So quick note before the monstrous piece of text I'm about to post: I'm going insane for about 21 hours tomorrow, so the only way that today's writing will get posted is if the random city in Illinois to which I'm heading at four AM has wifi I can plug into. And if I don't fall asleep/die of caffeine-induced heart palpitations. k? k.
Andrew (cont.)
I filled out the paperwork - insurance and such, mostly - and gave it to the tired-looking receptionist on duty. Then I went back to the waiting room, and told Thomas he could head home.
"I'm not leaving you here," he said, indicating the general awful antisepticness of the place. "Honestly. Who does that?"
"Fine," i said. "But if you have a kink in your neck tomorrow, it's not my fault." And I proceeded to fall asleep on the couch.
Nathan:
It only took three more days before Morgan was willing to let me go back to work. I pulled myself together quite well, if I said so myself. I even enrolled myself in an anger-management program. There were some things that had to be dealt with, and there was no way I was letting my temper get in the way of good business. When I told my PA that she had to fit in these weekly meetings, she gave me a hug. That was unexpected, but.. Oddly nice. Patricia was a good PA and nowhere near as insipid as some of my former PAs. If she thought it was that good of an idea, then I had a little more confidence that I was doing the right thing.
Morgan bought me dinner, when she found out. We went out to a local Italian place, very good, very expensive, with wonderful wines. I decided against the wine, however. For some reason, the thought of alcohol turned my stomach at the moment.
"I don't see why everyone sees this as such a huge deal," I ranted, after our food had arrived. Morgan was twirling a strand of linguini around the tines of her fork, and an elegant violin concerto was floating on the warm breeze that flowed through the restaurant from wide open trellis windows. I ignored the atmosphere. "It's not like it's a huge acheivement. I've realized there was something inhibiting my business acumen, and I decided to fix it. That's simple sense."
Morgan rolled her eyes eloquently, apparently too busy chewing to bother to respond.
"And besides, I do not believe that it affected any of the people celebrating overmuch - I fail to see why you deem it necessary to buy me dinner," I gestured with my fork, a bit of lobster stuck on the end, "especially here, of all places. It's just sense."
"But it's sense that you haven't shown in years past," Morgan said. having finally swallowed. "We've been worried about you. Energy and anger was a godsend when the business was first yours - Uncle is many things, but by the end of his tenure, a good business man was not on of them. You and he are a lot alike. You thrive when things are on the rocks, but as soon as things start becoming simpler, smoother, you start acting out. There's just not enough for you to do."
"That's slander," I said, offended. "Father was an excellent businessman to the very end."
"Then why did stock go up when you got hold of the company?" she asked. "You, the man who'd barely graduated business school, who'd only run his department for a mere two years when Uncle finally retired? The stock was tanking - it had nowhere to go but up, that's why. The stocks showed what your father was doing to the company: driving it into the ground."
I didn't say anything, instead concentrating on my food. There was a long, awkward silence, made worse by the fact that Morgan, by all appearances, didn't find it awkward, simply enjoying her food and the single glass of red wine she was allowing herself. The silence was only broken when the roving violinist came over next to our table and started playing the theme from a recent romantic movie. I felt my face flush, and said, stiffly, "We're not together. She's my cousin."
Without missing a beat, the violinist wandered off elsewhere. I looked at Morgan, to gauge her reaction, only to find her stifling a smirk. I didn't talk to her for the rest of the night.
My fist counseling session was the next day, a Saturday. My therapist - a petite woman with a mass of curly black hair and a healthy sense of sarcasm, who at least three people had recommended to me just before or after I'd fired them (thinking back on it, I should have picked up on that pattern sooner) got down to business incredibly quickly. "Exactly why are you doing this?" she asked me, leaning forward towards me. "I need to know your reasoning for this, before I can even begin to help you with anything."
I was there to help myself, so I didn't hold anything back. "It has recently come to my attention that I may have issues controlling my anger," I said. "I decided that this must be dealt with."
"What brought this to your attention?" she asked. "An incident? A comment?"
"I was... out with friends, and we had an argument," I said. No need to go in depth on the specifics of the outing. "I was angry - extremely so - and I went and got myself thoroughly drunk at a dive bar." I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. "That resulted in a trip to the hospital for a stomach pump and various other necessities, and several days missed from work. As I am the CEO, that is an extremely important mistake. I decided something must be done to remedy this emotional turbulence."
"So you want to bring some stability into your life?" she said. "That's a good goal. Can you list any other incidents that might be a display of your 'anger management problems'?" She dropped the quotations in so delicately that I almost missed them.
I wracked my brain, trying to think of other times this issue had arisen. "I... am less that pleasant to my PA sometimes?" I said.
"You have numerous referrals," she said, glancing down at the notes she had in front of her, "Several other people have told you you have 'anger management issues," again with the quotes, "And all you can think of is that you should be nicer to your secretary?"
