The next morning, Lisa woke up and went upstairs to hear the piano ringing out from the lounge room, alongside a guitar, and singing, James was holding Charlie, and they were gathered around the piano that took up nearly a quarter of the lounge room; she could hear Greg singing 'I bet on losing dogs' while playing the tune on the guitar and she could hear the piano playing. It wasn't as good as Greg, but then she spotted that little Tyson was the one playing, and how relaxed and happy they all appeared to be. Once the song was finished, Tyson jumped up and ran over to James, Lisa could see how much he was praising the little boy, who was absolutely ecstatic. "Look at you go!" James was gushing over him, "yesterday riding a bike without training wheels, and today putting on concerts! You're growing up way too fast!" and Tyson giggled and wrapped his arms around James in excitement.
Lisa entered a house just before lunch with James and Greg; where there were four other guys hanging around in the lounge room, chatting away, who got up and greeted them; "Jimmy! Greg! How have you been doing?" and for the most part they ignored Lisa at first while they chatted away until Greg cleared his throat.
"Guys, this is Lisa, she's come to visit so will be joining us for a one-time game. Lisa; this is Andre, Phil, Jay, and Ryan," Greg introduced her, and after she said hello; they went and sat around on the couch for a while; just talking about life. "Phil and Ryan have a daughter who is about Ty's age, which is how we met, at the park one day. They ended up inviting James and I over to play euchre which is where we met Andre and Jay," Greg explained.
"Oh right," Lisa smiled.
"So, Lisa, how do you know Greg and Jimmy?" the guy Lisa was fairly sure was Phil, who was bald with a greying goatee, asked.
"Uhm, we worked together in New Jersey for a long time," Lisa answered with a smile, "I missed having their spirited fun around work, so I came to visit them," which Greg gave her an odd look for; I thought you were here for a conference and a speech?
"So long as you're not that bitch, Cubby, Cuddy? It was Cubby, right?" Phil laughed; "the wicked witch of the west,"
An awkward silence hung in the room; before James hissed, "she is that Cuddy,"
Phil gasped in horror at what he'd said, "oh my God, I am so sorry… I'd assumed from what little Greg and James had told us… that you couldn't be Cuddy. I had no idea that all had been forgiven, I'm so sorry," to which Lisa laughed very awkwardly wondering internally exactly what Greg and James had been saying, and their guilty expressions didn't give her much hope as Lisa shook her hand to indicate that no malice was being held on her end. "You're right about one thing, however, absolute troublemakers those two, always up to something, usually no good. No wonder you had to be so brutal on them," Phil laughed awkwardly, "keep an eye out for Greg by the way. He cheats pretty much every game,"
Greg laughed, "I don't cheat, I'm just good at it. Although with how crappy you are it probably does seem like witchcraft by comparison. You were the one who introduced the idea of putting the 'shot' in 'shot euchre' when you suck ass at playing euchre and had no place whatsoever bringing alcohol into that mix. It's not pool or bowling, you don't get better at euchre the drunker you are. You of all people should know that Phil. Just because you suck doesn't mean that I suck. I'm the king of euchre,"
"Hear that? The apparent king over here who is really just a queen like the rest of us!" Phil laughed and Greg just light heartedly rolled his eyes at him; "so who's ready to play?"
Within the few hours they were playing, Lisa was now struggling to stay seated in her chair after her eighth loss, which Greg, who was stone cold sober, found to be beyond hilarious, until a point in which everything came crashing down in a matter of seconds. That point being when Lisa slurred "you know what Greg? I still have a raging crush on you. I still think about what if you'd turned James down and gone out with me instead. I think about you every day; your smile, your laugh, your humour, your sexiness, I think about you in bed with me. Come on Greg, I know you're not a faggot, James just changed you. I can fix you back," she leant over and kissed Greg who was seated next to her, Greg pulled away in disgust, looking at Lisa with pure repulsion, and felt like he was about to be physically sick; as Lisa slowly began leaning out of her chair and Ryan had to jump up and catch her from falling and hitting her head.
"You bitch!" James roared, "I knew you had some secret hidden fucking agenda for coming here! You've been in Greg's ear badmouthing me, don't think I don't know!" as he stood up and flipped the card table over, "I'll fucking kill you!" James screamed, lunging forward with so much fury that Jay, Phil and Andre had to hold him back and restrain him. Greg jumped up in between Lisa and James; knowing or at least hoping that James wouldn't plough through him to get to Lisa.
