Tierney meant to groan again but he opened his mouth and belched instead, making them both flinch. “So Emily’s here too? And Chase, I suppose.”
“And your mother,” Father added.
Tierney scrunched his eyes even tighter and tried to remember if his mother had ever been to his place before.
Until Father barked at him. “Get off of the damned ground and put something more on. I’ll be waiting in the living room for you with the rest of the family.”
That made him open his eyes. He swung his head around to look at his father. The man’s normally distinguished white hair stood up in places, and the lines bracketing his mouth seemed more obvious than usual.
“What’s going on? Why’re you all here?”
Father tilted his head and peered (further) down his nose at Tierney. “We’re here to perform an intervention.”
Tierney should have expected this, shouldn’t he? He’d known they’d have to come up with some response to him being gay. It was yet another thing he hadn’t thought about before he’d opened his mouth.
Like you thought at all, douche bag.
Well, fuck them if they thought they were going to send him to some bullshit ex-gay program. They can’t make me go.
Staring into his mirror in the bedroom, fists clenched at his sides and chin firmed, he believed in himself. I did that last night.
Hopefully he could keep up the self-determination. He nodded to his reflection. Time to go face the family. Just maybe not in nothing but tighty-whities.
He didn’t have any pajamas, and when he picked his bathrobe up off the floor, the worn, threadbare thing made him pause for a second. His mother had given it to him when he went off to college, and it showed some serious use. Since no one ever saw him in it, getting a new one had never occurred to him. Unless someone else would see and be impressed by his clothes, he didn’t much worry about them, did he?
Weird.
I don’t care about appearances. The way his insides flinched made him wonder if that was true. Another thing he didn’t know for sure about the new Tierney.
Whatever. His family could face him in this fucking holey robe. He threw the thing on over his briefs and belted it on his way to the living room. It’d have to do for battle armor.
Mother recoiled when he appeared, probably frightened by the state of his undress. Chase and his father nodded curtly. Emily smiled faintly. Everyone seemed full of adverbs this morning. He, for example, was slovenly.
“Morning,” he muttered to Mother and Emily, refusing to look at his other family members, standing in front of his floor-to-ceiling windows. He sat down in a chair across from the couch where the women were. As he did, he could’ve sworn an invisible elephant wearing a Just Ignore Me T-shirt tiptoed into the room and settled on that stupid frilly ottoman. “Well, let’s get this bullshit underway.”
“Tierney!” Mother gasped, as if she’d never heard the word before.
He could feel his lower lip poke out. “It’s my intervention, I can curse if I want to.”
Emily stood up, smoothing her skirt. “I think I’ll find the coffee and open the donuts we brought.” She glanced at Tierney.
“It’s in the cupboard above the dishwasher, and the coffeemaker is right there on the counter.”
She gave him another weak smile before heading toward the kitchen area, leaving awkward silence behind her. At least, it felt awkward to Tierney, but his head still pounded and he couldn’t come up with much to say after everything he’d already blabbed at the wake. Didn’t matter—they’d started this, they could continue it. He listened to the water gurgle in his fish tank. How come it sounded louder when a room full of people were completely silent than it did when he was here alone?
Father fixed on his gravest expression and began to pace. Back and forth in front of Tierney’s stellar view, forcing Chase to step out of his way. Thirty-some laps later, he said, “It’s come to our attention that you’ve been behaving erratically lately.”
“Really.” Tierney put his feet up on his coffee table and watched his mother open her mouth, then shut it and look away.
“There is, of course, last night’s—” Father cleared his throat “—incident, and that other debacle—” He broke off to breathe heavily out his nose, lips compressed.
“There was another debacle?” Mother whispered, clutching her pearls.
Father ignored her. “Further, Chase has told me about a few other irregularities you’ve exhibited in the past few months.”
Tierney thought he caught a fleeting glance of something other than superiority from his brother, but it didn’t last long enough for him to make a guess about it. “Like what?” he asked Chase.
Father answered. “Well, you’ve indulged in daily liquid lunches, so to speak, and a lot of extravagant spending.”
Tierney hunched down further in his seat and crossed his arms over his chest. None of that was unheard of for any of them. Although he couldn’t deny that he’d done too much of both recently. Silence seemed like a good idea.
“In short, you aren’t behaving normally.”
Normal behavior was how he got here, and he cared fuck-all about being normal. Or did he? He let his head flop back on the chair and closed his eyes, trying to shut out the world. The headache he’d been successfully ignoring renewed its attack, hammering in his temples. Waiting for them to get to it. Tell him what nice facility they thought they were sending him to so someone could pray his gay away.
“Darling,” Mother said. He’d forgotten she sat there across from him. “What your father is trying to say is that we’ve arranged for you to get some help.”
Tierney lifted his head up and stared at her. “Help, huh?” Here it comes.
She nodded. “It’s called the Dunthorpe Centre for Rehabilitation and Wellness, and I’m assured it’s up to our standards.” She reached over to pat his knee.
Huh. Shoving his feet against the coffee table, he sat up. “So, like, an ex-gay thing?” he clarified.
“No,” Chase bit out. “A mental health facility.”
Riiiight. “You’re asking me to check myself into a loony bin?” One that thought homosexuality was a mental illness.
“No!” Mother said.
“Certainly not,” Father said at the same time.
“Pretty much,” said Chase.
Emily walked in just then with a tray. “Here we are.”