who backed down and looked a little more chastened.
“You didn’t tell me.”
“I was asked not to.”
“I don’t give a shit. This is Jasper Brunswick, Dec! Or have you forgotten what he did to us?”
“You really think I’ve forgotten?” Dec snorted. “He enjoyed doing all the shit he did for Greg.”
Coby looked up again, probably distraught that his beloved Jasper Brunswick wasn’t getting off the hook so easily. “You said—”
“I said I could understand what he’d been through. But he’s an adult, Coby. He’s got to take responsibility for what he did, too. So I definitely haven’t forgotten.”
Strangely enough, hearing Dec say that made me feel a little calmer. It showed that he wasn’t so willing to forgive, or wipe the slate clean for Jasper. Sometimes Dec liked to put on a calm front rather than admit what he was feeling, and although I knew he was a far more laid-back person than me, I also hoped that he wasn’t repressing it all.
Coby didn’t like what Dec said, and opened his mouth to protest, but Dec cut him off by looking back at me.
“Come take a walk.”
“That doesn’t sound at all ominous. But I guess I’ll just leave, shall I?” I moved around Coby and kicked the latch at the back of his chair so that it sunk down to ground level with him in it. “I’ll just leave my office?”
Coby didn’t say anything.
Dec also remained silent as we travelled down in the lift, and the atmosphere was killing me. As we waited for the lights to change for us to cross over into Federation Square, I couldn’t take it anymore. “Okay, feel free to tell me off.”
“I was waiting for you to explode at me.”
“It’ll take too much energy.” I was exhausted. Fucking Mondays, and it wasn’t even the start of the workday. “You start.”
“I’m not going to tell you off.” His voice was soft and almost drowned beneath the cornucopia of noise made by the city.
“Oh? I think that’s what you were sent for.”
I was surprised as Dec’s lips suddenly brushed against mine. “Calm down.”