“Hey,” Zac says, soft and worried. “Hey, Cal, baby. What’s wrong?” He frowns, sort of flinches. “You, uh, you wanted that, right?”
Cal nods helplessly. He’s fucking crying. Great. It’s just—this couldn’t possibly get worse.
“Don’t do that,” Zac says, sounding terrified. “Shit. What’d I do?”
You loved her first. You married her. You had a family with her. And I can’t even blame you, because she’s wonderful and I love her too, so much, and I’d marry her and have a son with her in a heartbeat, and I am so fucking jealous of your happiness, and it’s killing me to watch it and think about what comes after.
Zac is terribly still, his expression stunned. Then he says, “After what?”
And that’s the moment that Cal realizes that he’d said all of that out loud. Cal lets his head fall back onto the hardwood floor. He lets his legs untangle from Zac’s. This is going to be it after all, isn’t it? The moment when Zac says, Look, this has been a great time, but I think this is getting kinda heavy, don’t you?
“After this.” Cal gestures, halfheartedly, to himself and Zac. And then aimlessly at the ceiling, because Anya’s upstairs.
Zac still doesn’t move. “And you see this happening soon? This...this after.”
“I don’t—Isn’t that what this is?” He swallows hard. “You think I don’t know that I’m—” He can’t say disposable, because he knows he’s not. Zac needs him almost as much as Cal needs him back. But he also knows there’s a time and a place, and this was always going to happen, and this is the natural spot. They yelled at each other to get to this point, hell, they shoved each other. If they’re going to salvage any kind of friendship out of this, it’s stupid to wait and risk things devolving further. “I know I’ve always had a limited shelf life with you guys.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Zac asks.
Okay, maybe the shelf life thing wasn’t really better phrasing than the disposable thing. Cal winces. “I mean...”
“You mean what?”
“I mean...” Cal cannot think of a single word. His brain is doing a mental shrug, a you’re on your own, buddy.
“You mean that you think we’re going to break up with you.”
“Are we...are we together?”
Zac’s mouth drops open. Then it snaps closed. “We had this talk. You said you needed something serious. We said we were serious.”
“Sure, for now.” Cal can’t believe that Zac is actually making him say it. For the first time, Cal can imagine a time when he could hate Zac, because this is—it’s unbearably cruel. And there’s no purpose in it. There’s no point in saying any of it. All Zac has to do is ask him to go. He doesn’t have to pry this whole ugly thing out of Cal’s chest first.
“For now,” Zac repeats, his tone tightening. “Because we have a shelf life. Serious, my ass. You’re such a fucking liar.”
Cal’s really confused now, because he doesn’t know what else Zac can be expecting. It’s like they’re having two separate conversations. Okay, maybe Cal was wrong for assuming that this was the exact moment Zac would realize he’s done with this part of their relationship, but Cal’s not sure what the hell else could be going on. “Yeah, all right? There’s a shelf life. You can’t get mad at me for...for realizing that. What was I supposed to do? Plan on this lasting forever? How can you even expect that from me? That’s...it’s mean.”
“You really...” Zac clears his throat. “You’re really—you’ve really had one foot out the door this whole time.”
He sounds so small. So hurt. So—so much like Cal’s being a monster that Cal just—snaps.
“It’s not my fucking door!” he yells, making Zac jump. He pushes Zac off him and gets up, going for his jeans and tugging them on. He uses his shirt to wipe their come off his belly, then throws it aside. Zac’s staring up at him, stunned, and it only pisses Cal off worse. “It’s not my house. It’s not my table or my couch or my wife or my child. All the ‘serious’ in the world won’t change that this is your family, and I’m the guy who’s... What the hell do you want me to do? Maybe it takes a year, or maybe it takes you five years or ten, but eventually you’re going to put together that you have a family that you belong to and it’s time to settle down and this game that you and Anya play where you invite someone in for a while to spice things up is gonna get old, and I’m really glad that you like me more than the rest of the guys you’ve screwed on the side, but you’ll still have a family when it’s done. What do I have? What can I ever get out of this that’s mine? And fuck you for not bothering to fucking notice that fact, fuck you, Zac, for assuming any of this is easy or that I should just carve all of this out of myself for you to paw through and—”
Cal stops short because he’s about to say something horrible. Something massive and terrible is clawing its way out of his throat. He doesn’t think he can do this. He wants a drink. He wants to stay. He wants to hear Zac say the words so he can leave and never look at any of them again, because watching them all be happy while he’s grieving will be the thing that kills him.
“Wow,” Zac says, staring. “Wow. When you let go, you really let go, don’t you?”
“There’s a reason I usually don’t.” Cal sounds wobbly. His knees are weak. He sits back down.
“Yeah.” Zac stands and doesn’t take the time to do more than tug his boxers back on before he’s heading for the door. “Come with me.”
“Zac—”
Zac turns back, grabs his wrist, and hauls him up and into the hallway. “I’ve never been this furious in my life, man. We’ve been friends for twenty years, and I had no idea that you thought I could ever be this much of a user, especially of someone I love, and it’s pretty fucking clear you don’t trust me at all, but you’re gonna do what I say, right now, no arguing, because I’m fucking done with this garbage. Come. Upstairs. You. Bastard.”
Cal exhales hard but allows Zac to tow him up the stairs, and when Zac points to the bedroom, Cal goes in and slumps onto the bed to wait. He feels like a man on death row, waiting for the inevitable.
He can hear Zac down the hallway talking to Anya, and then hears her loud, startled “What!” and he figures he’s screwed that up too. But at the same time, he doesn’t know what he could’ve done differently. It’s not his fault that he figured out the end of this road before either of them did.
He doesn’t blame them for that, exactly. They’re impulsive by nature, both of them. They’re the kind of people who get married on a beach after they’ve been dating for three months, who don’t think ahead to all the things that can go wrong. They’re the kind of people who can say it’ll work itself out and still feel safe. They don’t bother to imagine what an ending might look like before it arrives.