It was 8 pm, right after dinner...

XXXVII

"Brett?"

What did one do, if one was having one of the most impactful epiphanies in one's life while being surrounded by people one had to film a video with? In the middle of recording?

Brett didn't know for others, but he knew, how it was going for him:
In the middle of a lovely conversation with the erhu player, he just froze. His mouth agape and his eyes so wide like they wanted to jump out. His brain went blank and he could do nothing than to stare at the person responsible for his current, messed up state.
Everyone looked at him. Of course they did, him being the main character of a sappy dating format and technically having to provide the next question for the chat, but instead just sat there, mute.

"Brett?", the subject of his epiphany asked, "Are you alright?"

Brett didn't hear any of that. All he heard was that little voice from before, saying one single name, over and over again.
A name so lovely, so beloved, so wonderful, so beautiful it shook Brett's core in a way his world crumbled and fell apart.

"Eddy", Brett tried to taste that name on his tongue like it was the first time.
"Yes? Are you okay? You're supposed to ask the next question. If you don't have any anymore, we can just switch to the second girl."

Brett was silent and still just blankly gawked at him.

"Alright then. I guess we'll switch."

The erhu player stood up and Eddy quickly ran over to Brett.
"Brett! What's going on? Are you feeling sick? Do we need to stop?"
No reaction.
"Brett!" Eddy touched Brett's shoulder and made the other jump and almost fall down from his chair.

"Uhh", Brett made, trying to gather his wits but finding it very difficult with a, in his eyes, God like Eddy standing right in front of him. He shook his head.
"What's going on?"
"You're going to chat with the singer, remember?" Eddy frowned, clearly confused about Brett's demeanour.
"Oh, okay. Yeah, let's... continue..."
"You sure?"
"Yeah, I'm fine."

But Brett wasn't fine at all. All sorts of feelings and emotions whirled through his hurting head and his stomach started to churn uncomfortably. For God's sake, he'd just discovered something about himself, which he'd never deemed possible. Never even dared to consider! And which would probably destroy his friendship and career, if this news would ever be received by the wrong person.

Yet, the time to process this wasn't now. Now, he had to make sure they'd have useful material for a funny video at the end of the day and that compelled him to continue as if his universe hadn't just been turned upside down by his own, stupid feelings.

Luckily, the singer was a talker, so he let her tell her story and just chose the erhu player at the end without really caring about it anymore. With his acting abilities, mastered over the years of doing skits for their channel, he managed to get through with everything without anyone noticing that something was off... Or so he hoped. Even the outro sounded more or less genuine. And his blankly staring into nothingness while he had finally found out the reason for all those weird feelings over the past couple weeks would just had to be cut out by their editor. The video was a wrap.

So when Eddy finally announced the end of filming, Brett could do nothing else than run to the toilets and bend over the bowl, his head pounding and tears uncontrollably streaming down, while waves of nausea overtook and consumed him.

Eddy wouldn't come, he knew, because he'd be busy with properly thanking the musicians and tidying up the studio with their team and Brett was grateful for that. Having to look into Eddy's eyes without giving anything away seemed impossible at the moment and he couldn't deal with more shit! Not now!

When his stomach finally stopped torturing him, Brett rested his head in his arms on the toilet lid and sobbed. It felt like there was an endless pool of tears inside him begging to be spilled, because he had been stupid enough to fall in love with his best friend and there was just no way this was going to end well. Brett would have to hide it and under no circumstances could Eddy ever find out. It would ruin their lives...

And this was the last thought Brett had, before darkness enveloped him and he drifted into a dreamless void.