Last Year Was Complicated

Brett stared at Tyler, she wasn't sure why she was so surprised by his words. She shouldn't be, this was the kind of shit he said all of the time to her. She was baffled though, to hear him say something like that, and to her face no less. Maybe it wasn't so much his words that surprised her so much, maybe it was just the way he said it; like he really, honestly didn't care about her feelings, like he was trying to hurt her.

She couldn't help but ask him, "Didn't you say you weren't gonna fight with me?"

"Changed my mind." He stated, getting up from the couch as he told her, "You're not the only one who get's to decide when arguments happen."

She rolled her eyes and turned and watched as he left the media room, leaving her completely baffled. She stared at the door, as if expecting him to come walking back through, and when it was clear that he wasn't going to do that Brett crossed her arms over her chest and headed out of the media room. The light was on in his bedroom so she headed down the hall and in there, finding him in the closet. He had started an argument and then went to pick a suit out for tomorrow's game. Unbelievable.

"Thought you left." Tyler stated, not even turning around to face her.

Brett knew that Tyler knew he was infuriating her, and she wondered if that was why he was doing it.

"No, I'm still here. You should know by now you can't just get rid of me that easily." Brett stated, watching as he turned to glance over his shoulder at her.

She crossed her arms over her chest as he said, "Could have fooled me."

"What the hell does that even mean?" Brett asked him, her voice slightly raised.

He spoke so calmly, void of any real emotion other than a slight hint of annoyance, "Just that you run off every time things get hard. You run off every time we fight."

His flippant attitude toward their conversation was making Brett angry. No, not angry, she was pissed off. Tyler could hear it in her voice when she told him, "What else am I supposed to do? You pick these fights and then you just shut down."

"You picked this fight Brett, not me." Tyler told her, shooting her a look when she went to argue. He continued, his voice slightly raised, "You came here looking for a fight and you know it. Don't start acting like you're all innocent now when we're fighting. You came here intending on fighting with me. Well you got what you wanted."

"That's what you think? You think I got what I wanted? This isn't a fight Tyler. I'd rather be screaming at each other than this, whatever it is." Brett told him.

"Oh, you wanted to there to be yelling?" Tyler asked her as he turned around to face her. Brett stood across from him, and she didn't respond, but she flinched when he started yelling, "Okay, go home Brett!"

"Stop it." She spoke softly as he stepped toward her.

"This is what you wanted wasn't it? You wanted me to scream at you, well I am. You got what you wanted." Brett didn't have words, she just stood still as a statue as he continued to step closer and closer to her as he screamed at her. Finally, he stopped when they were nearly touching and this time he didn't yell, "Yeah, see how different it is when you get what you asked for? Where's the tough girl Bret huh? Is she still in there? That's what I thought."

"Stop." She wasn't sure why but she couldn't move. It was like her feet were glued to the floor, forcing her to stand here and take whatever it was that he thought he was dishing out. She didn't know what he thought he was going to accomplish with this, but there were few things that she understood about Tyler when they fought. It was like he was a completely different person.

"What? You're gonna cry, really Brett? You think that's gonna work? You don't think I know you better than this?" He gave her a gentle push on her shoulder, and Brett took a step back to balance herself but then, again, she stood still. He rolled his eyes and pushed her again, yelling, "Come on Brett, this is what you came here for. Quit crying and get mad, you asked for this."

When he pushed her again it was like something snapped and Brett reached out and pushed him hard right back. She told him, her voice loud and harsh, cutting through the silence in the room, "Don't fucking touch me."

He smiled, "Yeah, see I knew she was in there somewhere. Funny how it takes that to bring her out. You're not as good at hiding it as you think you are."

"Shut up."

He crossed his arms over his chest and Brett wanted nothing more than to reach out and slap that stupid fucking smirk right off of his face. Even more so when he told her, "You're just as fucked up as I am."

"I am nowhere as screwed up as you are." Brett told him harshly and Tyler let out a laugh.

"You are. You wanna know how I know that you are?" Tyler asked and Brett didn't respond, in fact she crossed her arms over her chest and stared at him blankly. So Tyler stepped toward, and he reached out using three fingers, shoving her backwards again as he told her, "Because you like this. You like the way we fight, you love getting shoved around and you know it. It's the only way you get to let the Brett I know out."