The meeting went downhill from there.
After the meeting finished - and after I'd been argued up and down and all around the room on my treatment of people in general - I ended up phoning Jim, that's how desperate I was for someone to tell me that I wasn't completely missing something important about myself. "You're not always the best guy to be around," was his response.
"But that's not really a sign of major problems," I said, a little desperately. "There are many people who 'aren't always the best to be around.'"
"But you're like that, only, I don't know, amplified," Jim said. "When you're having a bad day, the whole world knows it. And you have bad days a /lot/."
"No, I don't," I said, getting angry.
"One time, you screamed at a waitress because she'd put too much ice in your drink, and man, she hadn't even prepared that drink. If that's not an anger management problem, I don't know what is."
"Go to hell," I shouted, and hung up the phone. Pressing the button to hang up wasn't very satisfying, but I looked at the phone with righteous indignation anyway. Then I realized what had just transpired, and called Jim back. He didn't say anything when he picked up. He just waited for me to say something. After a moment, I said, sheepishly, "I just completely proved everyone's point, didn't I." It wasn't a question.
"Yeah, pretty much," he confirmed. "Hey, think of it this way. At least now with the therapist you've got someone who's specifically paid to deal with your shit and help you not take it out on others."
"That's one way to look at it, I guess," I said.
The next week or so was interesting. Now that I was watching for it, I noticed myself lashing out at people for no reason. I shouted at another intern, before reigning myself in and apologizing. He seemed more alarmed after the apology than her had before it, and wasted no time leaving once I said he could go. Patricia was walking around like she thought I was a bomb, about to go off, defusing any situation that might set me off as soon as she could. I didn't mind the deference, but still. "I'm trying to be a better person," I told her Wednesday afternoon. "So you do not have to be so meek all the time."
"I'm not behaving any differently than I normally do," she said. "It's you who's different. When that merger fell through yesterday, I could have sworn you'd have absolutely torn up the staff for something, or me for forgetting to bring you extra cream cheese for your bagel this morning. But you haven't."
"Like I said, I'm working on it," I said. My guilty conscience, which had only just started to let me off for the whole 'keeping Morgan in the hospital worried about me' bit, started haranguing me about the way I'd been treating my employees. Part of me - a large part - was still saying that they all deserved it, that I had never done anything unjust towards them, but I could recognize patterns. I'd had a definite pattern of anger before. I had to stop that.
By the time Friday rolled around, I was exhausted, as much from the effort of consciously being, if not kind, then at least not a horrible human being, as much as the final effects of the hospital trip and the work week in general. But of course, I couldn't be allowed to stay home and rest. Morgan hijacked me when I was on my way home to read a good book and sleep. "You would just end up doing paperwork," she told me. "Instead, you're going to go out and listen to music and not be antisocial outside of work for once."
"That's really a magnificently bad idea," I said, doing my best to escape. "Really. Especially if it's with the new hire. It will end poorly."
"It's not," she said, laughing. "We're going to go out and do something fun. We will not be people running a company. We will be friends and relatives. And you are going to enjoy it."
"Again, I really doubt that," I said, but the battle had been lost before it had even truly begun. Morgan knew I was coming, because I had never been able to tell her no to anything.
So I once again donned overly casual clothes and went forth to a bar, in order to have ‘fun’. It was with the least enthusiasm since someone had last gone down death row that I went out into my living room, where Morgan lounged indolently on my sofa. Despite the regular insistence of several elderly aunts that seemed to live specifically to prod me into a relationship, I had no need of the kind of significant other they wanted me to have. I had a cousin to prod me into going on outings that I didn’t want to go on, dressed in a way I was uncomfortable dressing.
“You look like you’re on a death march,” Morgan said, looking up at me. “Very Black Parade.”
“I would hate to make the rest of the concertgoers feel gloomy,” I said, turning around and heading back to my room.
“Oh no you don’t,” she said, standing up and heading towards me. “We’re having fun. I will make you go and have fun if it kills you.”
“I hate you,” I said. “You and your sadistic ways.”
“Come on,” she said, grabbing my arm. “You’re such an eeyore. Honestly.”
We went, and I did my best to only complain when given a legitimate reason – so only every five minutes. Despite everything, it took until the concert actually started for things to start heading downhill. Then I recognized the singer – it was the woman who’d started the whole catastrophe two weeks ago. Then everything started going to hell.
I felt ill for the entire first set, just waiting for her to recognize me, and, despite what all common sense might have suggested, come down to start berating me again. Morgan, on the other hand was enjoying herself, smiling at the occasional man who caught her eye, and being in general a more well-adjusted person than I apparently was.
Then the set ended, and I went off to the restroom in a slightly stupid attempt to hide from what’s-her-name, Rhianna or whatever. I discovered entire new genres of graffiti for the approximately thirty seconds I was in that room before I left, in a hurry to not die of a contagious disease before I got home.
