It’s so fucking hard to concentrate on work when all I’m doing is stressing out about what happened between Eric and me last night.

As sure as I was about my response—that we needed to wait—I can’t help but feel as though it would have been better to suck it up and follow through with his request.

It doesn’t feel right, but after what went down, after how I hurt him, I realize I might have made a terrible mistake. He wanted to feel in control, and it’s his body, as he said, but it reminded me of that night when we went camping and he totally lost it. He thought he could push, and he pushed too hard, too fast. I know he hurt that night, but so did I, watching this man I was falling head over heels for shaking, trembling, trapped in the horror of his terrifying memories.

Maybe it was selfish of me not to hear him out. Doesn’t he have the right to decide how to handle all this?

God, I don’t fucking know. There aren’t manuals for how to handle something like this. Hell, I feel like everything I’ve read makes me more aware of certain things about what he’s going through than what the hell is happening with me. How the fuck am I supposed to handle a situation like the one that came up last night? That’s not an easy Google search.

I keep pushing through my day, when my phone buzzes. I check, hoping it’s Eric, who hasn’t texted me all day…and who hardly spoke to me after our fight last night.

A fucking fight? This isn’t us at all.

A combination of disappointment and excitement duke it out when I see Ty’s name on my phone. I should be ecstatic that he’s not texting, that he’s fucking calling, but because of the mood I’m in, I don’t want to answer. I have to, though. This isn’t an opportunity I can pass up.

As Eric said last night, regardless of what’s going on, it’s not like we’re going to have a big fight and storm out over it, but still, I fear it will change what we share—that I’ve pushed Eric, potentially in some way we won’t be able to bounce back from.

“Hey, man, what’s up?” I say, answering my phone. I’m trying to sound like everything’s fine, but the harder I try, the more insincere my words sound.

“Hey.” Ty sounds as unenthusiastic as I do, leaving me even more curious about why he’s calling.

There’s this delay, and I don’t rush him.

“We’re definitely getting together for volleyball next week. Just seeing if you can make it.”

“Yeah, yeah. That’d be great.”

My voice cracks slightly…because it feels like a fucking miracle that he’s asking me for that. I’m so torn between excitement to be on the path toward getting my friend back and another of totally fucking up everything with Eric.

“Is everything okay, Jesse?”

As he speaks the words, this pain ripples through me, stinging in my chest. I want to tell him how not okay I am, yet I’m caught in this strange place. Ty and I haven’t made up yet, and so much about what frustrates me has to do with things I hold in confidence with his father.

“I’ll be fine.” I should’ve said, “I’m fine,” but lying to Ty right now seems like an even stupider move. “It’s just…stuff. I’ll be good.”

The way I said stuff, I wonder if Ty can sense that I mean so much more than that.

“Okay, okay,” he says. “If you’re game, I’ll text you next week, and we’ll see if we can work it out.”

Back in the day, I would have told him I was hurt and frustrated. We would have hung out. I would have been able to unload so much of my problems on him, and he would have complained about the shit in his own life.

But everything in my life in this moment is stuck in my throat.

I don’t like this.

I want my friend back.

“All right. Cool, cool. Well, I’ll talk to you later,” he says quickly and then hangs up.

Probably for the best, because I could’ve ended up saying too much. Hell, I already did.

Tears stir in my eyes the way they did last night when I was talking to Eric, and I want to break down.

But I need to push forward. I have to at least keep the other aspects of my life together, if I’m going to royally fuck up all my relationships.

I press on with my work. It’s hard to get anything done when I have all this hanging over my head, but I need to get this in before the weekend. However, fuck if I don’t just want to call it quits and figure out this shit with Eric.

There’s a knock on my door. I’m sure it’s Sam, but there’s a part of me that’s hoping it’s Eric, that he’s rushed by today to talk to me, and actually talk to me, not blow it off like he did last night.

“Come in,” I call out.

The door opens, but it’s not Sam or Eric.

It’s Ty, and that bastard is carrying a pizza, probably Meat Lover’s. It reminds me of when he came and talked me through that shit with my granny.

And now I can’t hold back the tears I’ve been fighting all day. They slide down my face…because god-fucking-dammit, how can he be so amazing when I’ve been such a shit to him?

He gets this whimsical little smile on his face. “I got this pizza,” he says as he traipses into my office, “and it’s not gonna eat itself.”

It’s like when he told me the same thing after I broke it off with Whitney.

