Chapter 18 #2
“Yo!” Parker jumped from behind the bar to give Lance a bear hug, nearly knocking him to the ground.
“Jesus, you’re big,” Lance laughed as he staggered backwards a few steps, somehow managing to remain upright. Parker pounded him on the back and just laughed as Lance punched him in the shoulder. “You remember Tanner,” he said, nodding towards his highly amused boyfriend, who seemed to get a real kick out of watching Lance get manhandled.
“I sure do!” Parker exclaimed happily, giving Tanner a fist bump.
“How are the ribs?” Tanner asked, since the last time he’d seen him, he’d been injured and in a lot of pain.
“Better with every tequila shot,” Parker answered with an exuberant laugh. “Do you guys want me to mix you some drinks?” he asked, jumping back behind the bar and grabbing some glasses.
“Yes, please!” Tanner replied, chuckling.
“What would you like? I have some amazing top shelf booze and a gazillion mixers here, bro!”
“No Gatorade.” Lance had no idea how Tanner was able to maintain a straight face when he said that. Parker burst out laughing and gave them both a high five in response.
“So, how about I make you guys the all-American classic?”
“Which is?” Lance asked, watching as his brother began to pour different ingredients into the blender.
“Margueritas, baby!” Parker replied with enthusiasm.
“Pretty sure those are Mexican,” Lance remarked with a laugh.
“Yeah but stealing shit and taking credit for it is definitely American,” Tanner agreed with a proud smile. Parker snapped his fingers and pointed at him in the universal gesture for exactly .
“How very unpatriotic of you, G.I.,” Lance criticized with an exaggerated frown.
“I’m retired.”
Parker snorted and passed their drinks across the bar.
“G.I.?” Parker asked, leaning against the bar. “You were in the military?”
“Yep. Army. Helicopter pilot.” He always kept his answer short and to the point when asked that question. His tone indicated that he didn’t care to elaborate further, and most people got the message loud and clear.
“Jeez! That’s fucking cool. How come you’ve been hanging out with his lame ass?” Parker barely dodged a punch from Lance.
“Because I don’t want to pay to have my income taxes done.”
Lance laughed and elbowed him in the ribs, forcing Tanner to yank his drink out of the way to keep from spilling it.
“Where’s Jeremy? I want to go noogie his bald head and tease him about it,” Lance said, looking around for his youngest brother.
“Where do you think? Hiding inside playing World of Warcraft or some weird shit like that,” Parker replied. “Anyway, I love hanging out with you guys, but you better take a hike so I can get back to making drinks.” He nodded towards the line forming behind them.
“Fair enough. Don’t poison anyone!” Lance advised with a casual wave before dragging Tanner away from the bar.
They found a nice, out of the way, shady spot at the edge of the backyard that had several lounge chairs. With no one nearby, they could sit and talk without being disturbed.
“Income taxes, huh?” Lance asked as they sat down, shaking his head and laughing in disbelief.
Tanner shrugged then sipped his drink. “What was I supposed to say? That I think you have an exceptionally fine ass? I don’t think that would have gone over too well.”
“No, I guess not,” Lance agreed. Sipping on his marguerita, he recognized that Parker was, in fact, a gifted mixologist, despite his rotgut booze creations at his frat house. Lance shuddered, remembering the last time he’d been there. “This marguerita is infinitely better than Gatorade and vodka.”
“I think your mom’s bar budget for this party might be a tad higher than that of a frat house party. Though, to be honest, I’ve had worse than Gatorade and vodka.”
“Yeah? Like what?” Lance relaxed back in his chair, looking forward to hearing the story.
“One time we got this assignment in a place so remote that we called it Bumfuck, Egypt. After about two months into our time there, one of the guys got a care package from his wife. The box had the usual shit in it. You know, cookies, candy bars, and Red Bull. But she’d somehow also managed to sneak him a bottle of Everclear.”
“Ah, shit! That stuff is gross,” Lance said, shaking his head.
“Yep. It’s always gross, but this was the 95% alcohol one. It was basically just plain ole rubbing alcohol. Anyway, one night, all the guys in our section of the barracks were cleared of duty assignments. So, this dude gets out the Everclear, and three cans of Red Bull, which was not nearly enough as the mixer part of this for the ten of us but it’s all we had. He got an empty gallon water jug from the mess tent and mixed all that shit together. Each one of us had been issued a small tin coffee cup to carry in our rucksacks, so we used those to make sure everyone got an equal share. I will never forget the first drink I took of that shit. I swear, it tasted like I’d stuck my tongue in a wall socket. There’s no other way to describe it.”
