Want Him, Can't Have Him.

Sorting It Out

I was the first one in the studio two hours later, soon followed by Mike, and then Billie once he had gotten my message.
"What's going on?" He asked warily but I told him to wait until we were all here.
I didn't think Mike would show, but after ten minutes he slunk through the door. We were all on edge and Billie was looking more and more flustered as the minutes passed.
I looked to Mike for his explanation but he avoided my gaze.
"Mike?" He looked at me and shrugged a shoulder and I knew he wasn't going to be the one to tell Billie. Jason was the bigger person and began.

"Billie, I'd say that we're good friends... and you know I'd never intentionally do anything to upset you..."

"What are you trying to say?" He squeaked, looking worried.

Mike sighed, "me and Jason are seeing each other, alright?"

Billie froze, looking in disbelief from Jason's guilty eyes to Mike's seemingly bored ones, "what?"

"Billie-" I tried but his head snapped round at me.

"You knew about this?"

"Only since yesterday, I didn't want to keep it from you but they asked me-"

"Oh, so that makes it okay does it?"

I cleared my throat, "right, we need to get this all sorted-"

"That's easy for you to say!" Mike butted in straight away and jabbed a finger at Billie, "he cheated on me, with you, and he" he pointed to Jason, "was lying to me. Can't I trust anyone? I thought you were my friends!"

"Of course you can, you can trust-"

"You stole my boyfriend!"

"I didn't steal anyone!" I snapped, "you had upset him and he thought you didn't want to be with him!"

"Well maybe he should have spoken to me before running off with someone else!"

"Stop talking as if I'm not here!" Billie butted in, "you said you wanted to see other people!"

"Well I didn't expect you to go running off to find someone straight away! Or didn't I mean enough to you to wait a while?"

"You can't fucking talk! You're with Jason! And thanks a fucking bunch for running it past me by the way!"

"And you're with Tré! Did you ever run that past me?"

I could see angry tears welling in his eyes and I immediately wanted to stop all of this. "I thought you loved me and you told me you wanted to sleep with other people! How did you expect me to act?!"

"Don't you dare act like I was the one in the wrong, you cheated on me! With one of my best friends!"

"I thought you'd dumped me! I didn't cheat on you!"

"But you pretended you hadn't done anything afterwards! You didn't come clean until the others got involved! Which moves me onto you, Jason, you knew about it all along and then lied to my face to get on my good side. How could you do that?"

"Can't we talk about this later?" Jason looked uncomfortable.

"No."

He shuffled his feet, "I'm sorry... I wasn't thinking. I liked you and I didn't want to upset you. I didn't mean to lie to you-"

"You clearly did!"

"Okay, I obviously meant to do it, but I shouldn't have. I wish I'd just told you the truth. I'm sorry, Mike."

Billie scoffed at Jason, "nice to know that all that time I thought you were being nice to me that you just wanted to fuck my partner."

"It wasn't like that," he said defensively, "I would never do that to you, you know that."

"Yeah, of course-"

"Don't talk to him like that, Bill," I frowned, "he tried to protect us, even if that meant lying to Mike. He hasn't done anything wrong."

We stood in a thick silence and glared at one another, none of us knowing where to go from here.
I was the one to break the tension, "guys, this is fucked up. How did we let this happen?"
Jason's features softened and he looked away from us, but Billie and Mike were still rigid with anger.
"Guys..."
Billie pawed away a tear that had fallen down how cheek and looked away sharply. He walked over to me and stood by my side, and I briefly touched his fingers with mine to show I was there for him.
"So what are we going to do about this? Are we going to hold grudges and let it fuck up everything that we've worked so hard for? Ruin the friendships that we've had for years?"

"I don't want that," Jason shook his head, "I just want things to go back to the way they were. I miss you guys."

Billie looked at Jason with sad eyes, "me too. I want to stop fighting."

Mike looked reluctant and sighed impatiently, "we can't just all pretend like all of this never happened, if that's what you're suggesting."

"No," I said, "but we can move on from it. We can't carry on like this, we need to all shake hands and start fresh... sound good?"

Jason nodded and Billie remained quiet-the whole thing was resting on Mike and he knew he had the power to change everything. We all waited on his word and he eventually uttered "fine."

"Its not going to be fine straight away, but we need to all make an effort and apologise."

"I am sorry," Jason said to Mike, "I really didn't mean to upset you."

"I'm sorry too," I also said to Mike, "I shouldn't have done what I did, I wasn't thinking... and I'm sorry, Billie, for not telling you about Jason and Mike when I found out."

Billie didn't look up but mumbled a quick apology to Jason about the way he'd acted towards him, and then to Mike.
Mike took a little while to respond, but eventually said that he was sorry too.
I was glad it was out of the way-it didn't feel a lot better, but at least it was a start. I suggested we all have some space to cool down, and Billie and I went back to my room.