“Okay, so what?”

Rachael and Trace told me we had to have a ‘talk.’ They said this in the same tone I imagine people say ‘you’re going to the firing squad.’ I don’t know what this is about, but they’re sitting on the other side of my dining room table with stone like faces and in Trace’s case, looking like he wants to shit himself. I’m racking my brain trying to think of other times in my life they’ve tried to pull intervention on me for anything, see if it gives me a clue. There was a brief time during the Justified promo where they thought I was getting too cocky and becoming an asshole, there were a couple of post break up issues where I was kind of depressed, and then there was the time they thought I’d graduated from weed to coke. I hadn’t, they’d been listening to too much gossip.

Rachael shifts uncomfortably in her seat, and I’m wondering why she hasn’t spoken up. She looks a lot more resolved than Trace does yet she’s obviously waiting for him to go first; maybe he lost at rock-paper-scissors again. I keep telling him that if he always picks paper everybody else will always pick scissors.

“Okay…” Trace coughs a little, clearing his throat. He fiddles anxiously with his watch. “First off I guess I better say we know you’re not gonna like this, but I swear this is out of concern for all parties and not us trying to be douches or tell you what to do.”

“Word to the wise, brother,” I say while compulsively sipping my water. “Starting off a conversation like that only tells me shit’s about to be said and I’m probably going to get pissed at you.”

“That’s the risk we have to take for being honest with you, I guess,” Rachael shrugs. “But seriously, we want your absolute assurance that you realise we’re not trying to be assholes and we’re just worried about everybody.”

“Okay. You’re not trying to be assholes, but I need your assurance that you realise this will not necessarily prevent you being them.” What? You try being sat down like a child and handed this crap without being sarcastic. It can’t be done.

“Oh I can see this is gonna go well.” Trace rolls his eyes before leaning forward and settling his hands together on the table. “I’ll level with you, it’s about Addy.”

“Oh God…” I immediately start to scrape my chair back, but Rachael snatches my wrist and gives me a warning look.”

“Like I said. Concern for all involved. That means Addy too.”

“Fine.” I sit back down, leaning back in my chair and folding my arms tightly across my chest. I feel hostile right now. “Talk.”

“I know you and Rach have already fought about this, but after that dinner last night I have to agree with her. I’m sorry man, but I think something’s really up with Addy and I think she needs help.”

“Why? Is she shooting up crack or something?” I bite out. “What?”

“You know what,” Rachael sighs. “Being so withdrawn, barely talking or going out, hating everything, worrying all the time, working herself to death. You can’t tell me you haven’t noticed this shit, JT. It’s not the behaviour of somebody who’s happy.”

“She seems fine to me.”

“Does she really?” Trace asks, eyeballing me. “Or are you seeing what you want to see? Dude she was barely talking last night, barely eating either.” I remember Addy mentioning a time when she’d been blue over her ex and had lost her appetite, so Trace’s comment stings more than he knows. “She’s never been Miss Outgoing, but last night she was practically catatonic even though we took her to a quiet place, just the three of us, nobody else there to make her uncomfortable. She’s never been the chattiest person in our little gang but she’s never been a fuckin’ mute, either.”

“So she had a bad night the night before and was still a little cranky, is that so wrong?” I won’t mention either that she may have been pissy with me after the whole sex thing. Still, if she was that mad I suppose she’d have begged off coming at all.

“Look, Justin…” Rachael sighs yet again, and I will grudgingly admit that she looks genuinely worried. It’s the way her forehead has creased up. “I know you hate me going on about this, but I really am worried about her. She just seems so miserable all the time, and while I really do get that she’s had a tough transition to LA it’s not normal to be so down so long. I want her to get better, but that means somebody’s going to have to do something about it.”

“So why are you lecturing me not her?” I challenge.

“Honestly?”

“Honestly.”

“Because while you two are boating down the Nile together, she’s never going to admit there’s a problem,” Trace butts in bluntly.

“So what, you think I’m enabling her?”

“Basically.”

“That is so much bullshit.”

“Is it?” Rachael asks. “You throw a fit at me every time I say anything about her being less than peachy. She always pretends she’s fine even when it’s obvious she’s not, like that party she pretended to enjoy to Lily’s face while telling you she was in Hell. But you’re always defending her, comforting her, explaining away everything she’s done. And I know it’s because she’s your friend and you want to stick up for her and that’s sweet, but while you keep doing it she’s gonna figure that ‘hey, Justin thinks I’m okay.’ You’re telling me there’s never been one time when you thought she was overreacting?”

“Well yeah, but that’s every friendship in the world” I point out, not unreasonably I think. “What am I supposed to do, make it worse by pitching a fit at her?”

“Honestly babe, I think you’re making it worse by letting her pretend the way she reacts to shit is normal.” Rachael reaches out to squeeze my hand, but I grumpily withdraw it from her.

“This is all so much bullshit. I went through exactly the same, remember?”

“It’s different, J.”

“How?”

