I think it’s what I needed, honestly.
Feels like I lose twenty pounds in just pent-up tears alone.
Best diet ever.
Half an hour later, my ma and I are back inside, and I learn that Nadine did, in fact, witness the whole scene from the kitchen window, but was “really, totally, honestly trying not to”. It doesn’t end up mattering; everyone assumed I was crying because of our house getting crushed in. Tanner’s papa tells us it can be fixed up quickly; between him and his brother Gary, they have a big, skilled construction crew of people for these sorts of things, constantly maintaining both Strong ranches as they do. He could even have it fixed as early as tomorrow afternoon, provided his crew has the materials.
This discussion leads to Joshua springing to life with a basketful of excited questions about whether the “crew people” can make a “super top-secret” treehouse built into our new roof connecting to the nearby trees where he can hang out with his friends. Marcus gently pops his little brother’s bubble by telling him they should be lucky they have a roof at all, but I spot Tanner and his pa smirking at each other over their heads.
I guess some ideas are already percolating between the two.
My ma and I spoke a lot more outside by the pool after I broke down sobbing. We talked through my tears. She put on a brave front and struggled to keep in her own, trying to be strong for me. Then she said something funny, and we both laughed until neither of us were sure anymore whether we were laughing or crying.
What she told me about my pa and her, how they struggled and fought and wrestled themselves into what they are today still spins around in my mind. Had they not worked it out, I wouldn’t even exist. Sure, I know a thousand cases can be made for how we all end up where we are in life, all the millions of decisions made throughout a lifetime that shape not only your own life, but every single person you ever touch, even a random dude you pass by at the market and choose to smile at.
Or the two beautiful kids you choose to adopt when you went to the agency with your husband expecting only one.
And the patience your incredible husband shows all the while.
He really is pretty incredible, isn’t he?
I catch Tanner’s eyes across the room when he looks up from whatever game the kids are playing now on their tablet, as if even the two of them have forgotten the outburst from last night, living in the bliss of their new grandparents’ house. But Tanner doesn’t smile. I think he’s afraid to. We both know the words weshared in his bedroom upstairs, the conclusion we finally came to.
His eyes look so broken.
Even if he was just a second ago so happy with the kids.
It reminds me of this time when we were making out in the back storage room at T&S’s many years ago before the kids. Yeah, I know, the look of his broken eyes might seem like an odd segue to remembering a hot and messy moment we shared at my place of business, but the store was open, we had customers, and we didn’t care. I think his kids at the school had just won a game, he was on a high, and I was the happy recipient of his overflow of masculine energy. He’d undone my pants and was grinding his hips against me with such intensity, my balls ached—and I enjoyed it. I craved the way he made me feel when I became the center of his world. Tanner really does have this special talent of making me feel like he’s worshiping me on a pedestal at the exact same time he’s taking my body for what it’s worth, pressing me against that wall of the supply closet. And it isn’t a large supply closet. Our elbows kept hitting everything. We couldn’t care less.
Until one of our elbows hit a shelf, knocked it completely off its support, and down came a metal container of something I still to this day can’t confidently identify. But the second it whacked me in the head, sexy times was over, and the pair of us made the quickest visit to the clinic I can remember.
And after I was bandaged up—thankfully avoiding stitches—I remember the look Tanner gave me, holding my hands, kneeling in front of me while I sat in a chair in the doctor’s office. His eyes were so broken and apologetic. There’s no telling whose elbow hit the shelf. Maybe it was just ready to collapse, balancing on a loose screw for years. But Tanner still felt terrible.
“You ready?” he asks me.
I flinch, yanked out of the memory.
Tanner has joined me at the kitchen counter where I’ve just helped myself to a glass of Jacky-Ann’s special lemonade, then forgot about it, not having taken the first sip. I’m just standing like a mannequin in a store. “Ready?” I ask, confused.
“Marcus and Joshua are up in their room,” he explains.
“Oh.” I look down at my lemonade. “Ready for …that.”
Tanner puts a hand on my shoulder and rubs it soothingly. “It will be okay,” he assures me. “I’ll do the emotional heavy-lifting for once. I’ll handle the parents. Just … stick by my side and keep squeezin’ my hand, alright?”
I can hear my parents chatting away in the dining room. And his parents, too, along with Jacky-Ann. All seated around the same table we made our first announcement, months ago.
I’m not ready.
I’m not ready at all.
But I take Tanner’s hand right then and give it a squeeze. “I’ll do just that,” I tell him. “Squeeze until I cut off your circulation.”
“If it helps,” he says with a smile, which quickly flat-lines, and then he swallows hard, his lips tightening up into a look of grim resolve before he mutters, “Here goes,” and takes me away from the kitchen counter—and my glass of lemonade—to head into the dining room.
There we stand, facing the five of them, my parents, his, and Jacky-Ann, who is in the middle of telling a funny story.
Boy, aren’t we about to be a pair of serious buzz-kills.