Love Is Always Write Volume 4

do while you occupied yourself with a fuck- de jour ? Oh, and, what the hell are you doing with a fuck- de jour anyway? I thought you said you never mixed business with pleasure."
    "I don't, and it wasn't what you're thinking. That was an old friend from Duluth."
    "Really, I thought that group left earlier."
    "They did, but he wasn't with them." He sat down next to Nick and ordered a root beer. Not normally his first choice but he was still working on getting that foul taste out of his mouth. Of course, Nick grabbed a drink as well. "Seriously, though, don't get trashed. Your wife will kill me. It was the only thing she made me promise before she'd agree to stay home and rest."
    "She's too pregnant to travel and she knows it."
    "Exactly, man, but she wouldn't have listened to that unless I did some sweet talkin'. I'm guessing you did some as well."
    "Screw that! I just did my husbandly thing and put my foot down." Zeb gave him a sideways glare of disbelief. "Ok, I begged." Nick admitted and Zeb chuckled.
    That was the weird thing. How something so good could come out of a move motivated out of his break with Chad. Callie met Nick, a music teacher, five months after they settled in on the West Coast and fell hopelessly in love. It was so great to see his best friend so blissfully happy, married to a man that treated her like a princess, and now pregnant to boot.
    Actually, in a sick and twisted way he could say two good things came out of it; the second directly related to his broken heart. He'd spent months after moving pouring his heart out onto the sheet music, trying to purge himself of his feelings for Chad. Terry, the bigwig that heard him perform Cry at the fundraiser, claimed it was a new sound; something between blues and popular rock that music lovers would eat up. So far he hadn't been wrong, but instead of the music helping Zeb to purge Chad out of his system, every time he performed one of those songs he only felt the ache in his chest that was now so familiar to him.
    Speaking without giving himself a chance to change his mind, he said to Nick, "Okay, I got a question for you. One of those hypothetical theoretic types you like so much. You know, like, if a tree falls in the woods type?"
    "Okay, shoot."
    "Say there's this couple. They want to be together and, you know, they don't break up or anything, but they don't talk or see each other for a long time, years – are they still a couple?" He wasn't sure where the thought had come from, but once it invaded his mind it was stuck there.
    "Well, that depends on why they haven't seen each other in so long."
    "Let's say one moved."
    "Okay, but why wouldn't they still talk?"
    Zeb gave a huff. "Let's say one tried to call but the other never picked up the phone."
    "Is that the same one that moved?"
    Another huff. "Yeah."
    "Then I'd say the one that moved and didn't return the other's calls did the breaking up. You don't have to say the words 'it's over' to get the message across. You ignore someone long enough it sends a pretty clear message of 'I don't want you' without having to have the guts to say it to someone's face. So your answer is no. The couple wouldn't still be considered together."
    Hearing Nick echo Chad's words practically verbatim raised his defenses. "But what if the only reason he moved in the first place was because he thought the other man didn't want him. And what if the only reason he didn't pick up the phone was to save face because he thought the other man was only being easy on him."
    "Well, first off, I'd have to say that you should never assume anything. At least, not if it's important. If the guy meant anything to him and if like you said, that neither one wanted to break up? Then I'd have to say that you have a lot of 'what if's' in this scenario for it to be hypothetical."
    Zeb kept his gaze locked on the bottles and glasses behind the bar and shrugged, trying to pretend it was still just a casual conversation.
    "I take it we're talking about Chad." Nick raised a brow and smirked. "I'm not stupid you know. Callie married me for something besides my body."
    "But how do you know who Chad is?"
    Nick rolled his eyes. "Do you think I live in a cave? You were moody as hell when I met you, pissed one second and faking extreme happiness the next. I thought you were an extreme case of bipolar or something. Then Callie told me you were going through a hard break up and that you weren't normally an ass. That one I think is debatable. Not to