When I got back, I had to immediately melt into the crowd, because of all people that Morgan could have run into, she met Andrew what’s-his-name. Of anyone I could have seen during Rhianna’s concert, he was absolutely the last person I’d have wanted. And then he pulled her away and I discovered that the other people he was with were the other two last people I wanted to see – his friends.
I considered just going home at that point. Just texting Morgan that I felt ill, and going home to sleep and get paperwork done. unfortunately, while I was mulling over ways to make that not sound like a cop out and therefore have her rain down the wrath of the scorned woman later, she spotted me, and dragged me over to be a part of the conversation. She did it with nothing more than a meaningful stare. There was no reason why I should be so terrified of her wrath, but I was. I had a sneaking suspicion that if I bailed on this, I was moving to her shit list permanently. That's not a good place to be. There were interns in the past who'd preferred to risk my wrath than hers, and to be completely honest, they had good reason. My wrath was not exactly hard-gained, and interns were likely to experience it anyway.
I listened to Andrew - who'd given me a look of true disdain that caused me to bristle - talk to Morgan and his friends about stuff I didn't particularly care about for a while, until yet more people i didn't particularly want to know appeared. I felt Morgan freeze beside me. Morgan was never uncertain. This did not bode well. She greeted one of the newcomers by name, and I swear I felt the room drop five degrees in temperature. That's how cool they acted towards one another.
I did not pay much attention for the rest of the night, except to try and occasionally pick my brain as to where I recognized the man Morgan hated so much from. It was only after the concert, when Andrew disappeared - thank god - and the pair of them started talking that I remembered him. He was the man she'd been dating, oh, three years ago? Longer?
I remembered him. She'd been head over heels for him. Completely gone. I had honestly expected that the pair of them would run away together when my father put his foot down. He completely refused to let Morgan have anything to do with him. She'd thought his decree was funny; I'd thought it a bit preposterous. Even my father could not take Morgan in love on and come out alive.
He'd warned her though, time and again, that the guy was bad news. She hadn't listened. She had even gotten someone to go listen to him, and he'd been signed on immediately.
Then he had just... disappeared. Morgan had been utterly desolate. Completely inconsolable. She was broken-hearted for six months, simply depressed for six more, then started a long climb to be not only someone no one could hurt, but to be thee person who could hurt others - and yet choose not to. It was completely obvious to me that that's what she had finally become, as well as that my father had had a point - but as Morgan and her former flame talked, an awful, niggling suspicion began to form in the back of my mind. My father was what I'd always considered to be the perfect ruthless business man. He ould have out-machiavellied the man himself. And he'd always cared for Morgan, thinking that she was too sentimental.
I watched the man leave, abandoning Morgan to sit, shell-shocked, alone but for me and a guy who was vaguely familiar, in that way that minor celebrities that no one particularly cares about are. I went over to Morgan and gave her a hug, because of all times, of all people, she needed one the msot at that moment of anyone I had ever seen. "Everything he just said is a lie," she whispered, her voice sounding a little hoarse. "It has to be."
I just kept holding her. After a moment, she buried her head in my shoulder and sobbed, just once. Then she took a deep breath, lifted her head and pushed mee away. "I'm not going to let that arrogant bastard get to me," she said, fiercely. "Not again. Not after what happened last time."
"You're stronger for it now," I said, helplessly parroting of one of my father's favorite phrases.
"That's bullshit," she said, turning to me. "And you know it. Don't turn into Uncle. You can bee better than that." And she walked out, holding her head high. I followed her, because what else was there to do?
I made a less-than-pleasant call as soon as I got home. There are some things that have to be dealt with immediately.
"Hello, this is the Farthing estate, I'm Becky, how may I help you?"
"Yes, Becky, this is Andrew Farthing. Please put my father on the line." I was in professional mode. If I was correct, my father did not deserve for me to treat him as such, because he'd effectively ruined Morgan's life - the life of the one person whom I'd ever felt truly close to.
There was a classical interlude, then my father picked up - I'd known he would still be up. "Andrew! How are you?" His faux-geniality was more than a little grating.
I cut to the chase. "Father, I have a question for you, concerning Morgan. I know it is late, but it is urgent."
"You have as much access to her medical records as I do, surely," he said, alarm creeping into his voice.
"She's unharmed," I said. "Mostly. It's mental harm that I have a question on."
"Oh! That' fine then," he said. "I was doing a bit of paperwork for the city council anyway, this is a pleasant distraction."
Like he would consider talking to me pleasant unless he was talking about Morgan, I though bitterly. "Do you remember Morgan's boyfriend, several years ago? The one that she claimed was her true love?"
My father snorted. "Good riddens to bad rubbish. Like he would have treated her the way she deserved."