"James, James, nothing happened, okay? This is the first that I've heard anything, okay? I'm just as angry and betrayed as you. Don't lose control, baby. Just try and stay calm. Maybe we should go for a walk, yeah? Take some time to cool down. We can't act reactively, James. Nothing has ever happened, okay?" Greg tried to placate James, who was staring forward with a fury Greg couldn't remember seeing so extreme and acutely in James' eyes. His eyes were fixed and staring at Lisa, his upper body was heaving and trying to squirm and wrestle out of the grasps of his friends in order to get to her, his breathing was deep and almost appeared like snorting, his hair hanging loose over his shoulders and teeth bared in an animalistic snarl. "We've got to get him out of here. I haven't seen him mad like this before, I don't know what's going to happen if we don't. Let's go out the back, James. We'll have a drink to cool down and a joint to get you out of this state," Greg tried to placate him.
"I'm allowed to be angry! Let me be angry!" James screamed, "she just admitted to having fantasies about and wanting to steal my fiancée! She kissed you!"
"Yes, you're allowed to be angry. I'm just as angry too. But right now, James, you're well past angry and now you're murderously angry. Let's get him out the back," as the five of them wrangled and half carried James outside, and once they had; Greg knew that despite his own fury and disgust at Lisa, he couldn't let that show as it would only serve to infuriate James more. He had to be the calm one right now, for both of their sakes. "James," Greg called over gently as he sat down on the chair on the back pavement, "come away from the door and sit with me," as James yanked and pulled on the door, his temporary tunnel vision of rage making his desperate to get inside and get to Lisa. Greg sighed and just hoped that this security door outlived James' meltdown and kept him outside until he'd calmed down enough to go back inside to just walk through the house without ending up with 25 to life. James stepped away from the door and paced up and down the back of the house, staring up to the windows, seemingly trying to discover another way inside the house.
Greg lit up a joint, hoping that maybe the still air would somehow hotbox James, or that he'd come over and take a joint for himself. After about 20 or 30 minutes of pacing, searching, pounding and pulling on the back door, yelling, and jumping up to see if he would be able to get through a window; James had seemingly completely physically exhausted himself. While he was still just as betrayed and felt infuriated, he had calmed down significantly, as he came and sat down next to Greg, "there's my Jimmy," Greg smiled, "welcome back to Earth, honey," as he pulled a joint from in his pocket, lit it, and passed James the lit joint. "Are you feeling a little bit better?" Greg asked about ten minutes later, James shrugged, paused, and then nodded.
"I'm exhausted and mad, I know what Lisa said and that she kissed you, but I trust you have never done anything at all with her. I remember what Lisa said, and I feel betrayed and angry, but I don't really remember exactly what I did," James frowned, and then began to break down, "I hate being this way, Greg, I hate it, I hate it, I hate it. I can't even remember how I ended up locked outside. It's like I remember getting angry at Lisa, and next thing I know is that we're locked outside, sitting here. Did I really pull the fly screen off that window? Or was that like that before?" James pointed at a window where he'd leapt up and hung off the screen of the window, pulling it down.
"Yeah, that was you. You were in a rightfully very angry state. That's why we're outside for the time being. Don't stress yourself out too much about it though, James. The guys know, they understand that this isn't you, this isn't who you are," Greg did his best to appear to be comforting, as he wrapped his arm around James' shoulders and pulled him closer in.
"I'm not going to get into trouble, am I? I didn't do anything bad, bad, did I?" James whispered and Greg shook his head.
"No, baby, we managed to get you outside before things became physical. As for the window screen, we'll just buy a new one and all is forgiven," Greg comforted, pulling James gently against him, singing 'I bet on losing dogs' softly to him to bring him back down.
Inside, Lisa awoke on the couch in an unfamiliar lounge room, "my head," she whimpered, as a man she didn't really recognise approached her with a glass of water and some Tylenol and Motrin, "how did I do at Euchre?" Lisa asked.
"You really don't know?" the man continued, "you really don't understand what happened?" to which Lisa just shook her head; "memory is a funny thing…" the guy asked.
"Are you friends with Greg and James?" Lisa asked. To which the guy nodded, "where are they?"
"You really have no idea what happened, do you? What you said? What you did?" this guy raised an eyebrow in doubt, and Lisa frowned, shaking her head. "You got absolutely sloshed and wound up confessing your undying love to Greg, said that you thought he wasn't really a faggot and that you fantasise about him in bed, and then proceeded to fall drunk off your chair," he started, "oh, yeah, and then you kissed him,"
"Oh shit, how… how did they take it?" Lisa muttered.
The bald guy with the goatee who'd been helping Lisa rolled his eyes, "how do you think? You confessed to being secretly in love with one of them, that your 'conference' was just a rouse to get to Greg, that James had turned him into a faggot, and then you sexually assaulted him. They're beyond furious. Greg and James are engaged. They're going to get married. To each other," Phil added on, "they very rightly don't give two shits what you think. You know I thought that James and Greg might've been exaggerating when they were talking about you before, you couldn't be that bad, that they were simply being dramatic, but no, no they weren't,"
"Why does my head hurt?" Lisa whimpered.