He sets the box on my desk, beside my laptop, this knowing expression across his face, that awareness that I haven’t shared the details about what’s really upsetting me. It’s as though he’s pleading, “Please talk to me.” If only he knew how much I could use a friend right now.

“Think you can take a break?” Ty asks.

I shrug. “I don’t think I’m going to get much more done today anyway.”

“Come on, then. Let’s go crash at my place and talk shit about all our coworkers.”

I’m laughing through my tears because he says it as though we’re right back where we were before. I appreciate that he’s even trying.

“You talked me into it,” I say.

He takes the pizza with him, and we meet at his place. As we head to his unit, he’s cracking jokes, talking to me about some of the guys we play volleyball with, catching me up on some gossip.

When we’re in his condo, he sets the pizza box down on the coffee table, opens it, and grabs a slice before planting himself on the couch.

“Get us some beers?” he asks as he chews his pizza.

I do, and when I hand him one of the cans, I say, “I don’t know that I deserve all this.”

“Deserve what? Getting me a beer and hanging around so I can dump work shit on you? Then you can tell me why you sound like somebody shot your new puppy.”

I sit on the cushion beside him on the couch, opening my beer, thinking about how incredible he’s being, but also realizing I’m trapped. The things I need to talk to him about, I can’t.

“I wish I could tell you,” I say, “but I think I’m learning exactly how tricky this all is. The things we used to talk about if I had a fight with Whitney or something…now it’s so complicated, isn’t it?”

“Complicated? You had a fight with Eric? So what? That’s what happens, and, Jesse, if we’re going to find a way to make this weird-ass situation work, you can tell me when you’re down. And I can be here to help.”

“You can’t know what this all means to me, but there are details to this that I can’t really share…that aren’t mine to share.”

“Then share the parts you can.” His words are so soft, such a contrast to when he was shouting at us that night in Eric’s condo. It should help, but it can’t.

“I’m trying to think of ways of saying what I need to that won’t violate any trust he has in me,” I say, “and I keep reaching a dead end. I mean, it wasn’t a fight exactly, but it was more than we’ve had before, and I think I hurt him. I didn’t mean to, but I’m not sure if I should have just done what he wanted because he asked me, or if what I was fighting for was worth it. God, see? That’s the vaguest shit ever.”

I wipe tears from my face with the backs of my hands.

“Find yourself hurting a lot of people without meaning to?” he asks, a sort of bitterness in his expression.

“Ty, I know no matter what I say, or do, you don’t have a reason to ever forgive me.”

“Whoa, whoa. That’s not why I went to your office today. I went because, as fucked up as this situation is, I knew you were hurt. I’ve never liked to see you that way, even that first time we hung out together, when I brought over that pizza. And as for your issue with Eric, I definitely get that you can hurt someone without wanting to…because you hurt me.” Now his eyes are turning red and watering up as though he’s about to cry. “So much, Jesse. With Eric, it was one thing. I could have just written him off that day, really. There’s always been this wall between us anyway. But with you, we’ve been through so much together, shared so much. I really didn’t want to lose my best friend.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Those words don’t really make it better, Jesse. You know that.”

“I do.”

“Although, as angry as I have been with you for what happened, I have to admit that I know you would never have done this to hurt me on purpose. And if you really are happy with Eric, if this really was as special as it must have been for you to talk to me about it, what kind of bastard would I be not to want that for you? I’ve always wanted you to be happy, Jesse. So in this moment, seeing you in pain hurts me, even though I am mad at you still. But I don’t know how to get rid of that. I wish there was a way to erase the bad feeling, because intellectually, I can talk myself down. I keep thinking, if the shoe were on the other foot, I don’t know that I would have handled it as well as you did. And if you were in my shoes, being Jesse Morgan, you would have been even more amazing to me after my being a dick than the other way around. I mean, I’m supposed to be the fuck-up, right?”

We chuckle at the same time, the way we would have at a joke we would have shared in the past, but I’m not sure if it’s because he meant it to be funny or because there’s so much truth to his words.

“But there’s this feeling in me that I can’t shake,” he stresses. “It hurts, a lot, Jesse, and I’m not going to lie and pretend it doesn’t. It’s not only what you did behind my back, but like when we went camping and I had to watch you guys with your inside jokes, and then he was talking about how he flew to San Diego with you. Jesse, it’s my goddamn father. And…I’m jealous that, in a few months, you’ve developed this special relationship with a man I’ve been trying to get to give a damn about me for most of my life.”