"Did you have anything to do with the way he just disappeared?" I asked. There. The question was out there. Now to listen for the answer. My father was always truthful - lying was not only wrong, but it also showed a lack of finesse, in his opinion, which meant it was a mortal sin.
But to my surprise, he not only answered readily, he almost seemed pleased with himself when he did. "Yes, I did. She was paying far too much attention to that boy when she should have been advancing her career. Morgan is a bright girl - such a bright girl - and to let her waste herself or her efforts on some white trash kid with no background and a half-assed musical talent would have been a sin. I pulled a couple strings and made it so they wouldn't be able to see each other - at least not through my company."
"What do you mean?" I asked, my heart and fists clenching. ""So they wouldn't be able to see each other.'"
"The secretaries, the switchboard operators, the doormen, and the receptionists - they all got orders that that kid was bad news, and that he should bee denied. I cut his contract with us. He was gone. God, it made me smile to see the last of him." I could practically hear my father's smug smile on the other end of the line. I finally found out the meaning of the term 'seeing red.' I was literally seeing red.
"Blocked his number from calling us, too," he said, finishing off the list with relish.
I took one deep breath, then two, and tried counting to ten. It didn't work. I decided that, if there was ever a time to be angry, this would be it. "You purposefully broke you beloved niece's heart?" I asked. deadly calm.
"She needed to toughen up," he said, blithely.
"Father, you nearly ruined Morgan's life," I told him. "You have done something utterly unforgiveable. As of this moment, our association is at an end. I refuse to act like a son to a man who doesn't know what it means to be a father." Then I hung up on him.
The phone of course started ringing again almost immediately, but caller ID betrayed him to me. I ignored the call and instead dialed Morgan before she convinced herself of anything in one direction or another.
I was stalking my living room, from wood flooring to throw rug to wood and then back, waiting for her to answer. Finally, after five rings, she did, sounding like she was preventing tears by sheer force of will. "Nathan, it's too late at night for whatever it is. I'm off of work. Just let me be."
"It's not about work," I said. "It's about that scene at the concert."
Silence on the other end. Then she said, "Tell me one reason that I shouldn't hang up right now before you meddle in my love life."
"He was telling the truth." My apartment, always quiet, seemed to practically hold its breath as I stopped, listening for her reaction.
Finally, she said, "Okay, fine. Tell me."
I told her the entire tale my father had just told me. I wished that I could have seen her face as she listened, because telling the whole sordid tale to a wall covered in art prints and to the utter silence on the other end of the line felt odd. When I finished, I paused, then said, "Are you still there?"
"Yeah," she said, sounding far away.
"You need to tell me more than that. I need to know if I should start developing your alibi," I said.
"No, no alibi necessary," she said. "Axe murderers stick out, so I'll just ignore him." Pause. "He really admitted to all of that?"
"Almost gleefully," I said. "It was nauseating."
"Goddamn that man!" she burst out.
"Agreed," I said. Pause.
"Nathan, I need you to be the best cousin in the entire world," Morgan said, hesitantly. "I know that tomorrow is your break, but... I need to talk to some people. And I'd really rather not do it alone."
"Of course I'll come with you," I said. After everything she'd done for me, even since we were kids, I owed her at least that much. Being able to play a part in her future happiness would help my karma. Even if karma was an outdated and irrational conception.
"Thanks," she said. "Now I sort of really need to get some sleep."
"Good night," I said. "We'll fix this."
"I hope so," she said. I could hear her smile through the phone. "Love you."
"Love you."
Andrew:
I woke up the next morning being shaken by Thomas. "Hey," he said. "They're trying to release your sister. They sort of need you up there to do that, though."
"mrphl," I said, coherently, before I stood up and started wandering blearily towards the light.
"Easy," Thomas said, grabbing my shoulder. "That's a window, dude. Where's your glasses go?"
Beginning to actually wake up now, I squinted, and found them on the end table next to my couch-bed. I grabbed them, and as I put them on, the world came into focus. "She's being released?" I asked, blinking at the sudden clarity of everything.
"That's what I said," he said, nodding patiently. "I'm beginning to wonder how you made it through puberty without falling off a poorly placed cliff."
"I was too busy keeping you from free-diving off any cliffs to fall off one," I said, finally having adjusted to being awake, upright, and not blind. Thomas nodded, accepting of that as a valid answer. "Let's spring Grace. She's got to be pissed right now."
She was. She was civil to everyone, if a bit short with me, but whenever we were doing business over her head, she was muttering vile imprecations against whoever had slipped her a mickey. If I hadn't been exhausted and about to fall over, it would have been funny, her sitting there with awful bedhead, swearing literal oaths of vengeance. She was honestly as nerdy as I was. It only expressed itself better when she was stressed, though.
