5. Tanner
TANNER
The house is quiet, exhaustion hanging over me like a second skin.
I was unprepared meeting Fallon’s new boyfriend, Otto.
I probably should have been more worried he wanted to fight, but I was just too tired.
We talked like adults but that didn’t assuage the nervous energy he was throwing off.
I knew I had to tell him—admit to him that I’m gay and not a threat to the life he’s building with my ex-wife.
And I did.
Overall, he took it remarkably better than my parents had.
I thought it would be freeing to finally be able to admit it and it is, but it’s brought a whole new wave of emotions in its wake.
I wish I’d had more time before meeting Otto, more time to acclimate myself to this town.
My mother had been shocked but at least outwardly willing to be supportive, however my father had left the room.
He’d turned his back on me, and despite my mother’s reassurance that he’d come around, I don’t think there’ll be a day where that moment isn’t the default memory burned into my brain.
I downplayed that when Fallon had asked how seeing them had gone. No reason to worry her any more than she already is. She didn’t see that me uprooting my life after I finished my contract with the air force was less of a sacrifice than she’d made.
But six years is a long time to live in one reality while having to face another. Fallon had wanted to come back to Clementine Creek, and I wasn’t going to tell her no. Her parents are here, and now, I’ve been briefed that her boyfriend’s family makes up half the town, so we have them too.
Or she does.
Briggs does.
And they deserve that.
These people have no reason to welcome me here.
I’d seen the looks Fallon and I got at the diner the day I arrived, the time right before Otto had landed on my doorstep.
I was labeled an outsider and the tension was thick in the room.
She assured me the Thayers are different but what does that even mean?
Otto and I had gone to the school to pick up Briggs together—a united front of sorts. I’d taken Briggs home and he’d taken Fallon, but I’d seen the way she stared at Otto in the parking lot.
I felt the bond between them.
The love.
I’d seen the certainty that no matter what lay ahead, they’d tackle it together.
That had been us once too.
But Fallon and I hadn’t looked like that.
Our relationship had been a whirlwind and then one of necessity, and while our love runs deep, it’s not romantic and I’m not sure it ever was.
It certainly didn’t look like that.
And it makes me wonder if I’ll ever get the chance to have that kind of connection with someone.
Maybe it’s too soon to tell, but it feels like I’ve lived a lifetime in the past couple of months and I’m begging for a reprieve.