Page 79 of Spark
Chris blew out a breath. “You’re right,” he said, simply. “We need to talk. Coffee first though.”
Matt silently held out a clean mug as Chris came around the island. His housemate looked like he’d been awake for most of the night, too.
Their crisis meeting didn’t start until plates of waffles, eggs, bacon, and fruit had been served up, and Chris was starting on his second mug of coffee. The two of them sat across from each other in the breakfast nook.
“Do you want to start, or should it?” Chris said, at last. His hands were cradling the steaming mug, and he hadn’t touched his food yet.
Matt wasn’t hungry either, even after a morning of mucking out stalls in the stables, and hauling hay. The tension curdling his stomach killed his appetite.
Chris lowered his mug and began drizzling syrup over his waffle in an artistic pattern.
“I’m sorry for the way things went down last night. I let my bear get the better of me, but that’s no excuse for what I did,” Matt said. “I acted like a real jerk to you and to Sophie.”
Chris put the syrup pitcher down and poked forlornly at his eggs with his fork. “Yeah, well, I was in jerk mode, too. I shouldn’t have said the things I did. My cat panicked that maybe she was going to pick you and shut me out, and I kind of lost my temper. Not that it’s any kind of excuse. My dad always told me that our cats are stupid, and that our human halves always need to stay in control, or bad things will happen.” He looked up at Matt. “Apology accepted, and I’m sorry, too, for being such an asswipe last night.”
“Apology accepted,” Matt said, feeling a bit of relief. “But how are we going to fix things with Sophie?”
Chris made a scoffing sound. “You mean after we put her on the spot in front of the entire family, got everyone all riled up,andmade her cry? We’re fucked,” he finished glumly.
His shoulders slumped.
“I’m not giving up,” Matt said. “Not yet. Not until she gets on that plane for Todos Santos.”
Chris shot him an incredulous look. “Everyone always says how stubborn the Swansons are, but, Matt…don’t you think we’ve fucked things up enough?”
Matt shook his head. He didn’t know yethowhe was going to fix things, but he sure as hell needed to try something.
“Remember how our firefighting classes talked about root cause analysis?” he asked Chris.
“What does that have to do with anything?” Chris responded.
“One of my college professors always said that before you can start imagining solutions, you need to define the problem.” He crossed his arms. “So, let’s talk about the problem.”
“Sophie’s mad at us. She dumped us. And she’s planning to run away, maybe forever,” Chris said. “And the two of us aren’t doing great, either. I hate this competition shit we have going on right now, you know? It’s riled up my cat like you wouldn’t believe.”
“Those aren’t root causes, they’re just a summary of the current situation,” Matt pointed out. “We need to think about what got us to this point.”
Chris groaned. “You’re really going to make us ask ‘why?’ five times?”
The “Five Whys” method had been drilled into both of them as a key part of the investigation process, to drill down to the real reason that an incident occurred.
“Do you have a better idea?” Matt asked.
Chris sighed, shook his head, and finally took his first bite of his waffle. “Mm, good,” he mumbled.
Now that he and Chris had cleared the air between them, and they were about to begin working on a solution to the crisis, Matt was suddenly hungry, too.
When their plates were empty and stomachs full, Chris rose to fetch the coffee pot and refilled both their mugs.
“Okay,” he said. “Let’s start with the facts. We both want Sophie for our mate. But only one of us can win in the end.”
Matt nodded. Chris had nailed the basic problem in his usual succinct way. Was it even necessary to begin asking “why?”
Examine all of your assumptions to make sure that they’re really true.His instructor had emphasized that point again and again in their training.
“Is that actually true?” he asked, slowly.
“Is what true?” Chris asked, with a puzzled look, as he raised his mug to his lips.
