Chapter Two
Tommy
The smell of dinner still hung in the air when Tommy and Bobby came into the living room an hour later. The kids had eaten, the twins toddled around, Davey and Collin finished their homework, and Carrie sat on the couch, braiding her hair. Mike had texted while they were on the way home, said he decided to sleep over at his friend’s house, which wasn’t really like him, and Tommy couldn’t decide if it was a good thing, that he was finally doing normal shit like every other kid his age, or if he should be worried Mike was out getting into trouble. Which would also be kind of normal, but either way, he figured he couldn’t really do anything about it, so he just texted back: Don’t be late for school tomorrow and make sure you get your homework done.
Which was stupid, honestly. Of all the kids, Mike and probably Carrie were the two he never really needed to remind about anything.
Mike’s response was quick and simple: Will do. And done. Say goodnight to everyone for me.
Judy smiled when they walked in, put a plate in the microwave. “I saved you some,” she said, then nodded to the twins. “They didn’t want to take their baths until you got home.” Any annoyance at their stubbornness was covered up by her fond expression. Tommy could identify. Yeah, babies that age were kind of a pain in the ass, but his were pretty okay.
He picked Max up as soon as he was in reach, settled at the kitchen bar with him as the microwave dinged. “Were you a good boy?” he asked, and Max nodded. Judy shot him a look, which told Tommy Max was probably an unholy terror, but he didn’t press for details. Instead, he kissed the top of Max’s head and thanked Judy when she set a plate in front of him.
“You didn’t get a haircut,” she pointed out.
“The only places open wanted fifty bucks for it. I’ll do it myself.”
Max nodded his agreement, even if he didn’t know what he was agreeing with, and reached for a potato on Tommy’s plate.
“Didn’t you get enough at dinner?” Tommy asked, cutting his food into smaller pieces and sliding some closer to Max on the plate.
“Is good,” Max said with a nod before stuffing some into his mouth.
“Yeah it is,” Tommy said with a squeeze for Max, even though he hadn’t tasted it yet.
Bobby, in a fresh hoody and thick socks, took a seat next to him, picked up Zoe when she waddled over to him. She was more polite and waited for him to offer her something from his own plate. She didn’t refuse it, though.
“Did you two get everything sorted out?” Judy asked, leaning across from them with a glass of wine.
Tommy shrugged. Did they? Not really. He was still unsettled and a little annoyed. “Nah.”
“Some,” Bobby countered. “We don’t know where we want the wedding, but we know we don’t want the courthouse. We know we don’t want to dump a bunch of money on it, but we want something nice.” He paused and took a bite, grinned at Tommy as he swallowed. “We know Tom’s favorite color.”
“Blue,” Judy said. At the look Tommy gave her, she shrugged. “You always pick blue.”
Having someone around who noticed shit like that was unnerving. But nice too. “I didn’t know I did that.”
She snorted a laugh but didn’t say anything else on the topic. After a few moments of eating in silence, Judy wiping down the counters, she said, “I don’t want to overstep—”
“Since when?” The words, along with a disbelieving laugh, were out before Tommy could stop them.
“Since now,” she said, reaching to pinch his cheek, laughing with him because, obviously, she couldn’t argue with it. “Since I got everything I wanted.” She dropped her hand back to her wine and took a small sip. “My son is in love and happy and has a partner—whom I adore. I have pseudo-grandchildren piled to the rafters; my house is full of laughter and arguments and dirty dishes and dirty clothes and life. And you did that.”
Tommy didn’t know what to say to that. Though, he nearly apologized—and why? He had no idea. For putting her out. For mooching free rent off her. For the hassle and the headaches and the work that came with all of them. But for whatever reason, she said it like it was the best thing that had ever happened to her, and you don’t apologize for that, right? The backs of his eyes burned, so he looked at his plate and only nodded in response, grateful when she went on.
“But is there a reason you don’t want to just get married here? If we wait until early summer, everything will be blooming, so you wouldn’t need a lot of decorations or flowers. There’s plenty of room. We could do an arch in the yard by the fence where the honeysuckle grows, and the roses would be budding, and… it might be nice.”
She sounded like there was a lot more to her ideas than what she said, and Tommy wondered how long she’d been thinking about it. Was it something she’d always wanted for Bobby? Get married at home, surrounded by friends and family, in the yard she worked so hard on. The place where Bobby played when he was a little boy, where he probably skinned his knees and cried in her arms, laughed and spent afternoons on the swing set, chased butterflies. Maybe where he hung out with friends when he got older, had cookouts with his parents, played catch with his father. The place where, now, Tommy had a lot of his best memories too. Watching the kids with the dog, running through the sprinkler in the summertime, ice cream on the back deck while the sun went down, sitting out at the firepit, laughing and talking together. Hours spent watching hummingbirds do their thing, bunnies hiding in the bushes that burst with pink and blue flowers as soon as the snow melted. Max and Zoe picking dandelions.
That was special, right? Hell, considering where they were not even three years ago, it was a goddamn miracle. “That sounds… pretty fuckin’ great, actually.”
Judy arched a brow at the curse but shockingly didn’t say anything.
He looked at Bobby, who hadn’t said a word. “What about you, copper? Think it sounds okay?”
Bobby cleared his throat and nodded, rested his chin on top of Zoe’s head. “I’m down for anything you want, Tom. But yeah. I can’t imagine anywhere better.” His eyes shimmered, and his cheeks pinked—hell, even his ears were red—and Tommy knew he was trying to hold it all in.
Before either of them could say anything else, though, Judy clapped and grinned at them both. “It’ll be perfect,” she said, tossing back the last of her wine. “Colleen and I have been talking about it, and we thought maybe hors d’oeuvres and desserts, nothing too intense, and we’ll borrow chairs, and I have several folding tables in the room over the garage and enough service wear for maybe fifty? How many guests were you thinking?”
