Excerpt: The Control

***This is totally a first draft, so please ignore any typos or just plain bad writing:)
Sam walked up the steps to the front door and, hoping that Marcus would hear him from the back yard, knocked hard. The action felt odd and uncomfortable, and he couldn’t remember the last time he had knocked on this door. The neighbours had shared an open door policy for years, since long before Jenny died.
Still, the idea of walking into his friend’s home when that friend had made it quite plain that he had no desire to see him felt nothing short of intrusive.
“Coming,” he heard Marcus call from the back of the house. Moments later, the door opened and Marcus said, “Oh. Hey.”
“Hey,” Sam echoed.
In the silence, Sam wondered if he’d made a mistake by coming here. As it was, Marcus looked ready to slam the door in his face at any second.
“What do you want?” Marcus asked.
Sam shuffled his feet. Since he’d basically been pushed out of his own house to get this over with, he hadn’t had a chance to think about what he would actually say. He looked at Marcus. “We need to talk.”
“Oh, do we?” Marcus’s voice was acid on Sam’s ears.
“Yeah,” Sam almost yelled, fuelled by his friend’s malice. “You’re ignoring me, and I don’t know why.”
Sam saw Marcus’s fists clench and his nostrils flare. “Well maybe you should have figured that out before you came over here, banging on my door.”
Though he had only been awake for an hour, Sam felt fatigued. “Look, man, everything is going wrong right now. I don’t need to be fighting with you, too.”
“Then don’t. Go away and don’t come back.”
“What’s your problem, man? You have no idea what’s been happening the last few days.”
“Hayley left, right? How hard is that to understand?”
Sam saw something then in Marcus’s eyes, something intimately familiar. He was hurt, deeply, by someone he loved.
Sam felt the harsh pangs of jealousy course through him as he cocked his arm back and punched into Marcus’s left jaw. “You bastard!”
Another punch, this time with his left hand, met his friend’s gut. Sam was pulling back for one more blow when Gayla grabbed his elbow, pulling it back with surprising strength.
“Sam, stop it!” she yelled.
“What the hell, man?” Marcus mumbled from the floor.
Sam felt his wide eyes and knew that he looked like a monster as he hovered over Marcus, now dripping blood down his bare chest.
“She’s my wife! You’re my best friend! How could you do this to me?”
“What are you talking about? I didn’t do anything to you!”
Sam reared back, ready to kick Marcus in the face, when Gayla jumped in front of him and shouted, “Stop it, you idiot!”
He looked at her and said, “So, what, you don’t mind playing second fiddle to Hayley for him?”
Gayla took a step back. Then she said, very slowly, “Sam, what the hell are you talking about?”
Marcus stood up behind her, and Sam fought the urge to lunge at him and strangle the man with his bare hands. “Think about it, Gayla,” he said. “Why do you think he’s so upset that Hayley left?”
“He’s not – ”
“Wait,” Marcus interrupted, cradling his jaw in his hand. “You think this is about Hayley?”
Sam was taken aback, immediately realizing that he had come to the wrong conclusion. “It’s not?”
“You’re a moron, Sam.” Gayla was eyeing him with pure contempt.
“Gayla, it’s okay,” Marcus said, somehow calm and collected despite having just been attacked.
“Yeah, tell me that after you’ve looked in a mirror, Marcus. You look like you just made out with the wrong end of a lawnmower.”
“There’s a right end to make out with?”
“Oh, shut up.” Gayla stalked through the house and out the back door.
Sam looked at Marcus, hoping the humility he felt was plain on his face. “You do look like you made out with a lawnmower.” He grimaced as Marcus’s blood began to drip onto the floor. “Sorry.”
The two men stood silent. Then Marcus said, “I’m going to go get cleaned up.”
“Yeah.” Sam knew he had already been forgiven, by Marcus at least. He couldn’t imagine how he had lost control of himself so quickly or so violently. It would take a lot of apologizing and making amends in order for Sam to forgive himself for hurting his friend.
Sam walked into Marcus’s kitchen and stood at the sink. His knuckles were cut and bleeding, and Sam wondered how much of the blood there wasn’t his. He let his hands rest in a gentle stream of cool water before he grabbed the bar of hand soap sitting on the window ledge. The soap burned at his wounds, but Sam relished the feeling. This sting was the very least he deserved for what he’d just done. “What will Hayley think of me?” he asked aloud.
“Probably that you’re a psychotic maniac who should be locked up forever.”
Sam turned to face Marcus. “I’m really sorry, man.”
“Yeah, I know. It’s okay.”
Marcus’s nonchalant behaviour confused Sam. “I don’t get it. Why are you being so cool about it? I just bashed your face in. And besides, aren’t you mad at me for ... something?” Sam tried not to draw any attention to the fact that he still didn’t know what had caused Marcus to ignore him for the past few days.
Marcus pulled a bag of frozen corn from the freezer and wrapped it in a dishtowel. “A couple of reasons, really. First of all, I kind of feel like it’s payback for that time I knocked you out.”
“Yeah, but that was an accident. I mean, you thought I was some stranger trying to kill you.”
“True. But you were just waking me up to tell me that Jenny was in labor. How bad do you think I felt after that? Ever since that day, I’ve felt horrible about it.” Marcus grinned. “Until now, anyway. I’m off the hook. So thanks, man.”
Sam shook his head and smiled. “So what was the other reason?”
Marcus looked straight at Sam and said, “You were about to kill me. I figure you must really have some major things happening if you got to that point. The way I see it, it’s not worth it to be mad at you if things are that serious.” He paused. “Besides, you scared the hell out of me.”
“Yeah, I kind of scared myself. Sorry,” he said again.
“Ah, don’t worry about it,” Marcus said as the men walked out the sliding doors at the back of the house. “Listen. I wasn’t upset about Hayley. No, I take that back. I was upset about Hayley leaving and I do miss her, but only because she’s my friend, too. The reason I was so upset – and I can’t believe I actually have to spell this out for you – was because I had to wait two days to find out, and even then you didn’t come right out and say it. I mean, why didn’t you just come over and tell me?”
He considered the best answer he could give Marcus. “You remember what it felt like when Jenny died?” Sam took his silence to mean that he would never be able to forget. “I know it’s not the same. That’s not what I mean. But you were empty after she died. That’s what it was like. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”
“Thanks,” Marcus said.
“Okay, so are we done with all that? Are we good?”
“Yeah,” he laughed. “We’re good, man.”
“Good, because you’re bleeding on your shirt.”