Lance shook his head and kissed him again.
“I don’t care what my mother thinks, Tanner. I don’t give two flying fucks what she thinks. Truly. I’ve devoted half my life to making her happy—I’m not giving her this.” Lance’s certaintyconvinced Tanner of his sincerity, so he relented with a sigh, relaxing in Lance’s embrace.
Lance hugged him closer, kissing him on the lips and forehead. Tanner was drawn instinctually to Lance’s heat. He felt safe there. Safe like few places made him feel.
“I’m so glad you’re feeling better now,” Lance whispered into Tanner’s hair. “I’m so fucking glad.”
Tanner dropped off to sleep feeling the warmth and safety that only Lance could provide.
Chapter 19
Lance woke to an empty bed, and a silent house.
It had been a difficult night. Tanner had woken again and again, yelling and thrashing around. Every time Lance jolted awake, he felt as if he’d lost another year of his life. Attempts to calm his wild animal of a boyfriend had been quite the challenge.
The last time they’d woken had been around 5:00 a.m., and that was the end of the nightmares. The beside clock now read 8:15 a.m. How in the hell had Tanner managed to slip out of bed without his noticing it?
Sighing with exhaustion from sleeping so poorly, he got up and put on some sleep pants. Moving slowly down the stairs, he rubbed his eyes and gave a jaw cracking yawn. The kitchen was empty as well and there weren’t any signs of Tanner having fixed anything before leaving the house. The coffeemaker wasn’t even turned on. Wherever Tanner had gone, he’d left in a hurry, without fixing coffee or breakfast.
He made himself a cup of joe and headed into the living room, grabbing his cellphone from the charger to check his messages in case Tanner had left him one.
He found three missed calls from his mother, a voicemail from Parker, and an unread text from Jeremy.
Jeremy
Parker told me.
Hope your BF is ok. Mom’ll come around.
You should have told us.
While Jeremy’s text didn’t exactly shower him with love and acceptance, it was a ringing endorsement compared to his mother’s ugly attack the night before. Too tired to respond, he left it for later.
He moved on to Parker’s voicemail.
“Hey—uh—so, listen—I don’t really know what the fuck to say, Lance. Kind of a shocker, you know?” He paused for a quick laugh before continuing. “I don’t care. Like, at all. I have a frat brother who’s gay. Doesn’t bother me, you know, I just—I never would have guessed.” Lance could easily visualize Parker’s nervous habit of running his hands through his hair while awkwardly explaining himself. “Just call Mom back, ‘K? We can, like, fix things.”
Maybe. Maybe things could be fixed. Lance just wasn’t sure how long it would take to return to normalcy after her tantrum in the driveway. At the moment, he had a much bigger issue to deal with than calling his bitchy mother. He sighed and skimmed through his contacts list to find Tanner’s name. There were no new messages, no missed calls. Nothing at all. Alarmed, he quickly pressed Tanner’s number.
It rang six times before Tanner’s voicemail picked up. The generic kind that simply stated the phone number and requested that he leave a message after the beep. While Lance usually didn’t leave messages for Tanner, he forced himself to leave one this time.
“Hey, I don’t know where you are, and I’d really like it if you could like—give me a sign of life before I call the National Guard and go on a wild goose chase only to find out later that you went for a drive or some shit,” he paused and chuckled, running a hand through his hair. “Sorry, I don’t mean to be smothering you or anything, but—” he laughed again, and realized he was about to run out of time. “Anyway, call me back? Or send me a text. Something, alright?”
And then he hung up and began to wait.
His patience ran out after about 20 minutes, so he called Tanner’s sister.
“Lance?” Cameron was surprised by his call. He could hear the sizzle of bacon frying in the background and his mouth suddenly watered. He’d been sick with nerves, so worried about Tanner’s whereabouts that he hadn’t been able to eat anything yet.
“Hey—uh, did you hear from Tanner this morning?”
A fork, or something metallic, dropped onto the stove, as Cameron replied, “No, nothing. Why, did something happen?”
Taking a deep breath, Lance wondered how to put this so she wouldn’t freak out.
“Kinda—yeah,” he confessed. “We went to my mother’s 4th of July party yesterday, and there were fireworks—”
She cut him off with an angry shout, “You took him to a fireworks show? Are you insane?”