“Because you knew shit was wrong,” Trace says. “Okay, running away was a dumb idea, but you knew something was wrong and in your own messed up way you were trying to fix it. You admitted it was wrong to the rest of us, and to Addy. Has she done that?”

I admit that makes me pause for a moment, but then I shake my head and keep glaring. “Dude, she fixed me when I was all fucked up. She knows how to handle shit and it’s fucked up that you guys are talking all this crap when you don’t know what she and I have talked about.”

“This is my point exactly!” Rachael throws her hands up in the air, exasperated. “You feel so indebted to her and you’re so bound up with making sure you got her back that you won’t see that we’re not attacking her here. I really like Addy, Justin. I do. I think she’s really nice, and that’s why I’m telling you this because she needs help and I want her to get it. All the while you keep defending her because she’s been this saviour for you and the idea that she needs saving fucks with your head too much, but as long as you keep doing that it allows her to keep sticking her head in the sand and pretending it’s okay because you make up excuses for her.”

“So much bullshit.” I keep repeating, shaking my head and feeling murderous.

“Okay.” She reaches into the purse she’s left on the floor by her chair and pulls out a page which has obviously been ripped from a magazine. “Let’s test the theory, shall we… how many of the following apply to Addy? Number one, do you feel continuously low or sad?”

“Check,” Trace says.

“Two, feelings of hopelessness and helplessness?”

“She’s always claiming there’s nothing she can do and she has to just get on with it.”

“Three, low self esteem?”

“Every time I say she looks nice she disagrees with me. Usually chicks just say thank you.”

I would really like this little double act to stop now, but the bastards continue regardless. It’s not often that I want to hurt Trace but this is one of those moments. It’s even rarer that I want to hurt Rach since she has the ‘you don’t hit girls’ advantage, but she’s on the list too right now.

“Four, tearfulness?”

“Caught her crying and trying to hide it when I went to see her at work.”

“Five, feeling irritable and intolerant of others?”

“Exhibit one, Lily. Exhibit two, pretty much everybody but us.”

“Six, lack of motivation and enjoyment.”

“Check. She’s always saying she only keeps going to work because she has to.”

“Lack of energy, change in appetite.”

“Reference last night.”

“Do you need me to keep going?” Rachael asks as she eyeballs me. “Because there’s a long list here and the only one I can honestly say doesn’t apply to Addy is the one about suicide. Or at least I fucking well hope that doesn’t apply.”

I don’t think I’ve ever quivered with rage before, but this is it. I don’t like it; it feels like my head wants to explode.

“You two are so out of line. You have no idea what’s going on with her, you only even know her because of me. I mean, what, you go out to dinner with her a few times and you think you’ve done a deep psych evaluation or some shit?”

“And what did you do, Justin?” Trace asks quietly. “You were on a beach with her for a few weeks. We’re not claiming to be Freud, but you can’t pretend you’re some expert either. We’re just telling you what’s obvious, and what’s obvious is that she is not happy and it goes way beyond some petty work shit like when the rest of us get blue or whatever. If you refuse to see that then clearly you don’t know too much about her either.”

That’s the last straw for me. I loudly scrape my chair back, throwing them a death glare, and stomp out of the room. Yeah, I stomp. Stupid fuckers, what makes them the experts? I spend way more time with her than they do, so clearly whatever they’re going about isn’t so blindingly obvious because I don’t see it. Lily hasn’t said anything about it either; okay, I know they’ve been strained recently, but she does still live with the woman.

“I knew this shit was going to blow up in our faces.” I can still hear Trace from the other room.

“Well what else are we supposed to do, let him keep on denying everything? Good friends call bullshit when they see it.”

“But at least friends who don’t call bullshit are still friends at the end of it,” he says with a groan. “Maybe he’s right, maybe it’s not our business.”

“She’s miserable and starting to pull him with her. Yeah it’s our business.”

“But…” There’s a pause, like he’s thinking about what to say. “Is it possible we’re wrong?”

“Sure it is, but I really don’t think we are,” Rach replies. “If he really thought everything was okay he’d be with her by now.”

“With her? As in, ‘with her’ with her?”

“Yeah, shit for brains. What else do you think I meant?”

“Come on. You don’t think he still…”

What? Still what? I wish Trace would finish that sentence, because I’d like to know what the fuck they’re talking about. Yeah I liked Addy, yeah I had a fling with her, but it’s not like we were Romeo and fuckin’ Juliet (which is good, considering that didn’t end well).

“Yes I do. Why else do you think he’s so idiotically but loyally stupid about all this stuff? He wouldn’t be this sensitive about the whole thing without feeling for her.”

“Oh fuck. Wish you’d mentioned that before.”

“Why?”

“Because then I would have told you that pulling an intervention over a chick he’s in love with was gonna do nothing except get his back up and piss him off. Nice job, Rach.”

Huh. I find myself torn. On the one hand I utterly agree that Rachael’s whole idea was really frickin’ dumb, on the other I really want to march in there and object to that whole ‘in love with her’ thing. Only that would let them know that I was eavesdropping and they’d probably claim that proves them right.

Damn those fuckers.