Me
Ok
I grabbed the letter from my passenger seat and headed inside. To my surprise, Liam, Caitlin, and Albert were there, in addition to Miguel and Mr. O’Neil. They’d brought in extra chairs from the dining room and were sitting around Mr. O’Neil’s desk. Liam was currently talking to someone on his cell. I paused just inside the doorway. “Oh, did I interrupt a meeting?”
Mr. O’Neil waved me in. “No, we’re all done with the meeting. They just wanted to be here to have your back.”
My eyes stung and my throat constricted. “Wow. That’s…thank you.” I didn’t trust myself to say anything else.
Miguel caught my attention and patted the empty chair next to him. “Have a seat. Liam is on the phone with Marco’s brother. He’s a big-time lawyer. He’s going to help you.”
I hadn’t even sat completely when I started to stand. “I don’t have money for a lawyer.”
Liam looked up from his phone and said, “Sit down. This is family. Your money’s no good here.” Everyone in the room looked at him in surprise. I sat back down like I was told.
Mr. O’Neil stared at his brother open-mouthed. Liam frowned at him and whispered, “What?”
“I’m not sure whether you dating Marco is good or bad,” Mr. O’Neil said.
Liam rolled his eyes and flipped his brother off, then returned his attention to his phone call. He said something to the person on the phone and then asked me, “Do you have the letter?”
I nodded mutely, still trying to process that a big-time lawyer was doing something for me for free. I handed Liam the letter. He opened it and took a picture of it. “I’m texting it to you now,” he said.
Miguel leaned over and said quietly, “I think we’ve been adopted.”
“You too?” I asked.
He nodded. “Mr. O’Neil heard about what Carlos did and asked me about it. When I said I was alone in my family, he told me Moonlight was all about found family.”
“What’s that mean?” I asked. “I’ve never heard of that before.”
He looked thoughtful. “It’s kind of a thing in the LGBTQIA+ community. A lot of folks on the rainbow spectrum have been thrown out by their families. They end up forming their own families out of people they meet on their journey.”
“Oh. Okay.” I wasn’t sure I would fit into this found family they were talking about since I wasn’t on the rainbow spectrum. I was just plain old me.
Miguel patted my hand. “Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it.”
Before I could respond, Liam came over with his phone extended to me. “He wants to talk to you.”
“Uh, okay,” I said as I took the phone from him. “Hello?”
“Zach,” the man on the other end said. “I’m Santino D’Angelo.”
“Hey, Mr. D’Angelo. Thank you for helping me out with this.”
He scoffed. “Eh. It’s nothing. And call me Tino. You’re a friend of Marco’s, so we’re practically family anyway.”
I wasn’t sure how much of a friend I was to Marco. I’d only met the guy a week ago. But I wasn’t going to turn away help when it came to me. “Thanks. I appreciate it.”
“So,” Tino began, “the good news is, they can’t make you leave with only a two weeks’ notice. Are you up to date on your rent payments?”
“Yes,” I replied. “I paid this month’s rent a week early because I was going to be at National Guard training on the first.”
“You’re in the National Guard, and they’re doing this? Assholes,” Tino grumbled. “Anyway, they have to honor the lease you signed, and so does the new owner, unless there’s a ‘termination due to sale’ clause in the lease. If that’s the case, the new owners don’t have to honor the lease.”
“Shit, I have no idea if that clause is in the lease, and I didn’t think to bring it with me.”
“Don’t panic,” Tino soothed. “Even if the clause is in there, they have to give you sixty days from the sale of the property to leave. As far as I can tell, they haven’t sold it yet.”