“Oh God!” Lance burst out laughing and shook his head in disgust. He’d tried the 60% alcohol one in college and had nearly thrown up, even though his had been heavily diluted with Sprite and melted ice.
“Yeah. It was bad. Reallllly bad, yet—not as bad as the next morning.”
“Bad hangover?”
“Bad? I’m not sure how it’s even possible, but it burned even worse on the way up.”
Lance groaned in sympathy as Tanner laughed.
“It was Chris’s alcohol of choice,” Tanner added, shaking his head at the insanity of it all. “He used to say, ‘If I’m gonna get fucked up, I don’t want to remember it!’ Real fucking moron if there ever was one.”
He was obviously fond of the guy. Lance hesitated to ask about him, but it felt much too important to let this moment slip away without knowing the whole story.
“Where’s Chris now?”
Tanner shook his head and took a sip of his drink, his smile fading as he avoided Lance’s gaze.
“Chris was my copilot,” he explained, voice tight with pain. “I’m pretty sure he died in the crash, but if he didn’t—then he was still in the helo when it blew up.”
“I’m really sorry,” Lance offered in sincere sympathy while deeply regretting asking about the guy.
“Thank you,” he said, voice low. Tanner turned to him then and met his gaze. “He was a good guy. A great guy, even. He’s been dead for over three years now. It’s alright to remember the shit that happened before, too, you know. Not just the sad parts, but the funny parts too.” It sounded like a line from his shrink. Like something he might be trying to talk himself into believing and just needed more practice saying it out loud.
“Sure, yeah,” Lance agreed with him, glad to see a glint of humor in Tanner’s eyes.
They had almost polished off their drinks when Jeff came by to chat. He was the kind of stepfather you didn’t mind getting to know. He wasn’t a father figure to Lance. Had never been. Would never be. But he was a good man who’d helped a broken woman to heal and flourish. If for no other reason, that made him a decent man in Lance’s opinion.
“Well, hi there, son!” Jeff’s greeting was warm and welcoming.
Lance smiled and got up to shake Jeff’s hand.
“You doing alright? Your mom is handling the PR side of things, so I thought I’d swing by and catch up. Feels as if I haven’t seen you in ages.”
“I’m well, thanks. Business is great and Parker’s drinks are pretty good, so what else can I ask for?”
Jeff laughed and then turned to Tanner. “Hi, Tanner! Good to see you again, son! And thanks again for all your help with that Parker situation—truly.”
Tanner rose with a wince to shake hands with Jeff.
“I was happy to do whatever I could for those two. It was a tough deal for everyone concerned.”
After releasing Tanner’s hand, Jeff glanced down at his left leg, which he had been bending slightly to keep weight off it. “You okay there? Need a doc to look at that leg? You look like me after a few too many games of squash! I got a good friend of mine here, Dr. Carson. He’s head of orthopedics at St. John’s, I’m sure he could—”
“No, no,” Tanner interjected, before Jeff could call the doctor over and get anything started that could quite easily turn into a real shitshow. “Old injury, all good. Nothing that can’t be fixed with a little more tequila,” Tanner joked. Jeff laughed right along with him and Lance.
“Are you an athlete like our Lance here? Did you play college ball too?”
“No, sir,” Tanner replied, and reluctantly went on to explain, “I was in the military. Got injured during deployment.” His tone was polite and reserved, his usual method of discouraging further inquiries.
Apparently, Jeff was well versed in these kinds of conversations, because he nodded solemnly and held out his hand again.
“Well, thank you for your service, son.”
Tanner shook his hand, and they exchanged a look of mutual understanding and regard.
“You said you were in the military. I assume you are retired, now? What work do you do? Are you also an accountant?” Jeff asked, showing sincere interest. Tanner must have found this surprising because he shot Lance an inquiring look before explaining his status.
“I was medically discharged recently, so I’m working for the family business right now. Going to school for a degree in mechanics in the fall.”
“Hell of a young man you are. Turning your life around so quickly,” Jeff said admiringly. “I tell you what, when you’re done with school, or if you ever need anything at all, just let me know, alright? I work with all sorts of companies. I have contacts all over the place. I’ll happily pull a few strings for you.”