When all the paperwork was signed, and she'd been allowed to go change and try to tame her hair a little for the trip home, we left. Getting back to the apartment was a little hellish, because it was rush hour and the streets were scary-packed, but we managed to find a taxi and got home in one piece. I only made it to my bedroom before I crashed because Thomas had gotten to his futon first. When I glared at him, he simply said, "You owe me, man." I'd acknowledged that staggered the twenty feet further to my own bed.
Grace... I don't know what Grace did. I'm assuming sleep was high on the list, though, because when I woke up, to a phone that was insistently telling me i had new unread text messages, she was so out that I could hear her snoring through the wall. She only snored when she was completely and utterly exhausted.
I got up and pottered around quietly, fixing myself something to eat that would sit well later as left-overs and getting my phone out to check the texts. They were mostly from Tammy - along the lines of 'we need 2 talk' and 'where ru?' I texted her back before I read the rest of my messages, giving my best summary of events in less that 160 characters. Then I kept looking. To my surprise, there was a text and a voice mail from Nathan. We'd exchanged numbers, but neither of us had used them until I'd tried calling him to see where he was the day he'd disappeared. This was the first time he'd contacted me. I left those, and looked at the last one. It was from Morgan. Before I could open it, I got a response from Tammy.
'omg thats awful! shes alright though yea? also u NEED 2 TALK 2 MORGAN. cale is in a bad way rite now'
'Yeah she's good. Was about to talk to her. Give Cale coffee?'
A moment or so later, as I pulled out a frying pan, her reply was 'haha. :P'
I opened Morgan's text, and for some reason was less than surprised to find that this also read 'NEED TO TALK W/U AND YOUR FRIENDS'
'working on it' I texted her back.
Finally, as I started grabbing potatoes to turn into fried goodness, I opened Nathan's text. It simply read, 'listen to the voicemail.' Succinct.
I pressed play on that, hit speakerphone and put it down as I started to scrub the potatoes. "Andrew? This is Nathan. I believe you have likely found out about the drama that has gone on between as certain one of your friends and my cousin; however, there was a highly-charged conversation last night that I believe you were not present for. Suffice to say, the pair of them had a bad break-up several years ago, because my father is a bastard who thinks he knows best, who kept them from seeing each other." I felt my respect level for Nathan rise a couple points when he kept his tone completely neutral throughout that sentence. "I think that both of them, should they know the true circumstances, would be more than happy to make up. Call me, if you would, and we can arrange this." Then the beep that signaled the end of the message.
I silently washed potatoes for another minute, while my phone went through its robotic litany of options for that message. I finally just hit four (if you want to save the message, press four) and went to get the knife and chopping board. I hadn't thought that Morgan would be that kind of person, and as Nathan apparently had outside information that neither Cale nor, presumably, Morgan had, it was my duty as a good friend to go and talk to him. At least he was being reasonably pleasant, now, even if he sounded like he'd swallowed a thesaurus and was coughing up pages.
I texted him - 'meet me across from Care for a Cuppa in two hours, k?'
I chopped another potato. Then I texted Morgan, 'meet me across from Care for a Cuppa in an hour an a half, k?'
I chopped the last potato. Then, to Tammy, 'get Cale to the cafe in like two and a half hours. I think I can help.'
Their responses were almost simultaneous, but were, respectively, 'Okay', 'sure', and 'oh god.'
The only one I responded to was the last, to which i replied, "I find your lack of faith disturbing."
'geek.'
'yep.'
By the time the potatoes were actually frying and Thomas and Grace started waking up and investigating these strange, wonderful scents the pan was making, I felt like I might finally have this stuff under control. i also felt like the Grand Puppet Master, but that was only a secondary emotion. Sensation. Whatever.
They ate for forty five minutes, and, giving them an excuse about needing more milk - absolutely transparent, but neither of them called me on it - I headed off to meet up with Morgan. And get milk. We did actually need some.
Waiting with my jug of milk, i was beginning to get impatient. It was not an hour and ten minutes later, and if Morgan really wanted to talk to me, she was going to really want to show up soon. Expecially because with Nathan around, I couldn't see her wanting to talk as openly. Nathan wasn't the kind of person I would spill my heart to.
I finally saw her, though, appearing around the corner, walking with purpose. She spotted me, sitting on the bench in one of the city's innumerable little green space areas, and headed towards me. When she was about twenty feet away, she asked, "Was this really the best spot to meet up?"
"Yeah, it was," I said. "Because I think I know what you're going to be talking to me about."
Her mouth twisted into a a frown. "Did you hear about it from your friends? Because I'm afraid they may not be the most accurate of sources on this matter."
"I heard some of it," I said. "But I want to hear the rest from you."
