REAL TALK
Marcus’s POV
The slamming of the door does little to settle my nerves.
If anything, it wasn’t loud enough to properly convey the storm clouds in my chest right now.
I grab a pillow and scream into it because, while it’s no less ridiculous, it isn’t nearly as childish as standing at my door and slamming it repeatedly until I feel satisfied that it’s conveyed my displeasure adequately.
Not that it ever could, hence why screaming into my pillow until my throat is raw, where no one can hear me, is the only proper solution at the moment.
I can’t do this alone. I can’t figure it out. Every time I think I’ve got a handle on everything, something comes along and wrenches it away from me.
And Qiang? Qiang is just wrong right now.
They’re clinging to something they don’t even want, something they know is wholeheartedly terrible for them in every way, and yet they won’t move on to anything new.
They are just stuck there staring at the same moldy food that they wouldn’t even eat if it were the only dish left on the table.
How do you reason with that? They already know, but they can’t fucking look away, and no matter how hard I try to grab their attention and almost get it, it’s never enough to get the sight of that moldy food out of their head.
Worse than all of that, though, worse than sitting in a corner and crying about how they won’t pay attention to me, is knowing how badly they are hurting and knowing I just fucking added to their pain.
Absolutely nothing was accomplished downstairs beyond the knowledge that I should have ignored their tirade in the kitchen and gone upstairs from the start.
I should have just let them stew on their own, because there was no rationality in their head to have a decent discussion, or for it to do anything other than spiral exactly as it had.
There was no reaching them to make them feel better.
I grab my phone because I’m so wholly out of my depth here in so many ways.
I’ve never felt anything like this for anyone before.
I’ve never played the relationship game.
Those little middle school and high school romances that teach you all the ‘dos and don’ts’ of relationships were ones I never touched.
I don’t know when to push and when to walk away, and the fallout of that is the travesty that’s just happened.
What I do know is that I’m not ready to give up on this.
I’m not ready to let this go and let them just be in pain all by themself forever.
But I also know that I don’t know what I’m doing, and that I’ve just completely fucked up.
I flip through my contacts until I find Darryl’s number.
He’s not much of a relationship guy either, but he’s actually delved a bit deeper into romance than I ever have.
Darryl answers after the fourth ring, and if that wasn’t enough for me to know I’d just woken him up, the half-awake grumble of his sleepy voice gives the rest of it away.
“If it’s ridiculously late here, then it’s stupidly late there, bro.”
“I’m sorry, I should have checked the time,” I start making excuses because now I feel bad.
We’re in football season with training, games, and somehow managing to keep up with everything else; we’re already exhausted. He needs sleep, not me traumasplaining all over the place.
“But the fact that you didn’t means you need to talk,” he says, his voice much clearer.
“Are you sure? I can call ba–”
I started to give Darryl an out, but he interrupts me, sounding fully awake now. “For fuck’s sake, man, just start talking.”
I sigh at that, knowing that at this point, if I hang up, he’ll stay wide awake and just pissed off for being woken up for no reason, so I dive into my spiral. “I just fucked up.”
Darryl snorts at that. “You? The great Marcus Bauer? I don’t believe it,” he says teasingly.
“That’s not helping,” I point out, rolling my eyes at the snark.
He chuckles lightly. “Okay, sorry. How did you fuck up?”
I let out a groan of frustration. “I basically just told them to fuck off.”
“As much as I love a good mystery, Boo Bear, I’m gonna need just a smidge more context on this one,” he says with that tease still in his voice.
“Did you just call me Boo Bear?” I ask him, tripping on the pet name. I shouldn’t be surprised since he pulls random shit like that out of the blue all the time, but under the circumstances, I wasn’t expecting it.
“Did it pull you out of your head enough to converse with me like a normal person?” he asks matter-of-factly.
I roll my eyes again. “Such a pain in the ass,” I grumble, an unbidden smile spreading across my face at his ridiculousness.
“Not yours,” he says simply, and I can’t help but laugh at that.
“Thank fuck for that. I’ve seen your dick, and in the Land of Nope, your dick is king.”
