I'm Going Slightly Mad

Chapter Three

“Your friends seem nice,” Lucas remarked. “A little weird, but nice.”

“Not all of them are my friends,” Aaron reminded him, propping his head up on his palm. “I don’t even know half of them.”

“Then why were they at your apartment?”

Aaron scowled, scribbling angrily on his notepad. “Because Jenna invited them. On one of our dates. Without asking me.”

“Huh. Nice. Guess you really are having problems.”

“No shit, Sherlock!” Aaron snarled, dropping his pen and sitting up straight. “I don’t know what I did, but I messed something up and now I think she’s trying to get back at me-- and I don’t even know why!”

“Maybe you blew up at her even though she wasn’t involved in whatever you were mad about,” Lucas snapped. “I know that would piss me right off.”

“Yeah, whatever. Just tell me what I should do! You’re the ‘wise elder’ here,” Aaron mocked, with the appropriate air quotes.

“I don’t see why I should help you if you’re just gonna be pissy.” Lucas crossed his arms and glared at him. “I only help my friends. You are not acting like a friend.”

“You’re a police officer! You’re supposed to help everyone!”

“I’m off duty. I don’t have to help anyone right now if I don’t want to.”

Aaron narrowed his eyes. “I thought you always wanted to help people. You told me that’s why you became a cop.”

“Yes, but I never want to help assholes.”

“Ridiculous. You’ve helped me plenty of times before.”

“You’re not always an asshole.”

“Of course I am.” Aaron sneered. “Why else wouldn’t I be able to keep a girlfriend for longer than five months?”

“Because you’re so afraid of messing up that you don’t let yourself relax, and constantly stressed out people stress out the people around them!” Lucas rubbed at the bridge of his nose. “Christ, Aaron. Your problems are so obvious but you can’t even see them!”

Aaron stopped dead, eyes wide. “Oh.”

In the back of his mind, he realized he knew better. He was fully aware of all of his problems, and, God, were there a lot of them. He kept himself up well into the night thinking about them. He was cocky and rude, and far too smart for his own good, without even any humbleness to balance it out. He tended to think he knew everything, and when he wasn’t right, he argued until everyone agreed with him.

He was an asshole. There wasn’t a doubt in his mind.

But, surely, if he was such an asshole, there must be even more to it that he didn’t know about. Lucas’s little revelation, for instance. Screwing up definitely scared him. It was a constant burden in his mind, but he hadn’t realized how much it affected his friends. He came to them, whining and sniveling about how he’d messed up and didn’t know what to do, again and again, and he rarely listened to the advice they gave him. He worried about his faults until his thoughts were a continuous loop of stress and anxiety, and then took it out on the people who tried to help. And he hadn’t even noticed.

If he’d missed this, what else wasn’t he seeing? Just how bad of a person was he?

“I’m sorry,” he murmured, rubbing his hands together.

“No.” Lucas sighed. “I’m sorry. That was uncalled for.”

Aaron shook his head, refusing to look Lucas in the eyes. “I needed to hear that.”