And that’s something I really fucking get.

He takes a shaky breath, as though he’s trying to recover from the wound he exposed for me to see. He leans forward and interlocks his fingers. “But I can say that, regardless of how much all that hurts, this entire experience gave me something I never had before.”

“What do you mean?”

He looks at his hands as he rubs his thumb over his other before saying, “Please don’t tell Eric this. Although, I guess if you do, what does it matter at this point?”

“I won’t say anything, Ty.”

He eyes me uncertainly, as if he questions my allegiance now in a way he never would have before, but he presses on anyway. “That day when I ran into him here, he thought I was ignoring him. But I was out, and I came up the stairs, saw him. He was pleading for me to come to the door, and reflecting on back when we first met, and his hopes, his disappointment. He was crying, like really crying, Jesse, really hurt at the thought of me wanting to be out of his life. If you’d asked me a few days before if I thought he would have even cared if I wanted to be in his life or not, I would have said no.

“But I finally saw a man who cared about me, who loved me—the man I wanted to believe he was in the beginning, a man who I maybe stopped believing in too soon. And I thought, ‘This is my dad, and he’s here for me, and he’s fighting for me.’ Awful as I felt about everything else, and hurt…and betrayed, that outweighed the rest.”

I’m so relieved to hear Ty say this, especially since that’s what I see when I look at Eric. Ty deserves to know that Eric cares…that he wants that connection as much as Ty does.

“He doesn’t know I saw that,” Ty adds. “I snuck around the corner and pretended I was coming around it when he was done, but that’s why I was willing to talk to him that day, because, Jesse, I do want my dad. Even just what we’ve all experienced, talking to each other again. No, it’s not going to be great right away, but the person he is right now…I like him a hell of a lot more than the guy I’ve been spending years hanging out with—unable to communicate with, feeling like there was this invisible wall separating us.”

He looks directly into my eyes, and even though he’s looked at me while we’ve been talking, it feels as if it’s the first time he’s really looking at me. “But now I feel like there’s a wall between me and my best bud since college, and that sucks, because I could really use a hug right now.”

“I could use a hug too,” I confess with a sort of bitter chuckle.

Ty scoots across the couch and puts his arms around me, pulling me in close for a hug, very familiar, similar to so many times we’ve shared before, just holding me.

It’s a hug like we shared after my granny passed, and I cry because I can’t help myself.

“I don’t deserve this,” I say, my voice cracking as I speak the words.

“Maybe you don’t, but I do,” he says, and I surrender, giving him the hug he deserves, for the pain he’s experienced and for the hope he’s found that maybe, just maybe, he can have the father he’s always wanted.

We cry together, shamelessly, each for our own reasons, as I find everything I dealt with last night with Eric creeping up on me and colliding with the pain I’ve put Ty through.

When Ty finally pulls away, he wipes his hands under his nose.

“Well, there we go, being all ridiculous and sappy,” he says, “and we still have to get to why you’re a mess right now.”

“Thank you. I’m glad you talked to me about it.”

“I am too. I don’t know the details of what you’re working out with my…Eric…” I can tell he stopped himself from saying dad or father—something I more than understand. “…but if we’ve learned anything through this whole mess, it’s that talking is important. Christ, if I can be sitting here talking to you, certainly there’s nothing you could have fucked up so much that Eric won’t be willing to hear you run your chatty mouth.” He winks, but then his expression turns serious once again. “Jesse, I may not know Eric as much as I’ve always wished I could, but what I do know is that he gets guarded. He shuts down, but there’s something else under there. I can’t say I’ve really figured out what, but…I think I’m realizing it’s more than just about me.”

He’s right about that. If only he knew how right.

I have to believe—despite how he got last night, how he clammed up with me—that I can remind him that I am here for him, and I do care, even though it may not have looked like that to him.

“I believe in you guys,” Ty says. “You’ve put too much on the line to throw in the towel now, right? So get your fucked-up shit worked out.”

He can’t know what those words mean to me…what this afternoon has meant to me.

He smirks, and I burst into laughter, a laughter I’ve needed after everything that’s happened.

“Now one more hug, and then I’m evicting you from my place,” he teases.

I laugh again as we exchange another hug, this time less sad, just appreciating that, even though it’s not great, or perfect…it’s better.