I Could Never Pretend

After finishing work that evening, Johnny decided to surprise Amelia at her apartment before going out with Jeff. He had not heard from her all day, which was mainly down to him being so busy in the office. He figured he would pick her up some flowers to make up for it.

When Johnny arrived at her apartment, he found Amelia fast asleep on the living room sofa with Brandon in her arms. A chick flick was playing on the TV and Johnny smiled to himself as he approached the sofa silently. Brandon woke up just as Johnny sat down beside them, so he put a finger to his lips. Unfortunately this did not have the desired effect, and the toddler started laughing.

Amelia’s eyes flickered open as Brandon struggled to climb out of her arms. Her cheeks were smudged with makeup and Johnny assumed she must have been crying at the film.

“Hey beautiful”, Johnny whispered, putting the bouquet of flowers down on the table. Brandon scrambled towards him to give Johnny a big hug.

Amelia smiled and straightened up. “Sorry I must have dosed off”, she apologised, watching Johnny scoop Brandon into his arms. “It’s a nice surprise to see you. I’ve kind of had a rough day.”

“What’s wrong?” Johnny frowned.

Amelia proceeded to inform him about her meeting with Harry. “Basically, Bam’s contesting the divorce because he thinks I cheated on him with you”, she sighed, wiping her tired eyes. She had spent the rest of the afternoon in tears after speaking to Harry. It seemed like everything that could go wrong, was going wrong.

“That’s a load of crap. We didn’t sleep together until you’d left him.” Johnny looked indignant.

“We know that, but no one else does”, Amelia shrugged.

Johnny looked at her in confusion. “Ok, but how does that affect the divorce?”

“Harry says I can either accept what Bam’s saying and the divorce will go through, but it will make Bam look like the innocent party and make me out to be the one who slept around...even though we both know that’s not true”, she added after seeing the look of anger on Johnny’s face. “Or I can contest it and go to court.” Amelia sighed heavily and rubbed her forehead. She was left with an impossible decision. She could either fight Bam to the bitter end, or accept his claim just for an easy life.

“The problem is, if I accept what Bam is saying, that the breakdown of the marriage is my fault, it’s going to make me look bad when it comes to the custody case”, she told Johnny. “Not to mention the press will have a field day if they hear that we were supposedly having an affair.”

Amelia could tell from his silence that Johnny was stumped.

“Oh and I forgot to mention, Bam has also decided to reschedule the court hearing over the custody. So I’ve got to wait another six weeks to get that sorted”, Amelia added bitterly.

“Why has he done that?”

“Conflicting schedule apparently”, Amelia shrugged. “So as you can see, I’m spending the rest of the evening, and probably the week, feeling sorry for myself. As soon as I put Brandon to bed I’m hitting the vodka.” She was not entirely sure if she was joking.

Johnny frowned. Bam was flying out to LA to meet with them several days before the hearing was supposed to have taken place. He could only assume that this was the reason for Bam changing the date and he felt simultaneously angry and guilty. If Amelia found out she was going to be incredibly pissed. He wondered what he could possibly do to make things better, if anything.

Johnny reached out and put a comforting hand on her shoulder. His mind was racing as he contemplated how messy things had become. “Well you know what they say, things can only get better.”

Amelia smiled tentatively. “Well they sure as hell can’t get any worse.”

After hearing Amelia’s revelation, Johnny did not much feel like going out with Jeff, especially as Bam rearranging the custody hearing was practically their fault. Instead, he opted to spend the night in with Amelia. They ordered take out and worked their way through her collection of soppy films, anything that would take her mind off her soon to be ex husband.

***

During the months since Ryan had left Castle Bam and moved in with Rose, he had tried his best to remain close to Bam. As close as possible that is, taking into consideration the emotional barriers of drinking and partying, that Bam seemed to have put up. The two men continued to hang out every now and then, but it was difficult around Bam’s new friends. Ryan felt alienated from them, purely because he actually had something going for him. Rose.

Ryan had been trying his best to turn a blind eye to Bam’s impossible behaviour, but when Rose got off the phone from her sister one afternoon, upset and worried about Amelia, he realised his relationship with Bam had reached the final straw. If Bam was seriously going to maintain that he was innocent and that Amelia had been having an affair, then he was mistaken for thinking that he could still call Ryan his friend. Ryan might not have known the full story between Amelia and Knoxville’s relationship, but he knew them both well enough to be sure that they had never gone behind Bam’s back.

Ryan jumped in his car and raced through town towards the castle. There was no need to rehearse what he wanted to say, or try to sound as diplomatic as possible. This time Ryan was going to give it to Bam straight. As much as he hated confrontation, it was time for him to make his feelings clear. He was done with sitting on the fence, trying to keep everyone happy. If Bam thought he was going to stick by him this time, then he was sorely mistaken.