“That’s very kind.” Tanner was both surprised and humbled by Jeff’s offer. “Thank you, that’s—incredibly generous, but even after I graduate, I don’t know that I’ll be all that valuable to anyone in the job market,” Tanner said with a small, self-deprecating laugh.
Jeff looked doubtful. “Well, what did you do in the military?”
“I was a helicopter pilot,” Tanner said, looking from Lance to Jeff uncertainly. “Rescue missions, mostly. Medical evacuations and emergency extractions.”
“And he doubts his value in the job market, he says,” Jeff said with a light laugh, clapping Tanner on the shoulder. “Son, technical skills can be taught, but finding someone who can work under pressure, be a team player, and a reliable employee, that I can’t teach. When you’re ready, you let me know and I’ll have a couple dozen interviews lined up. You just wait, there’s a whole lot of places out there that would just love to have you on board!” He said it with such confidence that it was impossible not to believe him.
“Well, uh, —” Tanner stuttered, shooting a panicked look at Lance. “Thank you.” Jeff gave him a big smile and a quick wink.
“It’s the very least I can do for a friend of Lance’s. Now, I’d better get back to your mother before she thinks I’ve deserted her and sends a team of US Marshals after me,” he said with a rumbling laugh.
Lance smiled and waved at Jeff as he headed back towards the house.
“He seems like a good guy,” Tanner said after Jeff was out of earshot.
“Sure is,” Lance agreed.
“Kind of surprising, quite frankly.”
Lance turned to look at him, thoroughly confused. “What? Why?”
“I mean—maybe I didn’t understand you correctly, but—didn’t your mother like—leave you in charge of your brothers so she could start a home with him?”
“Well, yeah.” Lance couldn’t figure out where Tanner was going with this.
“He doesn’t seem like the type who’d force your mother to choose between him and your brothers.”
Ah. Okay, now he understood what was bothering Tanner.
“He is not the type of person to force her into anything. My mother didn’t tell him she had kids. Not until much later, when I was leaving for college, and she had to take back full responsibility and care for Parker and Jeremy herself.”
“I’m sorry, but what the actual fuck?” Tanner’s voice rose steadily with each word until he finished with a screech. Startled, Lance turned to look at him, not sure what Tanner’s problem was. “Let me see if I have this shit straight. Your mother left you in charge of your two younger brothers so she could fuck off and find a new man who didn’t even know she had three kids? Who the fuck does shit like that to their kids?”
Tanner was furious on his behalf. That much was obvious. But Lance wasn’t sure this was the right time or place to have this conversation. He wanted Tanner to like his family. But as the Bard once said, “truth will out.” Maybe it was best to lay it all out there and just be done with it.
Lance collapsed into his lounge chair with a heavy sigh. Tanner plopped down in the chair next to him.
“I know what she did sounds insane, but at the time it made sense.”
“I don’t know how that’s possible but go on.”
“My mother had me when she was 16. My father was a piece of shit who drank too much and had no trouble slamming his fist into—just about anything and everyone he could get his hands on, including her and me. At the time, she was a waitress working a lot of double shifts to put food on the table and attending night classes to become a paralegal. By the time she finished her degree and had the means to get out of there, she’d had two more kids, Parker and Jeremy. Then one day my dad got into serious trouble, got busted, and ended up in jail. So suddenly, she was the wife of a convict and stuck supporting three kids.” Sighing, he rubbed the back of his neck to ease the tension.
Tanner’s hand settled on his knee, his eyes kind and sympathetic.
“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”
Maybe he didn’t, but now that he’d started telling the story, he might as well finish it.
“I kind of want to,” Lance said with a shrug. “Anyway, so my mom filed for divorce while my dad was in jail and started looking for full-time work. Mom got the first job she could find as a paralegal, which was two hours away. She couldn’t commute every day, so she left me in charge, and slept in a motel Monday through Friday. It wasn’t a perfect situation by any means. But she was able to make a lot more money than she did at the restaurant. She met Jeff on the job. Apparently, he was smitten with her from her first day there, and it was, you know, love at first sight.”
“No, I wouldn’t know,” Tanner said, an amused expression on his face. “I don’t have any feelings for anyone whatsoever.”
Lance gave him a quick wink and continued the story. “It was like this whole new life for her. No one knew who she was. No one knew she’d been married to a piece of shit. Or that she’d been a high school drop out. Or a teen mom. Clean slate. It was truly a fresh start, and I guess she wanted to keep it that way, so—she didn’t tell him.”
“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 time to 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.