“But didn’t she have to go home every weekend? Wasn’t that a bit suspicious?”
“It might have been at times, I don’t know, but he was a junior partner at this big law firm. He hardly ever had any weekends free. Sometimes she wouldn’t come home. She’d call me, tell me to grab some money for pizza out of the emergency stash and that she’d see us in a week. Whatever she told him, it must have worked, because they dated for three years, and he never knew about us that whole time.”
“How’d he eventually find out?” Tanner was amazed that she’d been able to keep her secret for three damned years.
Lance grimaced as he recalled that fucked up night when everything came to a head. A total shitshow of epic proportions.
“Dad got an early release for good behavior. He showed up one night at the house, completely smashed, and ready to burn it down. Jeremy and Parker were already in bed. He was yelling like a fucking madman on the front porch, and I was scared he’d break in. We’d changed the locks after he got locked up, but—I mean my dad’s a big guy, he’d have broken down the door.”
“What did you do?” Tanner could only imagine how terrified Lance must have been trying to protect his younger brothers from their violent father. Even though Tanner had certainly suffered his own fair share of terrifying incidents, at least none of them had ever involved anyone in his family.
“I called my mom. Told her what was happening. She was with Jeff at the time, and he figured it out pretty quickly. They were on a couples’ getaway in a hotel about 45 minutes away. Jeff called the cops, and showed up at the house just in timeto see my father get dragged off by four policemen, screaming about stabbing my mother in the face.”
“And Jeff didn’t get mad at her after he found out about what she had been hiding from him?” Tanner asked in stunned disbelief.
“I don’t—I don’t know, really. He just kind of—rolled with it? It was such a shitshow, and my mom—my mom was so happy with him that I think he just—didn’t care. He packed us up the next day and moved everything to his loft in the city. A year later they moved into this house. That was the year I went off to college.”
“So—you were how old? When your mother got her new job and left you in charge?”
He had to think about it for a minute. “I was maybe 13 or 14.”
“What?” Tanner snapped. “That’s way too fucking young for you to have that kind of responsibility!”
Lance shrugged. Maybe. He supposed so, yeah. He’d made do at the time because he had to. She’d done her best to deal with a shitty situation. Everything had worked out for the best in the end. He and his brothers had escaped a bad home situation and were all doing well now.
“It’s too young,” he conceded. “But it was the best solution for everyone, as difficult as it was.” He’d had his doubts at the time, but no longer.
Tanner shook his head and suddenly started laughing, as if Lance was missing something in this scenario.
“What?” he asked, wanting in on the joke.
“Just—you,” Tanner replied.
“Me?”
“Yeah, you—you’re amazing. You took care of so many things. Took on shit that shouldn’t have been yours to handle, and you’re not even bitter about it. You’re just—yeah, amazing.”
“It’s family. What else could I do?”
“That’s the thing, Rain Man. Most people wouldn’t have done all that. Not even for family. Just like they wouldn’t have given a fucked-in-the-head G.I. a second look, let alone a nice bed.”
“Technically it was a couch,” Lance corrected him with a smirk.
Tanner snorted then knocked back the rest of his drink.
“I’m going to need another marguerita to put up with your pedantic bullshit all night,” he informed Lance with a mock frown.
“Oh, pedantic! That’s a big word, jarhead. Careful now, don’t hurt yourself!” Lance replied with a laugh, earning him a smack on the back of the head.
“You’re such a jerk. I was in the Army. Jarheads are Marines.”
“Oh, and who’s the pedantic douchebag again?” Lance taunted Tanner, facing him as he walked backwards towards the bar. Tanner gave him a toothy smile, discreetly flipping him off by using his middle finger to scratch his nose.
The party was a hit. They’d chowed down on most of the potluck dishes, hit up Parker for another marguerita or three, and won a few rounds of cornhole. By 10:00, they were both stuffed and moaning from their last helpings of ribs and cake. Sprawled out in a lawn chair, Tanner complained about the additional weight from all that food and how he couldn’t stand or walk if his life depended on it. As the temperature dropped, people gravitated towards the firepit to listen to one of the neighborhood kids, Timmy, play his acoustic guitar. His rendering of “Sweet Caroline” needed some work, but the crowd enjoyed the songfest as he played several other Neil Diamond favorites. It made a nice backdrop as Lance and Tanner chatteddesultorily about which one of them was the best cornhole player and whether they’d ever be able to move again after eating all that food. His mother was somewhere in the house, entertaining her friends with a game of bridge, while Jeff helped Parker behind the bar. The party had begun to wind down and clean up was underway, but no one seemed in any rush to leave.
“I should go in the house and look for Jeremy before we leave. Make sure he hasn’t suffocated, buried under a mountain of cheese puffs and popcorn,” Lance said, chuckling at the image. Jeremy was a truly dedicated gamer, from the headset that appeared to be permanently attached, to the 24/7 obsession with junk food.
“Mind if I stay here? Leg’s being a bit—” Tanner didn’t say anything further as Lance winced in sympathy.