So much for not overstepping. But Tommy didn’t mind. He knew he wanted something special, knew he wanted something that would make Bobby happy. He also knew the last thing he needed was to plan a damn wedding. He’d never even been to a wedding. “My guest list is exactly three people long,” he said with a laugh. “You go off. We’re only doin’ this shit once, so whatever you wanna do.” After a second thought, he added, “Keep it cheap.”
The look on her face told him what she thought of a cheap wedding, but she didn’t say anything.
“I’m assuming you’re not willing to wear a tux?” she asked instead.
Tommy didn’t even need to think about it. “When would I ever wear a tux again?” he asked. “I’ve got a good suit, so that’ll do.”
Judy nodded, her expression somewhere between resigned and agreement. “Bobby? Class A?”
He shrugged in answer, but Tommy thought he saw a flicker of something in his eyes. A beat later, he looked at Tommy and said, “It’d be free.”
“I like free.”
With a laugh, Bobby said, “Yeah, I know your love language.”
So that was settled. Bobby in his dress uniform, Tommy in a suit, a handful of guests, cheap and easy and very little input from the grooms on anything else.
Things simmered down, wedding-wise, after all of that was decided. Judy and Colleen and Carrie never discussed their plans around Tommy, or at least not much, and Tommy got to go back to life as usual and let the day roll up on him.
Until one afternoon, a month and change before the big day.
“Tommy?” Colleen took a sip from her coffee, standing in the kitchen, her eyes tired as usual but alert. “What about Pop? You want him there? At the wedding, I mean?”
“Not really, no.” The thought of Cal there rankled on some deep levels. Yeah, they’d seen more of him lately, more than Tommy liked. He’d been by with his letters, he’d made an effort to get to know the kids, been to a few family functions, but Jesus. Did he need to be there for what was probably the most important day of Tommy’s life?
But the look on Colleen’s face made him pause, made him rethink it. “Why? You think I should?”
“I don’t know,” she said with a shrug. “Couple years ago, if someone had asked that, I would’ve told ’em to fuck off.”
“But now?”
“But now it’s your wedding, and you should only have people there that make you happy.”
“He don’t make me happy, Col. I’m not sure he could ever make me happy.”
“Yeah, I get that. I just…”
“Spill.”
“What if he really does come around and he’s part of the family and does good and you regret not having him?”
“What if I invite him and he shows up drunk and pisses on the flowers and then throws up on the cake and I go to jail on my wedding day for killing him?”
She laughed, a little sad but also amused. “That’s definitely a possibility.”
“It’s too early in the morning to think about this,” Tommy said after a minute. “I’ll get back to you on it.”
But he never did. Never really thought about it again until one sunny afternoon in May, just a week or two before the wedding, when Cal came over for a cookout—at Judy’s invitation—to celebrate some award or another that Carrie got in school. Tommy couldn’t keep track of her accomplishments, or any of them, really, since they were all doing good. Even Davey, which Tommy never would’ve guessed was possible. Not so long ago, he’d assumed Davey would be sweating out his first stint in juvie by now. Who knew?
So when Cal showed up with a potted plant in one hand and a grocery bag with chips and grapes and homemade cupcakes, Tommy gave him a hard look. Not because he was pissed off, not because he didn’t want Cal there or want his plant or his fucking cupcakes—which he didn’t—but because Colleen’s words were in his ear. What if he gets his shit together? Had he? Gotten his shit together? This sobriety stretch was definitely lasting longer than any others had, so maybe.
While the kids ran around the yard and Cal played with the twins and the dog and Judy put food out, Tommy pulled Bobby aside.
“Think we should invite him?”
“Your father? To the wedding?”
“No, the dog.”
Bobby snorted a laugh. “I mean, honestly, I’d be less surprised if you wanted the dog to be your best man than I am about you wanting to invite your father, Tom.”
“I didn’t say I want to, but I wonder if I should.”
“I think it’s our day and you should only have to deal with people who don’t make you feel like you have to deal with them, know what I mean?”
“Yeah.” He got that. Got that only people who were easy and made him happy should be at their wedding. But for one flash of a second, while Carrie sat in the grass making a chain of tiny flowers and prattled on at Cal about the food and garden and the colors and all the shit she and Judy and Colleen were planning—most of which Tommy hadn’t even heard about—and Max climbed on Cal’s back and Zoe shared crackers with him and Collin rolled around with the damn dog and Davey and Mike showed Cal memes on their phones, Tommy wanted to knock the shit out of Cal. Wanted to tell him to get the fuck back out of their lives and take his chaos and his bullshit and his lies and whatever the fuck else and hit the goddamn street.
But he wasn’t bringing chaos. The kids were all safe from his drama. If there was any. If there were any lies. Because what he did to himself now didn’t affect any of them. They were safe to be around him and safe to care about him if they wanted to, safe to be kids in a way they never were before. Because for maybe the first time in his life, Cal O’Shea was doing the right thing.
And before Tommy could think about it or stop himself or change his mind, he said, “Yeah, you wanna come, Pop?”
Bobby nearly fell over, coughed as he choked on a hot dog, but he didn’t say anything, didn’t argue, didn’t ask Tommy if he was out of his damn mind—which, clearly, he was.
And Cal looked almost as surprised. “Are you sure about that, son?”
“No,” Tommy said honestly. “But if you wanna come, then you should.”
He didn’t wait for Cal’s response, just stood and walked away, distracted himself by helping with the grill and telling Collin to watch the dog and asking Colleen if she wanted another burger. Because he couldn’t think about it anymore.