Casual Sabotage

Chapter Eleven

"I...fancy..." I spoke between kisses against Caleb's neck.

"Me?" He interrupted, chuckling as I nestled my face into his shoulder.

"Yes, but that's not what I was going to say." I replied with a smile. "I fancy throwing a party."

"A party?" Caleb questioned. "Sal, do you think that that's a good idea? You know what your relationship with alcohol is like."

"I'll be fine." I dismissed with a wave of my hand. "Don't worry."

"I always worry," He emphasised, kissing me hard on the lips.

When he stepped away, I took the opportunity to, gently might I add, smack at his ass. Turning to me, Caleb smirked. "Stop that."

"If you let me throw a party." I countered back playfully.

"Fine." He caved, sighing heavily at me. "But not too many people, okay?"

"You have my word, Babe." I smiled at him, soon calling out to him as he left through the bedroom door. "Love you!"

"Yeah, yeah," I heard Caleb reply back.

A little while later in the afternoon, Caleb and I were writing out a list to organise the party. I had written out a list of names of people to invite while he had all the food and alcohol to get. I was just adding the last person from work to the bottom of the list of names, before Caleb leaned over and scanned the page. His eyebrows furrowed.

"Are you not going to invite Brian and his troupe?" He asked, which took me by surprise.

Reflecting Caleb's look of confusion, I looked at him. "I wasn't going to...no. Why do you ask?"

"Well...I thought that you may want to." He shrugged.

"Do you think that that's a good idea?" I asked. "Given the circumstances."

"It's up to you, Sal. You're a grown man, you can make your own decisions." Caleb explained back. "I understand if you still want to be friends with him. I'm not going to be the controlling boyfriend like you expect me to be."

"Brian does love a good party." I considered aloud in thought. "Fuck it, why not."

I added Brian, Joey, Jiggy and Murr to our list of names, thinking it may be time to put our differences aside and bury the hatchet between all of us. Don't get me wrong, I still hated them for the way they treated me in high school, but I wanted to be the bigger person and forgive and forget.

**

I had sent out texts about the party to all the names on our list but one. I clicked onto Brian's name and hesitated for a moment. We hadn't spoken to each other since that night that Caleb caught us together. Things had been rather frayed and I was almost scared to talk to him. My thumbs hovered over my screen, wondering where to begin with my message.

Hey... I typed out, quickly deleting it. Hi, Brian... Nah. That didn't sound right. Party at my place on Friday. Be there. Starts at 7pm. There. That would do, right? It was simple with no bullshit emotion attached to it that it looked like it had been the same message that I had sent to everybody else.

I stared at the screen for a moment or two, before Brian's caller ID appeared. I listened to the ringtone play for a few seconds, finally accepting the call and holding the device to my ear. All I could hear was a shaken breath on the other end of the line.

"Brian?" I spoke first.

"Sal." He replied back, though his voice sounded timid; more so than it usually did.