She closed her eyes and took a minute to compose herself. Then she poured out what could have been Cale's story, if the positions had been reversed. She'd been deep in love with him, despite everything her uncle might say about it, when all of a sudden he'd just fallen off the map. He hadn't returned any of her calls - her calls to him wouldn't even go through, actually, he'd blocked her number - he'd never come back to the office, and her uncle had done his utmost to prevent her from ever going and actually talking to him. Finally, she'd just stopped trying. She'd been heartbroken for a couple months, and then slowly pulled herself back upright. Now he'd appeared again and he was claiming that /she/ had done that very disappearance act to /him./
Morgan paused, her narrative having grown less than perfectly under control, and took a slow, shuddery breath. Then she continued, saying, "I didn't believe it. But then Nathan called his father, and apparently it was all his doing." I noticed her knuckles were turning white where they gripped the bench seat beside me. "He thought I needed 'toughening up.'"
"Your father is a bastard," I said, calmly as I could. "What do you plan to do now that you've found this out?"
"Talk to Cale, of course," she said. There was a fierce look on her face, equal parts determination and fear. "At least apologize for hating him for the past five years. Maybe we could even be friends again, I don't know."
"I have no doubt that Cale would want to make up with you when he finds out," I said. "I think the trouble is going to be convincing him. He's 'in a bad way' about you, apparently."
"God," Morgan said, burying her face in her hands. "I feel awful. I shouldn't have stopped trying to contact him. He's a freaking musician, he had no way to block me that thoroughly. I can't believe I listened to my uncle. He's such an utter twat."
"That's a good description of him," Nathan said. I glanced up to find him coming towards us from across the street. "He and I aren't talking right now."
"Good for you," I told him. From the way he was looking at his cousin, and the way he hugged her shaking shoulders when he sat down beside her, I had to revise my opinion of him. He was an arrogant idiot, but he loved her like the most protective brother, and someone that loyal can't be all bad.
"So, this little reunion," he said, looking up at me, an arm still around Morgan, who was beginning to pull herself together. "What's it for?"
"I wanted to make sure you were both telling me the same thing," I said, and rattled of the three sentence summary of events as I knew them.
"That sounds right," he said, nodding. "There wasn't anything left out, as far as I can tell."
"Good," I said. "Then be prepared to explain it all to Tammy, when she gets out here."
"What?" the relatives asked me, in unison. "Why is Tammy going to be coming out here?" Morgan continued, looking at me, nervous and angry.
"Well, for one, she's probably seen us all outside her shop," I said, "So her coming out to talk to you was probably inevitable anyway. For another, you don't have a chance in hell of convincing Cale of anything unless you've got her on your side. Cale is /really/ upset."
Morgan cursed, and Nathan speared me with an angry stare. "What right do you have to be messing in other people's lives?" he asked me. "How come you get to be the one to make us all dance to your tune?"
That reminded me uncomfortably of my earlier puppet-master feeling, so I said, "Well, right now, I'm the only one everyone involved is currently talking to. So there's that. Then there's also the fact that I know the whol story, so there's that, too. And finally, I'm the only one actually taking steps to fix what went wrong here. Do you have a problem with that?"
He kept staring at me for a moment, before looking away and shaking his head. I got the sense that he was extraordinarily unhappy with me. Well, he could deal. If I made both Cale and Morgan happy, then I'd be vindicated.
We sat there, blanketed in an uncomfortably awkward silence, the pair of them refusing to look at me, for the next several minutes. When I heard a faint jingle of bells, and saw Tammy stalking outside, followed close at her heels by Cale, it was almost a relief. Even if she looked mightily pissed, too.
"Andrew Michael Farthing, what the hell do you think you're trying to do?" she yelled. Hollered, would be the word i would use if she or I was from a rural state, but since we aren't, I won't. "There are times when butting out of other people's business is the only thing to do. And you didn't do it."
I only half followed that sentence, because I was paying much more attention to whether I should get up, vault the bench, and run away than I was to the actual words she was saying. Unfortunately, by the time I decided, yes, I should be going, it was already too late. She was there. However, she was turning her wrath on the other two."And who do you two think you are, showing your faces around here again?" she asked, viciously. "You have no right, after what you did to Cale and Andrew."
"Tammy," I tried, but she bowled right over me.
"You ruined his life and screwed over his chances of getting the musician he needed, respectively," she continued, positively fuming, "And you dare show up outside my cafe, when you know full well what they mean to me!"
"Tammy!" I said, louder this time. It didn't work.
"And meanwhi-" she said, but I cut her off.
"TAMMY."
She looked at me, reproachfully. "What?" she asked. "Don't you think you've done enough here?"
"No, I haven't," I said, firmly. "I set this up so people would have a chance to /talk./ That's not hapening right now. I know that none of you like each other very much, but still. Nathan has some important information that might make a difference in all this."
"What is it?" Cale asked. "And it better be good." He had yet to take his eyes off Morgan, as far as I could tell. "Because I'm not doing that to myself again."
