You and Me, Forever Young

The first thing I heard was a slap.

I could still hear the sound of Shelby's hand colliding with Brendon's cheek when she started up.

"You! Do you have any idea what you've done?!"

"Shelby, Shelby wait, I didn't do-" Brendon attempted to explain but she cut him off.

"You ruined my best friend's marriage and you're ruining mine too!" She exclaimed. "You have no idea how much I want to hurt you right now!"

In response to her words I was sure Ryan was holding Shelby back right now.

If he truly loved her he'd know about her past as a boxer and how fierce a friend she was.

The combination in this situation was enough to threaten Brendon's wellbeing.

"Shelby please listen to me!" Brendon pleaded.

"Why should I? What would you have to say?"

The utter loathing in her voice gave me chills.

He sighed, obviously agitated with her assumptions and anger, the polite Mormon boy standing aside for the 'bad' Brendon Ryan had a hand creating (though he was as bad as a toddler with a magic marker).

"Shelby stop it! Lilly and I didn't have sex! I can't believe you'd even think that!" He exclaimed.

There was no chance for Shelby to interject any more accusations, not with Brendon wound this tight.

He was going to explode.

"I love Lilly, but she's my friend. Nothing more. And she was being a friend last night when I was drinking away my pain."

There were so many emotions in his voice; bitterness, pain, sadness, and a cloud of gratitude swaddling it all.

For the first time since they had arrived Ryan broke his silence.

"But you were kissing! And then both of you left practically in each others arms."

Brendon grumbled a little at that, clearly not comfortable to talk about his drunken mistakes.

Even though he was doing this so I wouldn’t have to deal with the outrage myself it still hurt knowing he was suffering.

So despite his instructions I left Zackie on the bed and marched out into the sitting room.

"Leave Bren alone, he feels bad enough!" I exclaimed, ignoring their shocked faces.

"Lilly!" Shelby breathed, a hard edge in her voice.

I shrugged her off. "No Shelb's, don't."

Brendon sighed and I shook my head.

"Bren I'm not gonna let you deal with this on your own. We're both gonna clear this up," I turned to Ryan and Shelby. "Got that?"

They nodded warily but didn’t relent.

"Okay, but we didn’t come down here just to yell at Brendon. I want the full story." Shelby announced, cementing her demand by sitting eerily calmly in the chair across from me and Brendon.

It had the awkwardness of a parent child sex talk as Brendon and I sat down on the couch together, stared down by our friends.

I let Brendon tell as much of his part of the story as he could before he had a déjà vu moment of the night before and then I stepped in, not wanting him to think too deeply about the whole night..

It wasn’t just me and him that he had on his mind, it was also the pain of his cheating girlfriend, the pain he tried to drink away, and if he could try to shield me as a friend then I had to return the favor.

When we finally got the whole night out, me throwing in the parts about arriving home and being shunned, to which Shelby scoffed, we turned on them.

"So now your turn. What's it like on the other side of the drama? Why'd you come here?"

Shelby took one deep breath, more for our sakes than hers, and spoke up.

"Bill's a nervous wreck. He's been pacing our hotel room all day, except for when he left to drop Zackie off with Madi. I don't think he could stand having him watch him fall apart." Shelby explained with sympathetic eyes.

"He's in denial, which is good since this is all bullshit, but even still, he's crashing and burning."

My heart ached as the mental picture of him appeared in my head, pacing, bags under his eyes, the same wariness he had when Zackie came home but without the happiness.

Thinking about him in such pain made everything else duller, everything on the line; our marriage, our baby, the puppy, the house.

It took all my will power to stay in my seat and not rush out on the Chicago streets to find Will.

All I wanted to do was fix what I had shaken without even knowing, but I really just wanted Will and me back to how things were.

And I'd need my friends help for that.