Another Door Opens

44 - Weird vibes

- EDEN -

I was stupidly nervous.

I'd put off introducing Austin to my friends for a couple months when I realised and couldn't ignore the extent of their trepidation about how quickly things were moving with him, not that I really saw it in the same way. 

I was just having fun and hoping the more they heard about him through me about how things were between us, how nice and attentive he was, the more likely he would grow on them.

But that didn't work at all. 

And the first meeting---a dinner I hosted last night at my place, wanting desperately to have a home advantage---was an unmitigated disaster. As in, worse than I could ever have anticipated.

I hadn't told Austin about my friends’ reservations about him and I, but he's bright and intuitive enough to have picked up on it considering how poorly they hid the fact, and did so pretty early in the evening. Which, in turn, resulted in my friends being stand-offish with my boyfriend, including Mason, who likes literally everyone; and my boyfriend being similarly disinterested in making an effort with them all night.

In fact, he actually seemed to go out of his way to poke and prod them in ways that were only ever going to result in pseudo arguments, especially with Wolfe who always bites back, and was in a state of near-constant snarl whenever Austin was in his line of vision, let alone speaking to him.

I don’t know who I was more annoyed at, to be honest---Wolfe or Austin. They were both just as bad as each other. Wolfe greasing Austin off and rolling his eyes whenever he opened his mouth, Austin being a right smartass and always needing to have the final word.

In my separate relationships with both of them, I’ve never seen either of them behave this way. I knew Wolfe wasn’t keen on Trey, but he at least always tried. And Austin, as I know well enough by now, relishes in being right about most things and seems to get inspired to persist whenever he is, so just kept baiting Wolfe into mini debates whenever he picked up on Wolfe even slightly disagreeing with him.

Take, for example, when Wolfe took the Spotify reigns on my phone playing through the bluetooth speakers in the background, and changed the soundtrack from the ambient techno one I had chosen for the evening to try to keep everyone calm with relaxed, rhythmic beats, to a slightly heavier one that he and I made and have listened to together countless times while running Hades and Medusa, which is effectively a battle off between 90s grunge and 80s metal. My dad was very much the pioneering influence on my eclectic music taste, and Black Sabbath was his all-time favourite. I still own and wear some of his old shirts from when he was a young metalhead teenager, which are so threadbare at this point that you can practically see my nipples through the black fabric if I’m not wearing a bra. Wolfe, on the other hand, while not completely discrediting Sabbath by any means, has always been more impartial to the Seattle grunge scene, probably in part due to the punkier influence that Dalen must have had over him over the years, and so always backs Nirvana in favour of Sabbath.

The change in music resulted in us picking up our usual bickering in favour of our preferred artist, which is always ridiculous because we stupidly persist in dividing the two like they’re both not great in their own right.

Now, I know definitively that Austin doesn’t like Sabbath. Any Sabbath. He’s complained to me in the past whenever I’ve had them playing in the car while driving. Ozzy and Dio both. And yet there he was, publicly claiming that he loves them and was pointing out how many ways that they’re better than any grunge band, even to the point of scrutinising the recording quality, mixing and mastering.

Wolfe doesn’t know anything about the specifics of music theory or recording like Austin does, which seemed to be Austin’s purpose in inserting him into our discussion---making him feel like he didn’t know anything and overintellectualising what is usually just a lighthearted debate between friends which always just turns into a fun, impromptu karaoke session completely off-key. Miles was unfortunate enough to run into us while we were out a few weeks back, and I think we scarred the poor thing’s ears for life blasting out Children of the Grave. Even Hades gets involved nowadays, adding in his own little ‘Awoooos’ whenever he hears me singing.