"You won't have to," Nathan said. "It is good." Then he regailed the story of his phone call to his father for the third time that I'd heard.
When he got to the part about his father getting the phone numbers mutually blocked, I thought Cale might actually have stopped breathing. When he told them about his father's glee, I thought that Tammy might have an apopalexy. It would have been entertaining to watch, if I hadn't cared so much about the outcome of this discussion.
When Nathan stopped talking - which was several minutes later, him having given the longer tail, to prevent misunderstandings - there was silence for a long, long moment. Then Cale closed his eyes, tightly, and I noticed his hands clenching and unclenching by his sides. Finally, he said, "Nathan, I'm going to kill you father."
"Legally inadviseable, but understandable," Nathan responded. "You have my permission. We aren't on speaking terms anymore."
Morgan, who was no longer looking quite so deathly pale, said, "I shouldn't have believed him about you. He'd always hated you, and I just let him convince me that you were the kind of person who would actually run off and not tell me."
"It's not your fault," Cale said, heavily. "He gave you more than enough reason to believe him." He whirled towards the street and kicked the nearby fire hydrant. "Godammit!"
"So," Morgan said, timidly - the first time i had ever heard her be timid for any reason - "What does this mean? What do we do now?"
"We talk," he said, turnign back towards her and heading to sit next to her, with a slight limp. "That's the only real option here."
I stood up to give him my seat, and started walking back over to the cafe. They didn't need me there listening to them right now. When I went inside, I ended up having to hold the door for Nathan and Tammy as well. She slid behind the counter while Nathan looked around, spotted a beanbag chair in the corner of the room, and sat down on it as stiffly as I have ever seen anyone sit on anything. This was obviously not his comfort zone.
"So maybe that was the right thing to do," Tammy said, finally, while i examined a poster on the wall that I'd yet to look at. "But still. It could have gone wrong in so many ways."
"But it didn't," I said. "And they had to talk about it some time, since he's working at her company now."
"True," she said. There was another awkward pause.
"So, how has your day been?" I asked, brightly.
She shook her head. "You're an idiot." But she said it fondly.
"Maybe," I said. "But I'm your favorite idiot."
"Then who's Cale?" she asked, teasing.
"Your favorite soon-to-be rock star, obviously," I said.
We kept bantering back and forth until Cale and Morgan came inside. They were holding hands.
Tammany:
I had wanted to smack Andrew, with his presumptions of knowing what was best for someone he barely knew. Who was he to go and try to fix Cale? Cale was my friend, my almost-brother, mine. Andrew wasn't allowed to fix him, that was my responsibility. So when So when Cale and Morgan actually started talking, I was a little pissed at the both of them. How /dare/ they fix things up between them without me? I actually though something along those lines. How /dare/ they. But then I realized exactly how awful a person thinking that made me. I remembered the fact that I am no, in fact, particularly good with people. Now, neither is Andrew, from what I'd learned about him so far, but apparently there was a touch of a social idiot-savant about him. This had worked. They were at least on the road to being happy again, if not there quite yet. Whether it had happened because of me or without me was completely separate from the whole deal. They were going to be happy, eventually, and that's what mattered. I followed Andrew into the shop.
There were a couple awkward moments in the store, before Andrew finally goaded me into joking with him again, and then the tension bled from the air. I breathed a sigh of relief. It was normal again, at least between us.
When Morgan and Cale finally came in, they were holding hands. I took that as a good sign. "So what's going to happen now?" I asked.
I saw Cale swallow. Morgan said, "We're trying again."
Andrew started clapping, dork that he is. Of course, I'm a dork too, so I clapped too. And Nathan, as out of his depth as he evidently was, even applauded. Cale turned beet red and Morgan flushed prettily. It was adorable. i discovered that I wasn't jealous of Morgan anymore, now that I knew that she wasn't a threat on the romantic front. It was less than wonderful to find that about myself. I ignored that, though, in favor of going behind the counter and digging out the supplies for a giant batch of hot chocolate.
We partied hard that day. Relatively. Too much hot chocolate and extra popcorn with gourmet popcorn salt. It was pretty legitimate.
For the next week, things were relatively calm. There were no earth-shaking revelations. Grace filed a police report about her drugged drink. We worked the shop, and Andrew and co. kept working on the album. All was as usual until the next Friday, when I was startled from a book-induced reverie by Andrew pounding on my door. I ran, thinking that something fatal had happened to someone, or was about to happen to someone. I was honestly scared. I flung upon the door, only to see him grinning at me like he'd just won the biggest lottery ever.
"What is it?" I asked, catching my breath. "Is someone dead?"
"The opposite!" he said, euphorically, before grabbing my shoulders and kissing me thoroughly.
When we finally broke apart, I asked, breathlessly, "Is Grace pregnant?"
He stopped. "What?" he asked, completely confused.
