I froze in shock, not wanting to believe what I was seeing. This had to be some sort of sick stupid joke my best friend was playing on me. I pulled my eyes away from his chest and looked him in the eyes, seeing tears and shame on his face. Anger surged through me like a bolt of lightning, feeling betrayed and a little stupid. I couldn't help myself, I sat back and slapped him across the face, first one way then the other, hard, seeing him start to cry. That made me even angrier.
"Stop crying you stupid fucking idiot!" I yelled as he crossed his arms over his face to hide his tears and protect his face. I pulled his arms away and slapped him across the face again. That, of course only made him cry harder.
Jumping up I stormed back and forth across the living room, my anger building every time I turned and looked at him lying on the floor. Clenching and unclenching my fists, I resisted the urge to go over and beat the living crap out of him. He was my best friend damn it… no, my only real friend in the world, and had been since high school. How could he do this to me? Me, the guy who protected him from the bullies who picked on him all through school and college.
When we were younger, I'd even taken a few beating from bigger, older guys for him until I learned to defend myself… well, Charlie and myself. Shit, I'd done his damn homework for him, wiped his snotty nose, helped him train so he could make the swim team, even dried his tears a few times when someone said something nasty to him when he lost a race.
As I turned back again Charlie got to his feet, pulling his shirt around his body as he went and sat on the edge of the couch, seeming to curl in on himself, head hanging. I walked over and stood in front of him, still clenching and unclenching my fists. Charlie looked up at me, tears still running down his face.
"Please don't be mad at me…"
"Shut up! I don't want to hear it." Which was a lie, I did want to hear it. I wanted him to explain to me why my best friend for as long as I could remember betrayed me like this. It didn't make sense.
I raised my hand to slap him again, seeing him cringe as he had when his Dad slapped him. That stopped me. I hated it when I saw his Dad did that, wanting to go over and beat the crap out of him, not that I could seeing he was over six feet tall and weighed three hundred pounds at the time. I lowered my hand, suddenly deflating, my anger turning to something else.
"Why?" Was all I could think to say. He shrugged. I let out a snarl of anger, feeling frustration, and something I couldn't even name. Scooping the wine glass off the office table, I chugged half a glass of red wine thinking that it would cool me down. It didn't.
"We were friends, Charlie… best friends. After college I thought we had a great thing going for us. A nice pad in Santa Monica overlooking the beach, great jobs, lots of pussy…" I drew a deep breath, thinking about the loss I felt when I came home one day and found him gone.
"You never said goodbye, never left a note, just up and vanished on me…"
"I couldn't." He answered lamely.
"…could what? Tell me you were leaving. Give me a reason. What?"
"I had to leave."
"So you had to leave, okay, but what about all this?" I waved a hand at him, as I couldn't put into words what I was thinking. "You vanish for almost two years and… and you just happened to run into me here in San Diego?"
"I… I didn't know you were here."
"Bullshit! The production company moves me to San Diego and I just happened to run into you two week after I arrive?"
"Yes, I swear it. I didn't know you'd relocated here, honest."
"Don't say honest, Charlie. You haven't been honest with me for a long time now." Every time I looked at him the more betrayed I felt.
"What went wrong, Charlie? Didn't we have all the things we talked about when we were in school? A Place of our own where we could do what we wanted, plenty of chicks…" I stopped as a thought occurred to me. "Was it that girl, what's her name… Angela something?"
"No, or course not." He didn't sound convincing.
"So you got pissed off because I fucked her instead of you, is that it?"
"NO!..." He hesitated. "Yes."
"I knew it. That's why you were all moody and wouldn't talk to me for days." He looked up at me, his eyes wet and pleading.
"It's… it's not what you think. I was always moody and pissed off every time you got a girl in bed and fucked her."
"Huh?" That made me stop and think for a moment. "What the fuck are you talking about?"
He was right now that I thought about it. He was always moody that way ever since we started finding and fucking girl's way back in junior high. That didn't make me feel any brighter. How could I have not connected the two events.
"So, you got your share of pussy. What? Where you jealous because I got into Angela's pussy instead of you?"
"NO." He spat back at me. That was a surprise. Charlie was so easy going, and I don't remember a time when he'd snapped at me like that.