When Ryan arrived at the edge of his friend’s land, the gates were open, so he put his foot down and sped up the driveway, skidding to a halt in front of the familiar building. Although it had been a good four months since Ryan had moved out, this did not stop him from storming into the building, unannounced and making his way through the house in search of Bam.

Eventually Ryan found Bam in the hobbit hole. The sight that met his eyes only served to confirm to Ryan that he was doing the right thing by breaking ties with Bam. Through the dense smoke that had filled the small room, he could make out the shapes of Bam, Novak and a few other guys that Ryan vaguely recognised from Bam’s frequent parties. They were lounging on the sofas with unfamiliar and barely clad women, if you could call them women, draped over them. Novak was holding a joint in his hand.

The floor was scattered with discarded beer bottles and cigarette ends. No one seemed to have noticed Ryan and he continued to watch in disbelief as one of the women started to prepare lines of coke on the table in the middle of the room.

Ryan was just about to back out and leave when Novak took off his sunglasses and spotted him. “Yo Dunn! Have you come to join the party?” His voice was raspy and now that Ryan could see his eyes he could tell that Novak was completely spaced out. It was a wonder he had recognised him at all. Ryan stared at the scene in disgust.

“Dunn’s here?” Bam sounded surprise and looked around slowly to find his friend. When he finally found himself looking at Ryan he pulled off his own shades. He too was as high as a kite. “Hey Dunn!”

“What the fuck is this Bam?” Ryan sighed. He no longer had the inclination to waste his energy on Bam. It was evident that he had gone too far this time and there was nothing Ryan could do.

“What does it look like? It’s a party!” Bam exclaimed happily, emptying his bottle of beer and throwing it at the opposite wall, where it smashed into pieces. Bam looked pleased with himself.

“What’s happened to you dude?” Ryan shook his head. In all the years he had known Bam, he had never seen him like this. Sure, they had experimented with drugs when they were teenagers and they had shared the odd joint from time to time, but he had thought that was the extent of it. It seemed he had been wrong.

“You need to chill out man, have some of this.” Novak held out the joint to Ryan, but Ryan ignored him.

“I don’t know why I even bothered”, Ryan looked sadly at Bam before turning on his heel and making his way back.

“What do you want from me Dunn?” Bam shouted after him.

Ryan ignored him and continued walking. He just wanted to get back to his car and get away from the place as fast as possible. Castle Bam had once held so many fond memories for him, but it was now beginning to seem more like a nightmare.

“I said, what do you want from me?!” Bam shouted again, once Ryan had nearly reached his car.

Ryan turned round to see Bam trying to catch up with him so he stopped in his tracks and faced him. “I came here to tell you that I’m done with this. I’m done with you Bam”, Ryan sighed heavily. “It was bad enough that you fucked up your relationship with Amelia but now you’re fucking up your whole life and everyone else’s.”

“That’s right Dunn, why don’t you tell it to me straight”, Bam cackled and swayed from side to side. The effects of the drugs were clearly still going strong.

“I don’t know why I’m even bothering to waste my breath”, Ryan shook his head. “Can’t you see what a joke you’ve become? I’m here to tell you that I don’t want anything to do with you anymore. I don’t want people to think I’m like you or that I agree with what you’re doing. And I’m certainly not going to stand back and watch you try to ruin Amelia’s life.”

“She asked for it”, Bam retorted. He sounded more sober but Ryan still wasn’t sure if he had listened or understood anything that he had just said.

“Don’t be ridiculous Bam. You might have everyone else fooled but I know you too well. It’s the same old story. You got bored of Amelia, so you treated her like shit and now your pissed because she’s found somebody who actually treats her right and loves her far more than you ever possibly could”, Ryan stared coldly at Bam and folded his arms. “To put it quite simply Bam, you’re jealous. You’re acting like a child and Amelia’s the toy. You didn’t want to play with, but now that Knoxville’s got her, you’ve decided you want her back.”

Bam stood silently as Ryan continued his impassioned speech. His head was beginning to clear and he had regained some of his balance.

“What you’re doing is pathetic and unfair, and I can’t be around you anymore.” With that, Ryan walked away and climbed into his car. As he started the engine he realised that he felt a hell of a lot better now that he had released so much pent up anger.

“Have a nice life Bam”, Ryan shouted as he drove away.

Bam stood perfectly still as he watched Ryan’s car disappear down the driveway. The funny thing was, Bam thought, Ryan would probably never know how close he had been to the truth.