Catching up with my colleague P

It had been quite a long time since I'd been out after work in the evening to catch up with my colleague P, so last week we decided to go together to the drinks event for gay guys who work for banks in London. It turned out that P's boyfriend D was also free that evening, so even though he doesn't work for a bank we take him along too.

"Let me get a decent bottle of red Burgundy for us to drink," I say once we've found a table to occupy at the drinks venue, "I know that if I lose my job I probably won't be able to afford it any more, but until that happens I'd rather drink good wine if possible :-)."

"Thanks GB," says P, "but please don't be too extravagant!"

Ignoring P, I ask one of the waiters to bring us a reasonable looking 1999 Volnay premier cru from a top négociant, before settling down to chat to him and D.

"So have you guys been up to much recently?" I ask.

"Well a few weeks ago," starts P, smiling at me, "we saw my friend XXXX that you met a couple of years ago :-)."

Glancing at D, I realise that suddenly he looks distinctly unhappy, which wipes the smile off P's face as soon as he notices.

"Yes, … , well," continues P, acknowledging the situation, "D and XXXX seem to have fallen out :-(."

I can see that it's a difficult subject for them, so I start talking about something else. But later in the evening, when P is talking to another gay colleague, I manage to ask D what the problem is.

"Well GB," begins D quietly, so as not to attract P's attention, "when we visited XXXX, he asked me what I'd been up to recently, while P was out buying the Sunday papers. So I told him that I'd had a little fling with this older guy, it wasn't anything serious, the older guy was a married man who'd only recently realised that he was gay and he needed a bit of support. Actually I haven't seen him for ages now. Anyway the following week, XXXX called P and they went out for a drink together, and XXXX told P all about this other guy :-(!"

"But why on earth did you tell XXXX in the first place?" I ask, feeling that D only has himself to blame.

"Anyway, P then confronts me," continues D, ignoring my question.

"But he knows that you sometimes play around a bit doesn't he?"

"Yes I suppose so, but he doesn’t like it much. But he was livid that I'd told XXXX about it!"

"So why did you tell him?" I ask again, hopeful of getting an answer this time.

"Well, I'd had a little *fun* with XXXX too, ages and ages ago now," answers D sheepishly, clearly regretting the incident, "so I guess I thought I could talk to him about these things. Actually I said to P 'I bet XXXX never told you about the time we he had sex with me'! So I never want to see XXXX again, now I know that he breaks confidences like that :-(."

At this revelation, I only just manage to suppress my desire to burst out laughing, because it's sounds exactly like an excerpt from a farce! None the less, it's an unfortunate incident, and is clearly a point of contention between the two of them. But perhaps P just needs to relax a bit? D always seems very committed to P, so it would be a pity if some irrelevant sex gets in the way of their relationship.