“I don’t know whether to be proud or saddened,” he ponders.
“Since you have no desire to inhabit my ass, I’d go with proud,” I point out.
“Fair enough, although I’m still missing the context of your stupidly late spiral and who you told to fuck off,” he changes the subject back to why I called.
The smile slips from my face, and I let out a heavy sigh.
Darryl knew I had a crush on Qiang, but he didn’t know how deep it went.
Now, after forty-five minutes of info-dumping about everything that’s happened between Qiang and me since Darryl and I last talked about this, way back when we put those shelves up, he’s fully clued in.
There’s a beat or two of silence after I stop talking before Darryl’s deep voice rumbles back over the line. “Wow, that’s some heavy shit.”
“Right?” I snort at the simplicity of his response.
“I think I see where you’re going wrong, though. And as I say that, I want to remind you that you're both in the wrong, but I don’t think either of you is purposefully in the wrong.
“Qiang’s problem is obvious, and the help they need is even more obvious, but you need to worry about yourself first before you can have any hope of moving forward,” he says plainly, and the confidence with which he says it bothers me.
The fact that he can have all the pieces solved while I’m spinning my head for anything that makes sense annoys me.
Not that I’m annoyed with him, because this is why I called, but annoyed with myself because I should have had this figured out just as easily, and I haven’t, which is, yet again, why I called him.
“How is it obvious to you from several states away, while it’s completely out of my grasp and I’m only two doors away?” I lament with frustration.
“Well, partially, I think what you just said has a lot to do with it. You are up close and personal and can’t see the forest for the trees.
I’m removed from it, so the larger picture is easier to grasp.
The other part is because you are focused on how you can help without realizing that sometimes the best way to help is to let someone else do the helping. ”
I scrunch my eyebrows because if Qiang hasn’t figured out how to help themself yet, then who else is gonna step in and magically help them if not me?
“What do you mean?”
Darryl lets out a sigh. “Okay, real talk, because I know your temper and you’re not gonna like some of the things I’ve gotta say. But if you really want to move forward, then you need to hear them, feel me?” he says in that voice that tells me he’s preparing himself for an argument.
Luckily for him, no matter what he says, I’ll probably just take it because I’m not up for any more arguments tonight, or this morning, really. It’s too close to wake-up time to even ponder the possibility of sleep at this point, not that I’d have been able to anyway, under the circumstances.
“Yeah, keep my attitude in check and hear you out. Don’t worry, bro. I don’t think I can handle another argument anyway.”
Darryl lets out a loud, unhappy breath. “Doesn’t really make me feel better, like I think you meant it to.”
“Sorry,” I grumble as a bit of exhaustion seeps in. It’s gonna be a long day, but I need to hear what Darryl has to say. I knew I did when I picked up the phone to call him. “Lay it on me.”
“You’ve got a hero complex,” he says plainly, and I’m shocked at how fast I need to bite my tongue. I should have known he’d drop the heaviest, most argumentative line first. I do not have a hero complex, by the way.
“You always have,” he continues, as if he can hear the argument in my head. “You insert yourself to ‘save the day’ when your friends or family are struggling in any way; you can’t just sit tight and let them figure it out on their own; you have to jump in right away whether you’re needed or not.
“And I get it to an extent. You went through some heavy shit between trading one lifestyle for a completely opposite one. It sounds like a dream come true, but watching the way people treated you and how hard you struggled to gather your bearings, I know better now.
“And then there was the grief when you lost your uncle. You think because you’ve lived through these things that you have some sort of cornerstone on the totality of depression and trauma, when you’ve really only occupied a single square of it.
“I think all of these factors play into your need to control and protect, whether it’s your place to do so or not. And in this case, you haven’t gone through what Qiang has been through, and you do not have the tools or education to give Qiang the help they need.
“You also haven’t established the trust or pedestal in their life that you need to be on for them to really hear you.
Maybe someday you’ll be that person, but you aren’t there yet, and Qiang’s not open enough to let you in right now.
Sometimes, Marcus, the best way to move forward is to stand still and let someone else do the legwork,” he says.