Page 47 of Hold Me Down

Since it was impossible to do during a call anyway, he headed to the kitchen instead.

"Nothing has crawled anywhere," he muttered. "It's just been a rough—"week"—day."

"What happened?"

Dave put his phone on the counter before opening the fridge and pulling out a pitcher of water.

"Can't it simply be one of those days?"

Colin sighed. "It could, but I don't think it is."

"Great, another person who knows better." Dave shut the fridge door a little harder than necessary, then caught himself. "Shit. Sorry, that was stupid."

"A lot of people having opinions, huh? It must be hard."

Slumping into a chair, Dave leaned on his forearms against the table.

"You don't have to coddle me, either," he said, but the fight that temporarily reared up its head inside him was gone again.

"Wow, there's no winning today, huh?"

"Looks like it, yeah."

"How about we start over, you tell me honestly how you're doing, and I promise not to assume I know any better."

Dave stacked up his hands on top of each other and rested his chin on them.

"Well, if you must know, I'm currently wallowing in self-pity over how stupid I am."

"Uh-uh. What did you do?"

"I fucked up."

"Which means what?"

"I had a fight with Travis—and a stupid one, too. I went off on him because I was tired, frustrated, and pissed off, and he… Fuck, I don't want to get into it. Suffice to say, he left with a door bang, so, you know, not great."

There were another few seconds of silence on Colin's side before he spoke up again.

"Wow, I don't think you've ever told me about you and Travis having a fight."

"Yeah, well, we haven't. I mean, we've had disagreements, don't get me wrong, but we've never… This one deteriorated quickly, and it's mostly my fault."

Going off on Travis would have been bad enough. But to throw that otherthingat him…

"And how did you usually handle your disagreements in the past?" Colin asked, dragging Dave's attention back before he could go down a rabbit hole.

"Like most people—by talking it out, or giving ourselves some breathing room and then talking."

A few times they also opted for a hard fuck to relieve the tension, but Colin didn't need to know that.

"Okay, so there's a pretty good chance that you're going to talk it out once you both cool off, right?"

"I guess. I don't know. I've said some things I shouldn't have, and I feel bad about it."

Wasn't that the understatement of the year?

Colin hummed. "Do you feel like apologizing or are you not ready yet?"

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