Marcus came over on a Sunday evening with a bottle of whisky and no particular reason.
That was how it had always been between them. No occasion required. Twelve years of friendship and neither of them had ever needed a reason to show up. Marcus would call and say I am coming over or sometimes not even that and just arrive and Damian would open the door and that would be the whole of the explanation needed.
Camila was at her sister's. The apartment was quiet in the way it was only quiet when she was not in it, which was a thought Damian noticed and set aside without examining.
He got two glasses. Marcus poured.
They sat in the living room the way they always sat. Marcus in the chair. Damian on the couch. The city outside doing its Sunday evening things. They talked about a match they had both watched separately and had opinions about. They talked about a deal Damian's firm was closing that week and the particular headache attached to it. They talked about Marcus's sister who had moved back to Velmont and was already causing the specific kind of chaos that only younger sisters were capable of.
It was easy. It was always easy with Marcus. That was the thing about twelve years. The conversation did not need to work hard to exist.
They had been there about an hour when Marcus refilled both glasses and leaned back in the chair and said nothing for a moment.
Damian recognised that silence.
It was the silence Marcus used when he was deciding how to say something he had already decided to say.
"Just say it," Damian said.
Marcus looked at him. "Say what."
"Whatever you came here to say." Damian picked up his glass. "You have been sitting on something since you walked in. I know the difference between you talking and you waiting to talk."
Marcus considered this for a moment. Then he said, "You seem like a man who made a decision and is now living inside it and finding it a different shape than he thought it would be."
The room was quiet.
"I am fine," Damian said.
"I know," Marcus said. "That is the part I keep thinking about."
Damian looked at him. "What does that mean."
"It means you are fine in the way that people are fine when they have decided being fine is the only available option so they have stopped checking whether it is actually true." Marcus said it without heat. Just the way he said most things. Like information. Like something he had observed and was reporting accurately. "I am not saying you made the wrong choice. I am not saying that. I am saying you made a choice and something about how you are sitting in this room right now tells me you are starting to feel the weight of it in ways you were not expecting."
Damian said nothing for a moment.
He looked at his glass.
"Camila and I are good," he said.
"I am sure you are," Marcus said.
"We are building something."
"Okay."
"She is." Damian stopped. Started again. "It is good Marcus. It is what I chose and it is good."
Marcus looked at him with the steady unhurried patience of a man who had known him since they were twenty-two and had watched him talk himself into and out of more things than he could count.
"I believe you," Marcus said simply.
And somehow that was worse than any argument would have been. Because Marcus was not arguing. He was not pushing. He was just sitting there believing him in the particular way that made Damian feel like he was being believed about a fact and doubted about everything underneath it simultaneously.
He finished his drink.
Marcus finished his.
They talked for another half hour about nothing important. The easy nothing of two people who did not need everything to mean something. And then Marcus stood up and put on his jacket and picked up what was left of the bottle.
"Leave it," Damian said.
Marcus set it back on the table. "I ran into Cassidy last week," he said. Casual. Like a footnote. "She says Helena is doing well. The acting thing is real apparently. Jordan Park is telling people about her."
Damian looked at him.
Marcus looked back with the open expression of a man who had simply passed on a piece of information and was not doing anything else with it at all.
"Good," Damian said. "That is good."
"Yeah," Marcus said. "It is." He picked up his jacket. "See you Thursday."
He left.
Damian sat in the quiet of the apartment with the bottle on the table and his glass half empty and the particular silence that follows a conversation that was mostly about one thing and appeared to be about another.
He was fine.
He picked up his glass.
He was completely fine.
He sat there for a while after Marcus left. Not doing anything in particular. Just sitting with the bottle on the table and the city outside and the quiet of the apartment around him. Camila would be back in an hour. He knew her schedule the way you learn someone's schedule when you share your days with them. Her sister's dinners always ran until around nine. She would come back warm and slightly loud from the wine and the company and the apartment would fill up again the way it always filled up when she was in it.
He did not mind that. He liked that about her. The way she occupied space fully and without apology.
He poured himself another small measure and sat back.
Marcus's voice was still in the room the way voices stay after a conversation that landed somewhere significant. You seem like a man who made a decision and is living inside it and finding it a different shape than he thought it would be.
He had said he was fine.
Marcus had said I know and meant something else by it entirely.
Damian looked at the window. At the city outside going about its evening. He thought about the match they had discussed and the deal closing this week and Marcus's sister back in Velmont and all the ordinary things that made up an ordinary Sunday. He thought about Camila at her sister's table laughing at something.
He thought briefly about the car park on Monday evening. About Helena walking toward him like he was anyone. About the moment he had looked at her and tried to find the thing he was looking for and come back empty.
He set his glass down.
He was not going to sit here and do this. He had made a choice and it was the right choice and his life was good and Camila was good and everything was what it was supposed to be.
He picked up his phone and checked his emails. The small metallic sound of it. Then the door opening and her bag hitting the table in the hallway and her voice calling out to him.
For one second before she spoke he did not know who was coming through the door.
Just one second where his mind went somewhere he did not send it.
Then she was in the doorway smiling at him and asking how his evening was and the second was gone and the apartment was warm and she was there and everything was exactly what it was supposed to be.
He smiled back.
He told her it was good.
He picked up his glass and finished it and told himself that one second meant nothing at all.
He was getting less convincing at telling himself things.
He noticed that too.