"Stop it." It was more of a warning but it did nothing. He continued to shove her, until she reached up and slapped him straight across the cheek, leaving a bright red mark on his skin. Tyler paused, looked down at her, and he stepped forward and Brett stepped backwards. They continued that dance until Brett felt the wall behind her back, and she reached out behind her and pressed her hands into it, she wasn't sure what the point was at this point but she needed to keep that little bit of space between her and the wall.

Brett looked up at Tyler with soft eyes, and he looked down at her with dark ones, and he told her harshly, "I don't know what says more about you; the fact that you're trying to play innocent here, or the fact that you're still here, still letting me do this."

"Stop it." It was beginning to become her new favorite word it seemed.

"Why? You came to my house, you started this fight. Why should I have to stop it just because you can't handle it?" Tyler asked her, his voice low and angry, and it seemed to get angrier as he continued to speak, "Hmm? You're tougher than this Brett, we both know it. Since when can you not handle what I say to you? Come on, drop the act. We both know damn well your mouth is worse than mine."

"What are you doing?" Brett asked him, her voice quiet. His brow lifted and her voice got a little louder as she asked him, "What do you want? You think that if you insult me enough I'll what? Start hitting you more? You think you'll be able to justify treating me like this if I start screaming at you?"

"Don't act like you don't contribute to the problems in our relationship Brett. Don't you dare paint me as the only bad guy here."

She shook her head, "Oh I'm not. I know full well that I contribute to this stuff, but you're the one who's screaming and pushing me this time. Not me."

"And what, that makes you a perfect little angel?" Tyler asked her with a raised brow. When she didn't respond his eyes darkened and his voice lowered and he said, "You've done just as many shitty things as I have, and don't you dare roll your eyes at me. You start these fights just as often as I do. You shove me around as much as I do. Did you suddenly forget the time you slept with my best friend last year?"

"You were all over your ex, right in front of me... on my birthday!" Brett yelled at him, defending herself finally.

Tyler smiled, "See, I knew you wouldn't be able to keep that calm very long. For the record, one shitty thing doesn't get cancelled out by another."

"You don't think I know that?" Brett asked him, and she narrowed her eyes at him as she continued, "But I was sick over that for weeks Tyler, weeks. Can you say the same? Can you say that every time you've cheated on me you've been sick over it? Can't eat, can't sleep, completely torn up over it?"

Tyler stared down at her, and he stepped closer to her and he told her, "I don't care about how you felt after it. I care about how you felt doing it. I bet you didn't even think of me. You were so concerned with getting back at me that it probably took nothing for him to get you on your back. I bet he didn't even know what to do with you, no, I'm the only one that does. I'm the only one who knows how to touch you, how to love you. Where are you ever gonna find that? Nowhere, that's where."

Brett reached out, palms flat on Tyler's chest and she shoved him away from her, catching him off guard enough that he stumbled back. Not quite hard enough though because before she could make it out to the stairs in the hallway Tyler grabbed her wrists tightly, pulling her toward him. His grip was uncomfortably tight, but it lessened when she looked up at him with glossy eyes. She didn't know what that meant, did he realize he had finally hurt her and that this little game of cat and mouse that they had been playing for years had finally gone too far?

"Brett..." His voice was soft, foreign to how it had been all night. She wanted to know if it was real, or if it was fake, if this was Tyler from last week or Tyler from tonight talking but she didn't ask.

When she felt his grip lessen even more on her wrists Brett pulled them out of his grasp and she turned away from him, taking off down the stairs. She stumbled on the bottom step but her hold on the railing was enough to keep her on her feet before she slammed the door behind her, she didn't even bother to look and see if Tyler was chasing after her, she knew he wasn't.

She was halfway down the driveway when the heel of her shoe came apart from the bottom of it and she hit the pavement, scraping her open palms across it. As she shifted to sit down on the driveway Brett ripped both her shoes off, and tossed them aside in anger, before she got up, ignoring the stinging of her knees and palms, or the shooting pain in her ankle every time she walked.

