7
A Strong Tucker
It started with this tiny thing he said when we were out with friends.
It was a rare night without the kids. Marcus was staying over at a classmate’s house while Joshua spent the night at my parents’ with his new best friend Kirkland Junior—an unlikely pairing who bonded over video games at the Halloween thing. My husband and I were near to finishing a rather neck-and-neck game of pool against Mindy and Joel when he made a sudden offhanded remark about how I’m “a total helicopter mom over the oven” and that everyone in our house has “learned to keep well away from the kitchen” until whatever I’m making is finished. I laughed it off like I was supposed to. Of course it was a joke, right?
Then why did it bother me?
Tanner didn’t bring it up later. Neither did I. When we got home and changed out of our clothes, I decided to set it aside and make a sexy game out of pulling off Tanner’s boxers the second he put them on.
But the alcohol won, and before we could manage even a minute of making out, Tanner was snoring on the bed.
And I sat up with my thoughts.
All night.
I made myself some chamomile tea, drank it all, then listened to the silent, childless house, imagining the fun they were having at their respective places.
Had half a mind to drop by my parents’, but didn’t want to cramp Joshua’s style.
Also, it was 3 AM.
Am I really such a monster in the kitchen? Have I bitten any of their heads off and miraculously don’t remember? Is he making a reference to something I did six and a half years ago when I was stressed out about a cakehismother asked me to bake last-minute for a baby shower?
Why would he make that joke?
Fast-forward to a long weekend in the middle of November. “Really? Like, never? Not even once?”
Bobby chuckles at my reaction. “I dunno. What’d you want me to say?”
“That Jimmy also makes you climb up the walls sometimes!” I laughingly answer.
This is Bobby, the soccer-playing, quick-footed husband of Tanner’s younger brother Jimmy. How both of the mayor’s sons ended up married to men is a question no one asks.
We’re at a sort of outdoor brunch thing in town, and it’s the first time I’ve run into Bobby in months. (I swear, Jimmy keeps the poor guy all to himself, greedy bastard.) Everyone’s here.Even Lance and Chad, whoneverseem to leave their house out in the country anymore.
“We both made the crazy decision to marry a Strong boy,” Bobby points out. “I think if we’re honest with ourselves, the boys drove us crazy even when we were dating. Nothing’s different. It’s just … years later.” He eyes me. “We knew dang well what we were gettin’ ourselves into.”
I snort. “Touché.”
“And while we’vecertainlyhad our moments,” he goes on with a smile, “I wouldn’t say I ever thought of kicking him to the curb.”
His husband Jimmy, on cue, hops onto a picnic table to prove to someone that he can, in fact, do a modified Michael Jacksonish grab-his-crotch-while-on-his-tippy-toes dance move. He grips his hat—the same old threadbare thing he’s worn for years, loose muscle shirt billowing in the wind, third bottle of beer in the air—and does the move with gusto. Twelve times in a row. Each time spilling his beer over the table to a crowd of whistling friends and coworkers from the gym he runs with his husband.
Bobby bristles. “Yet,” he then adds.
I lean back against the wooden fence lining the pond. “So youdowant to wring his neck now and then?”
“Since the day we met.” He goes for a sip of beer—then stops. “Jimmy’s like a party that has no end. Even when I want it to. Even when I’m tired and whiny and just wanna go to bed. Is that what it means to be a Strong? To just …bestrong? Keep the party going and going?” He glances off. “But I love it. I love that he’s always a party … because it’s a party I’m always invited to.” He rethinks it. “And I guess it makes me appreciate the calm much more.”
I glance across the grass at Tanner, hanging out with Harrison and chatting over beers.
If a Strong’s purpose is to be strong, then I guess a Tucker’s purpose is to tuck. And we Tuckers tuck all our problems away like dust under a rug.
Out of sight.
But still totally fucking there.