Blue Plaid

Catharsis

In which Tyson makes a confession.

//

Lowering Cooper from my hip to the patch of floor which served as his play area, I pressed a kiss to the top of his head before turning towards the door to see who had been lightly knocking for the past thirty seconds, pulling it open to find Alex on the other side.

"Hey, man," I smiled widely. "This is a nice surprise."

"Hey!" Despite my friendliness, he seemed a little tense. "It's not a bad time, is it?"

"Not at all," I shook my head, stepping aside and pulling the door open wider, "come on in. You know Stella's not here, right?"

She had started her GED classes a few weeks ago and luckily, my boss at my new job was more understanding about my personal life than my previous employer, so we'd worked out a system where I didn't work three nights a week so that Stella could take night classes. That being said, I was fairly certain Alex knew Stella's schedule, so it was kind of odd that he had stopped by. It wasn't like I had an aversion to hanging out with Alex, but he was better friends with Stella and we hadn't really spent much time together just the two of us.

Stepping through the doorway, he shoved his hands into the front pockets of his jeans and shrugged nervously. "I know she's at class. I'm actually here to see you."

The fact that he specifically came by when he knew Stella wasn't around just made the entire situation weirder, but he was almost shaking with nerves and I didn't want to make it worse, so I nodded casually and glanced over towards where Cooper was playing with a stuffed dinosaur. "Oh, okay. Well, I gotta put Cooper to bed, but there's beer in the fridge if you don't mind chilling for a few minutes."

"No worries," he called out, striding towards the fridge as I turned to lift Cooper from his play mat and carry him towards the bedroom.

Flashing Alex a smile, I retreated to Cooper's room to tuck him into bed, going through our usual ritual of me singing him three different NSYNC songs before he finally nodded off and returned to the living area with the baby monitor in hand to find that Alex had made himself comfortable on the couch, beer bottle in hand. His eyebrows lifted in surprise as I entered the room. "That was fast."

"Yeah, I'm sort of a pro at it now," I grinned. I wouldn't normally brag about something like that, but it was actually a point of pride for me, considering how much anything involving childcare used to terrify me. Plopping down on the couch beside Alex, I stretched my legs out on the center table. "You should've seen me at the beginning, though. It used to take us forever to get him fed and calm him down enough that he would sleep. So what's up?"

Despite the fact that a few sips of beer had relaxed him a bit, I could tell there was still something he wanted to say and allowing him to get it out sooner rather than later would hopefully lessen his tension. Setting hid beer down on the table beside my feet, he turned his torso to face me, his gaze extremely serious. "I have something I wanna ask you."

"For sure," I replied breezily, though I was getting a bit nervous myself, "Go for it."

"I was wondering if you'd be my best man."

That was probably the last thing I expected him to say, which was why my response was completely stupid. "For your wedding?"

"Yeah, for that," he laughed softly, trying to gauge my reaction.

"Oh, wow," I stammered out. Truth be told, I was a little caught off guard, because it wasn't as though I was the most obvious choice for that position. Sure, I had been the one who'd picked up the engagement ring for him from Paris, but that had been more out of convenience than anything else. Or so I'd thought. But if Alex considered us close enough friends to ask me to be his best man, then I wasn't going to let him down. So I grinned and nodded. "Yeah, I mean, I'd be honored."