Total pages in book: 142
Estimated words: 135522 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 678(@200wpm)___ 542(@250wpm)___ 452(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 135522 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 678(@200wpm)___ 542(@250wpm)___ 452(@300wpm)
While Nadine busies herself in the kitchen with her friend and housekeeper Jacky-Ann, and Paul keeps the kids company asking questions about their game while sitting in an armchair behind them, I spend some time with Tanner and Billy by the food table.
“Does anyone here know what Nadine’s up to?” asks Billy with a shrug as he chomps a bite off a pig-in-a-blanket. Then his eyes flash. “Damn, these are good. Did you try these, babe?”
“I got here first with the boys, of course I tried them,” Tanner says with a laugh. “Tried every dang thing on the table. Dodge the jalapeño poppers at the end though, Cole, unless you want to burn a hole through your toilet when you get home.” That earns him a firm smack on the arm from Billy. “Hey, just bein’ honest!”
Billy turns his back on his husband. “Ignore him, Cole. By the way, I heard what happened at the festival. I mean, obviously,” he adds with half a chuckle. “Everyone’s heard. But I just wanted to say, as someone who has been put through the infamous rumor mill of Spruce, if you ever need to just get away from it all, I hope you know by now that this is a safe place you can come to. Tanner and I live just down the path, too, right here on the property, out by a small body of water we reluctantly refer to as a lake.”
“More like a big pond,” mumbles Tanner through a mouthful of potato chips. “The Tucker-Strong Pond.”
“Our modest abode is newly renovated,” Billy goes on, “to accommodate the kids. And now with Jimmy and Bobby married, we rarely have visitors anymore, other than the occasional drop-in from Mindy needin’ a break from Joel and the twins.”
“You mean Joel and the monsters,” says Tanner.
Billy sighs. “Their kids aren’t that bad.”
“Yeah, they are. Little monsters in their terrible twos.”
“Tanner …”
“I’m serious. One of them bit our Marcus on the foot ‘cause he wouldn’t let them touch his laptop. Mindy and Joel are raising a pair of wild Chihuahuas, not human babies.”
I stifle a laugh. “Well, regardless of what your friend is raising, I truly appreciate the offer to get away. But I’m not too worried. I know these things blow over fast.”
“They do,” assures Billy with a smile.
“Sorry,” grunts Tanner, lifting a hand. “If you ever wondered where your boss gets his sass from, it isn’t my mama. It’s entirely and unapologetically from me.”
Jimmy, one of my two bosses, is Tanner’s younger brother. He is, to be fair, quite sassy. Thinking of him makes me smile. “I enjoy working under the pair of them—your brother Jimmy and his man Bobby. They make great bosses and sure know what they’re doing with the Strong Fitness Zone. They had a vision and achieved it.”
Tanner smiles. “You sound like you admire them.”
“I sure do. And for quite a while. You remember when Jimmy asked Bobby out to prom back in high school? And in front of the whole soccer team? Well, I was a freshman when that happened, and I gotta say, it changed me in a pretty fundamental way, seeing someone be so brave like that. It set a fire inside me. Since that day, I swore I’d be true to myself.”
“Well, damn.” Tanner shakes his head. “Makin’ me choke up, talkin’ about my little bro and his guy like that.”
“It’s just the truth.” I smile. “I’m proud to work for the two of them. I was proud to sit there and watch them walk the aisle, too. They make a great team, and they give hope to me that someday, I will have a special guy by my side.”
Billy and Tanner seem caught in a trance after my spiel, both of them staring at me with glassy, empty eyes.
It catches me off-guard. “Oh. Did I … go on a bit too long about them? Sorry. I got kinda sappy there, huh?”
Tanner snaps out of it first. “Nah, that was great. And y’know what? You’re right. Jimmy and Bobby, they … they make a great-ass team.”
“The greatest of them all,” agrees Billy, staring off somewhere with an odd, faraway look in his eyes. Tanner puts his arm around his husband, then kisses him on the cheek. Billy smiles, though it seems distracted, and when the kids suddenly break into shouts at the TV screen over their game, Billy’s attention is pulled. “Hey, it’s just a game, it’s just a game, boys, calm down.” He excuses himself and heads to the living room.
While Tanner keeps eating, I notice him watching his husband with a hazy look on his face, like his mind is somewhere else. I’m not sure if it’s because of my experience with my own parents and how the two “speak with their eyes and not their mouths”, but I sense something’s going on. Tanner and Billy are supposed to be Spruce’s power pair. The example for everyone else in town. The perfect couple to aspire to.