“You fucker.” Tierney’s hands fisted in his pockets, but he kept his voice calm. “You don’t have any right to judge me.”
Father coughed in the throbbing silence. “Your mother doesn’t like you using language like that—”
“I’m not judging you; I’m telling you facts.” Chase narrowed his eyes. “Fact one is, this is all your doing, you asshole. If you hadn’t done that at the wake, none of this would be happening. The aunties would be here—”
“You’re blaming me for being gay?” Blood started pounding in his temples. “News flash, douche bag. It’s not a choice. As hard as I fucking tried to deny it, do you really think I wouldn’t have made another choice if I could have?”
“I don’t have a problem with you being gay, I have a problem with your coming out!”
Saliva rained on Tierney’s cheek, and that was good enough for him. Totally counted as throwing down.
“You’ve always done this shit—you always had to be the center of attention, but it was never enough, was it? You’ve done it now, though—you finally made such a spectacle of yourself that no one can talk about anything else, and you kno—”
Tierney punched the fucker.
Well, tried. Chase had been expecting it, and he blocked, but Tierney got him in a clinch, shoving him into Mother’s grand piano with a thud and some discordant notes. “You wanted me to live in the closet for the rest of my life?” Tierney twisted his fingers in his brother’s shirt and tried to hold the dude still, but Chase shoved him, and they both went down. “Faking it all the time and hating myself for it?”
“I just wanted you to not turn yourself into a fucking sideshow,” Chase spit out, getting a knee in Tierney’s stomach.
“Boys!” Father bellowed.
“No one asked you to stay in that closet all those years, you dumbass.” Chase finally landed a punch, just below Tierney’s eye, and through the disorientation of having his head knocked into the floor, Tierney heard him say, “If you’d told everyone when you first figured out you were gay, it wouldn’t have been like this.”
Mother shrieked just then, distracting Chase, and Tierney shoved his fist right in that mouth that wouldn’t shut the fuck up. “What, you wanted me to stand on a table at the annual Christmas party twenty years ago and announce it?” Satisfaction dripped through him the same way blood dripped down Chase’s chin. “I wasn’t even invited to the fucking thing at fourteen.”
Chase hollered and lunged, and then they were back to rolling around and flailing and trying to whale on each other. At one point Tierney came up hard against the angular leg of some piece of furniture, and the whole thing crashed to the floor, but he was pretty sure he tore off the pocket of Chase’s shirt in revenge.
There was even hair pulling.
In the background, voices—mostly Emily’s calmer one, interspersed with shrill tones from Mother and angry ones from Father—kept up some kind of commentary, but Tierney wasn’t listening. All his effort went into trying to make his brother eat his words, every single one of them. Every insult and argument for the last thirty years, but most importantly, the ones spilling out of Chase as they fought.
“—don’t fucking care if you’re gay! I hate. The way. You. Came. Out.” Maybe Chase had knocked his fillings around enough to tune him into the right frequency, but he suddenly heard his brother.
He doesn’t care?
Tierney stopped swinging. Instead he swayed and panted, up on his knees and trying to blink his vision clearer. Across from him, Chase was doing pretty much the same thing, but he had blood on his chin and his lower lip was swelling.
“I hate how I came out too.” Tierney swiped at the sweat on his forehead. “Total dick move.”
“Uh-huh.” Chase struggled up onto his feet, but then immediately bent over and planted his hands on his thighs, head hanging down.
“Do you two feel better?” Emily sounded somewhere between highly annoyed and relieved. Out of the corner of his eye, Tierney could see she had her fists on her hips.
“Yup.” Tierney had to grab the back of a chair to do it, but he stood up and grinned at her.
She didn’t grin back, but she wasn’t glaring. Mother stood behind her, mouth agape and hand over her heart. Father slouched in a lounger, hair mussed up and forehead resting in his palm.
Chase’s arm settled on his shoulders in the first brotherly gesture Tierney ever remembered from the dude. “When’s dinner?” he asked.
Tierney started laughing. He hadn’t had this much fun since he’d been a douche bag.
Sam’s Thanksgiving Extravaganza and Machination was crowded. The Monaco itself was crowded—packed dance floor, various lighting effects, thumping beat, guys in various states of undress, plenty of dark nooks—but the corner booth Sam had staked out for his “group” was overflowing with bodies. When Dalton got there, he found Andrea, Kendra the incident planning manager from the office, Ian’s cousin Jurgen, and Jurgen’s boyfriend Nik (who doubled as Sam’s best friend) all seated with Sam and Ian, plus a couple of guys he didn’t recognize standing next to the table, talking. He was pretty sure he’d recognize Miller, but none of the unknowns looked like him.
“Hey!” Andrea yelled in greeting, drowning out other “hellos.” He could usually tell by the volume of his sister’s voice how drunk she was. She appeared to still be at the giggly stage. Hopefully he could leave before she hit the “I’m going to die an old maid” stage. He’d borne the brunt of that too many times. And if she got to her vicious stage, well, he might need to bodily protect Tierney from the woman.
“Hi.” Dalton pasted a smile on his face, and people started shifting, scooting closer together so he could squeeze into the booth too. Sitting next to Sam when there was room, he said, “I hope this place doesn’t scare Tierney.” It wasn’t just that it was a drinking scene; it was also that it was a club scene. The man was a neophyte to this sort of place, at least as far as Dalton knew.
“If he even shows up,” Sam responded, shoulders drooping. Ian noticed and leaned into Sam’s other side, hand coming to grip the back of his neck, rubbing it. Dalton didn’t hear what Ian said to him, but it made Sam’s sappy smile appear, the one he only seemed to give to Ian.
They really were so cute.