Unlocking her vehicle she got in and started it, taking off quickly because she knew she was two seconds away from a complete meltdown and she most certainly did not want to do that outside of Tyler's house. So as she drove she pushed a hand through her hair, angrily shoving her hair out of her face as her eyes welled up with tears that seemed to stream continually down her cheeks with no end in sight.

She ended up having to pull off of a main road downtown and into the empty parking lot of a grocery store that had been closed for hours. She put the car in park, and she leaned her head against the steering wheel and cried. She cried so much that her chest was heaving with every painful and winded breath she tried to suck in and out. She cried so much that her whole body was shaking. She cried so much that she had to reached down and unbuckle the seat belt that was holding her tightly in place against the back of the seat.

It felt like she was in three pieces now; one part of her wanted to turn around and go back to Tyler's and try to fix whatever was left to fix, part of her wanted to show up at her parents hotel and cry to her mom all night, and the last part of her wanted to go home and crawl into bed and not get out for weeks, maybe months.

She knew there was nothing left to be said between she and Tyler, so going there was out of the question.

She knew her father would likely go completely crazy over this, so no matter how much she wanted her mom right now that was out of the question too.

So Brett straightened up, sucked in a few more breaths of air, before she wiped under her eyes and buckled her seat belt again. She pulled out of the parking lot and the whole drive back to the apartment Brett focused on her breathing. In and out. In and out. In and out.

When she pulled into her parking space she cut the engine and sat in silence for a few minutes. She wondered if she could get in the apartment and into her bedroom without Gia knowing. She wondered if she could just barricade herself in her room for a week without Gia barging in. She wondered if she could just go back to San Antonio and pretend the last three years had never even happened. All of that was doubtful.

So she decided to suck it up. She took in a deep breath of air and pulled herself out of the car, and as she got into the elevator in the parkade Brett hoped she didn't look too crazy just in case anyone got in the elevator between the base floor and her floor. No one did, she was alone the whole ride. The hallway on her floor was empty. The door was unlocked, not surprising, it was Brett who always locked the door not Gia.

She closed the door slowly and quietly, and she slipped down the hall, tip toeing past Gia's closed bedroom door and into her own. She was just carefully pulling her jeans over her scrapped up knees when her door flew open and Gia stood in the doorway.

Instantly Gia's face softened, and then the more she looked at the state of her best friend the more angry she got until she finally asked, "What the fuck happened?"

Brett glanced down at her legs, covered in blood, road rash, and little tiny pieces of gravel. She wiped her palms of her legs, getting rid of whatever was on them as well, before she told Gia, "I fell."

"I swear to god I'm gonna kill him."

Brett shook her head, "I fell. Honestly. I was leaving and my heel broke in the driveway and I fell. I swear."

Brett tucked her hair behind her ears as she watched Gia yank one of her dresser drawers open harshly. Gia handed her a pair of spandex work out shorts and a short sleeve t-shirt and told Brett, "Change."

So Brett did as she was told, and once she was dressed again Gia took her hand gently and she pulled her out of her bedroom and guided her down the hall to the bathroom. Brett sat on the edge of the tub like Gia motioned for her to do, feet inside the tub as Gia turned the water on and ran a face cloth and some soap under the water.

Brett watched as Gia meticulously cleaned up the scrapes on her legs, and her palms, rinsing them off carefully and drying them off softly before she turned Brett around so that her feet were sitting on the mat in front of the tub. Gia sat down on the edge of the tub next to her, and turned her to face the wall as best she could, and she braided Brett's hair out of her face before she got up, pulled a makeup wipe out of it's container on the sink and rubbed it over Brett's face.

Gia told her, "We have breakfast with your parents in a few hours. I'm not about to let you show up looking like you and your boyfriend tried to beat the crap out of each other."

"Not boyfriend." Brett muttered and when Gia raised her eyebrow Brett told her, "I can't keep doing this. I'm done."

"Sorry if you're too fragile to hear this right now but I'll believe that when I see it." Gia told her, tossing the makeup wipe into the garbage.

Brett followed her back to her bedroom, where she got under the covers and with both of their backs against the headboard Brett rested her head on Gia's shoulder and she asked softly, "How do you feel about puppies?"

Gia's brow raised, "Why?"

"Can we get one? When we move into the new condo? Like a little pug or something. Someone I can cuddle with when you're over at Alex's." Someone I could love and would love me back.