Tyed

chapter thirty nine

It's about then that Tyler gets a text. He checks it, momentarily not paying attention to whatever it is that Colby is telling Scarlett as he reads the text.

Saxon: Can we discuss a few things, as a family? Can you come up tomorrow, if you aren't busy?

Tyler stares at it, wondering how to answer his stepfather. Can he come up tomorrow? Does he fucking want to?

Colby looks over at him. "I'm sorry, is everything alright?"

Tyler puts his phone down. "It's not important right now."

Colby turns back to Scarlett. "Here's the important thing," he says, and Tyler's stomach does a nervous flip or two, hoping that the words he next hears aren't going to be anything bad for him. "I'm sorry. I treated you like a cheater when something bad had happened to you, and that was wrong of me. If there's anything I can do to make it up to you now, as a friend, I will do that."

"As a friend." Scarlett speaks in a monotone, low voice. She turns to Tyler. "I'm sorry, I know we've had this whole discussion together, but there is one thing I'd like to say to just Colby, if-"

"Anything you can say in front of me, you can say in front of him," Colby says, but Tyler shakes his head. As much as his stomach is turning and he's fearing, desperately terrified of what Scarlett might try and do, he doesn't want to delay it if something is inevitable. There's also a part of him that wants to test it, test whether Colby really cares about him or not.

"I'll go," he says. He gets up and walks over to the door. "Just let me know when you're done."

Scarlett breathes a sigh of relief. "Thank you," she says. "It means a lot to me."

Tyler gives a blank nod, because he's implicitly lying to her. As soon as he shuts the door behind him, he leans up against it, ear pressed right to the crack.

He can just barely make out their voices. "...friend," Scarlett says, "but you don't understand how I feel about the situation."

"You understand how I feel," Colby says, and doesn't clarify those words at all. Tyler looks briefly up and down the hallway, but sees nobody. He strains for any sound, but he's getting the idea that they're sitting in silence at the moment.

"Look," Scarlett says, somewhat loudly. "I've discovered a lot about myself recently. And I know, you were mad at me, but didn't you just discover there's no reason to be?"

"Because I'm not-" Colby's half-yelling, but then he stops, and speaks a few words too quietly to hear. Tyler can make out "more to it", and, well, his name.

"And how long have you known him?" Scarlett demands. There's a moment of silence, and whatever Colby says, it's much longer than "one week" or "ten days" or "it doesn't matter".

Scarlett's voice is clearer, easier to hear. "Don't you get it?" she says. "What is more important to you? Sex or love?"

And that's when it becomes clear. Tyler curls his fists up tight, biting down on the inside of his lip to keep from screaming. He thought this might be the case. And isn't it true? Colby can't love him after a week, ten days, however long it's been. The sex is what it's always been about, hasn't it? What it always will be about.

He married Scarlett. That has to count for something. And he's just learned that the reason he divorced her in the first place was a lie.

Tyler listens close for Colby's answer. He doesn't know what he wants to hear, because every possible answer feels wrong in one way or another. Every possible answer just... doesn't work. Doesn't tell Tyler that Colby wants him and not Scarlett.