"That's the opposite of someone dying," I said, just as confused. "Isn't it?"
"Yeah, but that's not what I'm talking about," he said. "I'm trying to - "
"So she is pregnant?" I asked. Then, indignantly, "Why are you still here? She needs support!"
"She's not pregnant!" he said. "I'm trying to say that Rhiannon just signed on!"
I opened my mouth to keep yelling at him about his sister, but then his words sunk in, and I heard gears in my brain grinding as it switched gears. "That's awesome!" I said. "Does she fit in?"
"Better than I had dreamed," he said, seriously. "About a million times better. God, this album is going to be amazing. I can tell."
"That's great, love," I said, wrapping my arms around him. "I can't wait to hear the final result."
________________________
Five years later:
I was waiting impatiently in our seats, having draped my coat over two and myself over three, just to make sure that no one would steal our spots. God, getting drinks could /not/ take this long. The concert venue was filling up quickly. It was a local all-comers arena, designed so that everything from concerts to basketball games could be held within. It was a concert tonight, and people were flooding in. I was glad to see that, of course. But people were beginning to eye my coat-covered spots as extra room to spread out, and I didn't want to have to deal with anyone if they got rude.
"Tammy, move your legs!" I heard Jim say. I looked up, and foudn that they'd come from the other direction, and now were lined up by my head, waiting for their seats. I sat upright and they all shuffled slowly into place, until we'd gotten out seating arrangements figured out and everyone was sitting down. Then concessions were handed out, and I received my funnel cake and pickles eagerly. They shouldn't have been good together, but they were. Honestly, the weirdest things were tasting good recently. Jim and Grace, inseparable as always, sat to my right, while Morgan was sitting with Nathan to my left. I sort of felt like a fifth wheel, but no way in hell was Andrew going to be out in the audience tonight. And I knew that Cale et al. were going to need him back there. Cale would be trying not to have a panic attack, if the past couple days had been any indication. Rhiannon wouldn't be speaking to anybody, Thomas would be trying to crack jokes and relieve the tension, and the drummer [fix] would be wanting to hit him for it. Andrew would be trying to keep a lid on everything, keep the tensions from snapping and destroying someone or something, until it could be let go in a controlled release on stage. That's where they belonged. Meanwhile, I belonged out here, because I would probably end up smacking someone upside the head. I wasn't a performer. I was much more of an audience person.
"Can you believe this crowd?" Grace asked me, looking around, craning her neck to look at the top rows of seats - even they were beginning to fill up. "This is insane. I love it."
"What do you expect?" Nathan asked her, from across me. "They're big. The tour's only making them bigger. Against the Odds is trending, and they're at their highest point yet."
"It's just so... Big," she said, waving the hand that wasn't holding her beer. "I mean, seriously."
"It's what they always wanted," I said.
We chatted for a while, before the opener - another of Andrew's groups - came on stage. The music was good, loud, and succeeded in its goal, i.e., getting everyone pumped up for the main event of the night. Apparently, tonight was going to be the premier of a new song, and the entire band had refused to let me hear it, because apparently it would 'spoil the surprise.' I was less than thrilled about that, and curious to the point where it was almost painful. Morgan was in the same boat as I was, if not more so, because Cale had refused to even practice it while she was around, and had been extremely secretive about it. As Andrew mostly worked in his studio, I hadn't had as much time to let it drive me slowly insane.
Then the opening band filed off stage, to great applause, and the techs started loading the stage. For whatever reason, that was something that cued success to me more than the arena or anything else. The fact that they had people to do this for them - not because the band couldn't do it, but for aesthetic, practical, and safety reasons - meant to me that they;d truly made it. Sending the band out would ruin the anticipation - aesthetic. The techs know the place better, because they work here and the band is only here for one night - practical. If the band does it themselves, there's a better chance that a fan might do something stupid - safety. It was working.
Then, finally, Against the Odds started filing on stage from the wings. The entire arena exploded with sound, sheers and applause. The band had released Andrew's album, which had ended up being self-titled, about a year after Rhiannon had joined, with a couple singles being released beforehand, and it had peaked at the number 2 slot for four weeks, under a constantly changing number 1 slot. Andrew was okay with that. "It wasn't meant to be a huge popular hit," he'd said in an interview six months later. "It was just meant to be art. I'm honestly a little shocked that it did hit number 2. Number 1 would have been nice, but that's never what I was focusing on."
Their next album, Ways to Come Home, did reach number 1. Rhiannon had issues with this, because she thought she might be selling out, and until Andrew finally managed to talk her down, there was a very real danger than Against the Odds was going to break up. But they came back stronger than ever, and did their first national tour. It was freaking amazing, speaking as a (only slightly biased) audience member. The chemistry between the band members was amazing. It was like watching a group of best friends go out and do their thing, only their thing was awesome music and entertaining thousands at once.
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