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He leans forward, resting his head in his hands as a wave of nausea hits him. ‘You were the one who called her. Not me. You had no fucking right to call her.’
‘Yeah well that’s not how things work. You’re with her, so when you do things like this it affects her too.’
Gregg sits beside him and hands him a glass of water. Tate takes it and manages one mouthful before his stomach objects.
‘Where’s Chloe?’
‘At the cafe down the road. If you’re going to pull fucking stupid stunts like this at least make sure you have some food for breakfast. You’ve got a hell of a lot of making up to do with her, Tate.’
‘Is she okay?’
‘She found her boyfriend passed out on the couch after drinking himself unconscious. Of course she’s not okay. I told her about the letters too.’
‘You did what?’ He moves his head faster than his headache is happy with. ‘Oh shit that hurts.’
‘What the hell did you expect me to say? You won two awards then came home and got smashed after being clean and sober for months. You not think the timing would have confused her just a smidge? I presume this little episode is thanks to the love letter?’
‘Yeah. Was in a congratulations card.’
‘Nice touch.’ Gregg takes the page out of his pocket and slaps it down onto the coffee table in front of Tate. ‘Time to talk, buddy.’
Tate stares down at the creased page in front of him. ‘Where the hell did you find that?’
‘In the bin. Bit of an obvious place to ditch it.’
Tate grabs for the page but Gregg pulls it out of his reach. ‘I don’t want her to see that.’
‘She already did.’ Gregg takes the second page out and leaves in on the table still folded. ‘She didn’t see what’s on this one though.’
Tate slumps back on the couch and closes his eyes as the room spins again. ‘Did you tell her?’
‘No. I gave her the outline – no details. Did you know about this?’
‘No and I’m not going there so please shut up. Destroy that and forget about it.’
Gregg doesn’t say anything for a few minutes so he convinces himself to face the spinning room again. He peers over at Gregg, slightly relieved when he’s not moving around.
‘I’m your friend, Tate. How can you honestly expect me to forget what I read and just move on? You need to talk to someone about this.’
‘Why? Knowing he kicked the shit out of me is bad enough. If he did that to me too... I don’t want to remember! I can’t deal with that on top of everything else.’ He groans as a wave of nausea hits. It could be the drink. It could be thinking about what he read in the report. ‘He was my dad. It was his job to keep me safe not do that. Sick fuck. I was just a kid, Gregg.’
‘I know, Tate. And I don’t blame you for wanting a drink. I really don’t. But I’m worried about you, buddy. This isn’t something you should be processing alone.’
‘Please, Gregg. Leave it.’
‘I can’t just leave it. Your therapist needs to know about this. She can help you deal with this. You drank because of it. What’s to stop you taking it up a level next time. I know the dickhead helped you out by putting that bottle in your hand, but you were the one who opened it. Why didn’t you call me? I’m not blaming you for wanting something after reading that, but you know the drill, Tate.’
‘I fucked up, okay. I get it.’
‘This isn’t about fucking up. It’s about helping you deal with this. Your father—’
‘Don’t say it. Please. And you read the report. They don’t know for sure. They just think he did.’
‘Tate—’ He stops talking when Chloe opens the door from the hall and places the bags of groceries on the counter.
Tate throws his best warning look at Gregg and his friend slips the page back into his pocket.
Chloe smiles as she sits in the other armchair facing Tate. ‘Morning. How do you feel?’
