“You left—” Lance said, his voice muffled by Tanner’s shirt. “I didn’t know where you were and after last night—” Lance’s voice trailed off.
“I left a note for you.”
“No, you didn’t,” Lance refuted, shaking his head, but not letting go of Tanner.
“Yes, I did,” Tanner countered quickly, pulling away from Lance to look down at him. “In the fruit basket. You have a banana every morning. Figured you’d see it there,” he explained with a shrug, nodding towards the kitchen.
And yeah, Lance had a banana almost every morning, except this morning, he’d felt too sick with nervous tension to bother eating.
“I—” Lance stammered in shock, feeling extremely foolish. Tanner chuckled and shook his head, then he leaned forward and pressed a kiss to Lance’s lips. He pulled Lance along behind him towards the kitchen.
“So, you called my sister—” Tanner said, shaking his head and sighing in resignation. “Have you notified the police yet?”
“No. It hasn’t been 24 hours,” he replied, his candor making Tanner chuckle. He grabbed the note from the fruit basket and handed it to Lance with a smirk.
Lance read it quickly.
Gone to see my shrink.
Be back later,
Xoxo
“Well, don’t I feel fucking stupid!” Lance ducked his head, looking abashed. Sitting down on a bar stool, Tanner grinned and pulled Lance towards him, positioning him between his legs.
“I didn’t want to wake you,again,” Tanner explained. “But I needed to see Dr. Jones. So, I called her up early this morning to get an emergency consult.”
“She does that?” He’d never heard of anyone being able to do that.
“Uh—I don’t know, actually. I think I sounded pathetic enough that she may have made an exception.”
“I’m so fucking sorry about last night.” Lance couldn’t help repeating himself because he felt so bad about taking Tanner to the party in the first place. He never should have allowed his mother to pressure him into going, and he vowed it would never happen again.
Tanner shook his head and looked up at Lance with a brilliant smile.
“But it wasn’t your fault.”
“Kinda was—” Lance replied with an eyeroll. Tanner suppressed his smile, trying to keep this discussion on a serious level.
“Here’s the thing—this morning, I was so damned angry—not with you, but with myself. I kept—I kept thinking, what kind of fucking idiot loses his shit at a barbecue, you know? Like—how am I ever supposed to get my life back together if I blow a fuse every time a car backfires, or someone lights a firecracker? I was so damned pissed. And sad. And I wanted to apologize and dive off a cliff at the same time.”
Lance opened his mouth to say something, but Tanner wasn’t done yet.
“That’s why I went to see her. And she said some interesting things.” Tanner said, his tone making it clear he hated to admit that his shrink might be helpful sometimes.
“What’d she say?” Lance asked, curious.
“She said I had a right to be angry.”
“Hell yeah, of course you do! You fucking asked me before the party about those goddamned fireworks, and I assured you—”
Tanner kissed him, which was the best, tried-and-true way to shut Lance up. “I’m not talking about you, honey.”
Lance sat back, pleasantly surprised to hear Tanner’s new pet name for him. Honey began running on an endless loop in his head, making him forget what he was going to say.
“She said I had the right to be angry with the people who fucked my life up. That I was allowed to holdthemresponsible, but that anger wouldn’t help me at all in getting my life back. And she’s right.” He sighed deeply. “I’m fucked in the head right now, Lance. And if—if what you saw last night scared you or makes you want to pull the plug on us, I’d totally understand. You know it’s probably going to happen again. And I’m okay with that. So, that means I have to be okay with the consequences too. Like your leaving me.”
It took a full minute for Lance to process all that.