"Because you lost eight games of euchre and took eight shots of bottom of the barrel tequila on an empty stomach. That's why. We all tried convincing you to give the euchre a rest, but you wouldn't. And if James and Greg were ever going to move back to New Jersey; well, that's not happening now. Not after your charade. You're fine, you're healthy, you're just hungover. Get some McDonald's on your way to the airport and wait some time to clear out the alcohol will cure that; being a lying, conniving, bigot who tries to break up my friends and sexually assaults one of them; there's no cure for that," Phil muttered, "Andre and Jay have gone home, Ryan called you a taxi to pick you up and take you to the airport to go back to wherever you came from. Physically, you're healthy, at least from what I can tell; just as a lowly faggot nurse who works for James. Mentally though, you're messed up," Phil stood up from where he'd been sitting on the couch at Lisa's feet.
"Wait, what about my stuff? It's at Greg and James' house," Lisa mumbled.
Phil sighed as he bent down, picked up her wallet and took $60 cash out of it, "I'll make sure they put any of your stuff in the mail with this $60," he turned and went to walk outside.
"Hey guys, how are we doing out here?" Phil called out, walking outside to see them both sitting and relaxing in silence on the concrete; "things are a lot quieter out here now. And hey look, the flyscreen on the bathroom window was the only causality," he joked, sitting down next to them. "She's going home. Ryan rang up a taxi to pick her up, it should be here soon. Here's $60 to send any of her stuff back that'll fit in $60 worth of shipping, the rest… I don't know, donate it to charity maybe?" Greg nodded and James looked shamefully at the flyscreen.
"Screw Lisa," Greg growled, "here, you keep the $60 and we'll buy you a new flyscreen window that got torn down. If she wanted to keep her stuff, she shouldn't have lied to us in the first place. Pain and suffering too, given that we brought a bigot into your home,"
"I'm so sorry for going crazy," James whimpered, "I… I don't know what happened…"
"I do," Phil answered, and James looked over at him with shock and fear in his eyes, "someone who you thought was your friend came to your home uninvited and under false pretences, she continually insulted you and your family, you pushed it all down and still tried to be a good host, you even invited her out to meet some of your friends and play some card games, where she proceeded to get drunk, assault your fiancée, tried to steal him off you despite that he was very obviously repulsed by the idea, acted like a bigot, and you tried to protect your family. You're not crazy, James. Passionate and emotional, absolutely. But you're not crazy, nobody thinks that you're crazy here; and it's all just been stacking up and up until you were forced to break. Any one of us would have snapped in that situation,"
Tears welled up in James' eyes; "I hate this all so much, why can't I just be normal?"
"Because you're Jimmy. Normal is overrated anyway. James; you're funny, kind, passionate, loving, sweet, strong willed, a great dad, an amazing partner, smart… so many different positive attributes; but you're not and never have been crazy. And one day soon, you will make the best husband," Greg whispered, holding James to his chest in a hug, "okay? Don't stress. Nobody, I mean nobody is angry at you for what happened, all you were doing was protecting your family. Nobody thinks any differently of you whatsoever. I promise,"
"I hate myself," James muttered, "I hate myself. I hate myself. I hate everything about me. Maybe you'd be better off without me, maybe you would actually be happier with Lisa like she kept saying. If I just killed myself then you'd be able to live a happy life without any problems, without a crazy fiancée like me who does things like rips flyscreens of off goddamn bathroom windows in a crazy frenzy," James gestured at the broken screen.
"I don't want to be with Lisa. Ignoring the fact that I'm not attracted to her, it'd just be absolutely miserable, James. If something happened to you then I'd never move on, you know that. It hurts me to hear you talk like that, but if what you need right now is to sit and wallow in those thoughts for a little while, then I'll sit in that quagmire right next to you for as long as you need me to. I'm never going to go anywhere, James, you're stuck with me now," Greg smiled as he gently nudged James in the ribs with his elbow, "hey? What do you say? You going to stay with me forever too?"
"Jay and Andre only wanted to know that you were doing okay before they left, and to pass on how disgusted they were with Lisa's behaviour and totally understood and respected why you were so angry. They asked me to check that you were doing okay, and to tell you that they were so sorry that someone you saw as a friend betrayed you two in such a way. That's all. They were concerned if you were going to potentially end up hurting yourself, but nothing more. No judgement from anyone here, okay?" Phil promised too. James nodded, and they sat in silence for a while longer, just watching time pass and enjoying each other's comfort in quiet support.
