I’m doing it again. What Marty had warned him about—falling into the same patterns. “Sorry,” he croaked. His arms lost their strength, slipping from Ian, letting him get away.
An apology. He’d made a real apology to Ian before, in the dude’s office, and now he’d started on the same shit. Victimizing his friend, using the guy as his personal whipping boy instead of facing the truth.
Tierney barely remembered playing the rest of the game. The Beaters would never ask him to fill in again, but he couldn’t care less. Afterward, he made it back to the car and sat in the driver’s seat, waiting to see if Ian would even come looking for him. Tierney’d take his ass kicking without protest. He totally deserved it.
The passenger side door flew open, and Ian wasn’t even fully inside before he started talking. “You have issues, man.” His voice was so sharp it stung Tierney’s skin. “Big, huge motherfucking issues. Issue number one is that I would kick your ass if Sam hadn’t made me promise not to.”
“Dude, I— Fuck.” Tierney hunched over until his forehead rested on the steering wheel, bearing the weight of his whole upper body. “I was feeling like a loser because of some stuff and I took it out on you, which is totally how I used to deal, but when I realized—”
“I know.”
Swallowing, Tierney nodded.
“When I left California? I worked through my shit in therapy, but I get it. I’m still fucking pissed at you, but I get it.”
Slowly turning, he looked at Ian to find the dude not stony-faced or full of rage, but only annoyed as hell. “I really am sorry.”
Ian pointed at him. “I’m giving you one more chance, T. Considering all the changes in your life lately? You get a ‘get out of jail free’ card, for, I don’t know, emotional distress.” He scowled and dropped his hand, flopping back into the passenger seat.
It took Tierney half a minute of blinking at Ian for it to settle in. He was being forgiven. Again. “I don’t deserve it,” he objected. “I wouldn’t—”
“Dude.” Ian sighed. “You stopped yourself when you realized what you were doing. Before? You’d never admit guilt. And like I said, I get it. I’ve used rugby as an outlet too. It’s way more therapeutic than talking to Janet for an hour and paying her a hundred fifty for the privilege.”
Tierney came close to arguing against it more, but he didn’t. Truth was, he needed this friendship. He needed the support. “Thanks for sticking by me. I don’t deserve a friend like you.” Fumbling, he finally got the key thing worked out and started the car.
“You’re a work in progress,” Ian said. “I just try not to expect much.”
He managed a smile for the joke—dude was probably half-serious, anyway. Leaving the car idling, he turned in his seat to look Ian square in the eye. “Um, you wanna be in my support network?” He ignored how high his voice went. Fuck it if he sounded nervous, he was. Ian deserved some emotional honesty from him. “Like, talk me down if I call you because I want a drink, or I just had a shitty day.” He swallowed when his friend raised his eyebrows.
“Sure.” Ian clapped his palm on Tierney’s shoulder, a total good-buddy kind of moment. Or it would have been if Ian wasn’t still half-scowling.
The weight of being a pathetic loser burdened him the rest of the day. It wasn’t just falling into old patterns with Ian, it was also what had happened with Dalton. Maybe it hadn’t been a pity fuck, but it was still charity, wasn’t it? It was still a sign that Tierney couldn’t function normally without someone holding his hand.
The whole situation ate at him, making him feel worthless. A familiar feeling, and one he used to be able to take care of with a drink.
But that wasn’t an option now, was it? Can’t do that. It’d be more of the pattern repeating, wouldn’t it?
At 8:13, standing in front of his fish tank and watching the nearly brainless creatures swim back and forth, he dialed Emily’s cell.
“Tierney?” she answered. “Is everything all right?”
“Not so much,” he said.
“Will talking on the phone be enough or do you want me to come over there?”
He swallowed. “Can we just talk awhile? What about the girls?” His nieces went to bed late for their age.
“Chase can handle them,” she said, a door closing in the background. “So, you want to talk about what set you off, or how you’re dealing with it?”
Thank God. “Let’s talk about how I’m dealing.”
Tierney didn’t call Saturday evening. Dalton hadn’t known he was expecting it until it didn’t happen, but the way he stayed totally attuned to the weight of the cell in his pocket—even while out at a club with Vance—was impossible for him to ignore.
Maybe he shouldn’t have left so quickly that morning after their conversation about support networks, but he’d been hyperaware of everything after that. Of knowing he wanted more, and wondering if Tierney might be suggesting more—at least more benefits, if nothing else. Except all the issues around Tierney’s recovery made everything foreign. Dalton hadn’t known how to act, and kept reading significance into stupid things. Like the way Tierney had walked into the bathroom while Dalton was brushing his teeth and smiled at him. It had read as a “I like seeing you in my house, doing mundane things” kind of expression at first, but it could easily have been a “you look funny foaming at the mouth” smirk. He was too agitated to tell, so he’d left before the situation got even more awkward, assuming they’d talk as soon as Tierney had worked on his support network.
One thing he’d forgotten to determine was how long that might take. Dalton had no idea whether it was unreasonable for him to be worried about it yet or not. Vance noticed his preoccupation early Saturday evening, and eventually they ended up in a quieter bar, just chatting.
But Dalton didn’t explain why he was so distracted, and Vance didn’t ask. In the end, he was home before midnight.
He definitely didn’t have the right to be anxious over Tierney not calling him for any other reason. Yes, they’d had sex, but with the explicit understanding that it was a friends-only arrangement. Obliquely aiming at a future relationship together didn’t give him any rights now.
So, was he being dissed or not?
He was totally wrapped up in worrying about it, and that scared the hell out of him. Being friends, and only friends, with Tierney wasn’t just good for Tierney, it worked for him too. Because he didn’t have to face the possibility that he was revisiting his past mistakes if there was nothing beyond friendship there.