Page 5 of Creed
I fumbled with the phone for a moment before finally looking at the screen. I recognized the number and immediately felt myself relax.
Hitting the answer button, I put the call on speaker so I wouldn’t have to worry about clumsily holding it up to my ear.
“Kayden? Why are you calling me so late?”
“Creed,” the familiar voice of my oldest friend answered. “Been awhile since I talked to you. I was just... wait. What do you mean late? Isn’t it the middle of the day where you are?”
Oh, right. I hadn’t told Kayden about my earlier retirement. As far as he knew, I was still serving overseas.
Well, at least that explained the odd time for the call.
“Actually, I’m back stateside.”
“What? Really?”
His voice was earnest, reminding me of the innocent excitement of childhood. Even now that we were in our forties, Kayden had never lost his upbeat personality.
“Yeah,” I said, grimacing when I heard how somber I sounded compared to him. “It’s... complicated. Some stuff happened, but I got to retire a few months early.”
“Stuff?” Kayden repeated. Just that one word, and I knew he’d already seen right through me.
We’d grown up as childhood friends, but life had taken us in different directions. Now, our friendship mostly consisted of phone calls and occasional video chats. I hadn’t actually seen the man face to face in years, yet he still had the uncanny ability to read me better than anyone.
“I take it you don’t want to talk about this ‘stuff’, so I’ll just ask, are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” I said, and immediately grimaced. I’d answered too quickly, and my voice was too high. There was no way Kayden wouldn’t notice.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Kayden insisted.
Yep, he’d noticed.
The word “yes” was on the tip of my tongue. I’d already curled my lips around the syllable, but before I could breathe life into the word, I hesitated.
“No.” The admission slipped out of me like a prisoner making its escape from a poorly locked cell. Just two little letters, but once I said them out loud, I couldn’t seem to stop talking.
“Retirement isn’t what I expected. I don’t know what I expected, but it’s not... Brody and Magnus have partners now, which is great for them, but also odd. We need money, so I should get a job, but I have no idea what to do. I just don’t seem to... fit anywhere.”
“I see,” Kayden said, and even through the phone I could hear the wide-eyed expression he must be wearing as he listened to my sudden rambling. “That sounds like a lot. So, your friends, Magnus and Brody, you said they have... partners now?”
Sighing, I set the half empty bottle of whiskey down on the floor by my feet and let my head fall against the back of my chair. “Yeah. Don’t get me wrong, Ellis and Trent seem great, and Mangus and Brody are both happy, but it’s just odd. The dynamic has changed, and I don’t know how to react.”
There was a pause on the other end of the line, which was unusual. Kayden almost always knew what to say. As a travel writer, words were his livelihood.
The silence didn’t last too long, but when Kayden did find his voice again, it was more hesitant than normal. “Maybe I misheard, but your friends are gay?”
Hearing the word “gay” out loud caused my brain to stall for a second. I never really spoke about it, not even with Magnus and Brody. It was just one of those unspoken truths that hung between us. People either already knew, or they didn’t, and I never bothered to correct them either way.
Maybe it was time to change that.
So many other things about my life were already changing, what difference would one more change make?
“Yeah. They are.”
I instinctively reached for the whiskey bottle again, but then stopped myself.
“And you’re... okay with that?”
I snorted directly into the phone.
