Chapter 11 Tanner #2
“You’re nothing like them,” I say.
He snorts. “You don’t know that.”
“I do. You’ve been an amazing Uncle Des.
You were there for them when their mother died.
You show up.” Des helped with little things like school pickups and grocery runs, but he was also this shoulder for them, for all of us.
He’d take them on drives in his sports car with the top down and make sure they had a disgusting amount of Christmas presents under the tree.
He turns to me, his eyes shining slightly in the dark. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“You don’t have to. They just need someone who cares.”
“You think I care?”
“I think you’re still here.”
That shuts him up. For a moment, the only sound is the soft whoosh of the fan overhead.
“I used to be jealous of you, you know,” he says suddenly.
“What?”
“In high school. Your house. Your family. The way your parents hugged you. The way they liked each other. It felt…like a different planet.”
“They weren’t perfect.”
“Didn’t need to be. They were safe.”
He closes his eyes for a moment, then opens them again.
“I don’t know how you did it,” he says. “How you had kids. Got married. And then…lost Katie. You’re a single dad to four kids. How are you not exhausted?”
“I’m definitely exhausted. That’s par for the course,” I admit.
“Here’s the thing: I don’t know how I’m doing it, but it doesn’t matter because I’m doing it.
There are tough times, and I get through them.
All those nightmare scenarios in your head right now—sick kids barfing on you, the grossest diaper blowouts you’ve ever seen, trips to the ER—they’ve happened, and they sucked, and I got through all of them. How did you get through cancer?”
“One chemo treatment at a time,” he says.
“We’re resilient, and so are they,” I say, something I need to remind myself about constantly. I sit up, feeling a crease in my forehead. “But I still worry. All the time. Even though I know we can get through things, I still worry. I worry that I’m not enough.”
The darkness truth serum has come for me, too, apparently.
“You’re more than enough.”
The words come out so fast I almost miss them. He doesn’t look at me when he says it, like he didn’t mean to speak it aloud.
“Thanks,” I say softly.
A long pause stretches between us. Not uncomfortable—just…full. Like the kind of silence that means something.
“I used to think we’d grow up and live down the street from each other,” I say. “You’d still be you, climbing some ad agency ladder. And I’d be the dad of four, waving from the porch.”
Des smiles. “Instead, I’m sleeping in your bed and pretending to be your husband.”
I laugh. “Plot twist.”
He turns his head, looks at me. His face is relaxed now, free of all the tension he carries at work. There’s something boyish in it, something familiar.
“Did you ever…think about this?” he asks.
“What?”
“Us. Ending up here. Like this.”
I don’t answer right away. I don’t know how to. Because the truth is—yeah, I thought about it. When we were teenagers. When we were both buzzed off cheap beer and lying on our backs looking up at the fake stars, hands so close to touching I still got an electric jolt.
As Hank once noted, I am a slut for monogamy.
I prefer long-term relationships. I had one girlfriend throughout high school.
Des would sometimes have two girls in one night.
Girls threw themselves at him, the cute, cocky, charming-as-fuck athlete.
He was irresistible and he knew it. He wouldn’t turn them away.
A few closeted guys would slip him notes or give him loaded stares across crowded parties. He had them, too.
I was Des’s safe harbor, a port among the storm of wild high school times. The reliable friend who was immune to his bullshit.
I cherish our friendship, but I wondered what it would be like if we were something more.
I never thought of myself as gay because it was only Des who made me feel these things.
It was confusing. I used to assume that these feelings were just really strong friendship feelings.
It wasn’t until recently, with the new vocabulary of the times, that I discovered I’m demisexual.
I have to know the person before feeling attraction toward them.
And for all of my life, that person had always been female. Des was the exception.
But Des always made it clear. He didn’t want a family. Didn’t want kids. I had way too much baggage. And I respected that.
So I kept it buried.
“I thought about you being around,” I say carefully. “I thought…it’d be nice. To have you close.”
He nods. “Same.”
I feel it again—that urge. Like a magnet behind my ribs. I want to reach for him. I want to see what it would be like, just once, to pull him into a ravenous, passionate kiss—not a polite courthouse kiss.
But I don’t. Because he’s here as my friend. Because this is pretend. Because he said it himself—he never wanted this life.
Cancer almost took him from me. I can’t risk losing him again. I know what it feels like to lose your partner. I’ve already gone through that hell once.
He shifts slightly, getting comfortable. His eyes drift closed.
“Thanks,” he murmurs. “For everything.”
“Of course.”
“Night, Tan.”
“Night, Des.”
I lie there, eyes open, listening to the soft sound of his breathing. The fan spins overhead. A car passes outside.
And for the first time in a long while, I don’t feel lonely in this bed.
Just confused.
And maybe…hopeful.
But mostly confused.