“Yeah, uh, just started.” Ian licked his lip. “Her name’s Sherri.”
“Huh.” Mother. Fucker. “Guess I shouldn’t mention what happened the other night in front of her.”
And there it was, a flicker of emotion just before Ian’s face went completely blank. It told Tierney everything he needed to know: as far as Ian was concerned, that blowjob never happened.
“Our first date was the day after,” Ian told him in a monotone.
Part of Tierney wanted to stay and hit the prick. Punch him right in one of those opaque eyes of his. But a much bigger part of him was injured, hemorrhaging pain, and had to get the fuck away. “I forgot, I have shit to do tonight,” he choked out before turning and walking blindly down the hall to the exit. Outside, the cold hit him, scraping his internal organs with shards of ice. He needed a coat, but he wasn’t fucking going back. He might see that traitorous dick and do what-the-fuck-ever to him. Punch Ian until he loved Tierney back.
I love him?
I must. His eyes were blurring with tears, and his lungs were doing a weird shuddering thing, almost like sobs, except he wasn’t crying, just trying to survive. That had to be love, right? A black hole opened up inside him. He recognized it from a night five years ago, when—like his father and brother before him—he’d been required to have dinner with his grandfather on the eve of his fourteenth birthday. That night, Milton Terrebonne had made a point of telling Tierney that giving in to any deviant physical longings was not done. “As a Terrebonne,” Grandfather had intoned gravely, “it’s your duty, to yourself and the family, to master any unnatural urges. Not only because of our social standing, but because of your financial future. Am I clear?”
He’d been clear then, and many times since. And this situation with Ian, that was just another kind of reinforcement. Another message to Tierney’s secret self that it had to stay hidden. In the closet. Sex with guys had to be anonymous, and love . . .
Love sucks the big one.
Fuck this. Tierney went back to his room and finished the bottle of bourbon he’d shared with Ian that night. Then the tequila he’d brought as backup.
He wasn’t crying then, either.
The next day, he drove home hungover as fuck. When he arrived, he only told Agatha, managing to completely avoid his family before crashing in his bedroom.
Hours later, something woke him. He lay on his stomach, hugging his pillow, trying to figure out what it might have been.
Tap tap tap. His mother’s knock. Knuckles on wood, not a foot on linoleum.
“Yeah?” Tierney called, rolling over onto his back
“Darling,” Mother began before she’d even fully entered the room. “We don’t say, ‘Yeah,’ when we answer the door. You should say, ‘Come in,’ or, if you’re feeling brusque, you could say, ‘Enter,’ the way your grandfather does, but only rarely.”
“Sorry, Mother,” Tierney answered on autopilot, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands.
“Your grandfather is expecting you to join him for an early dinner.”
Tierney froze. “Huh?”
“Tierney, we don’t say ‘huh.’ You may beg my pardon or, on occasion, even ask, ‘What?’ like your Grandfather Milton, but ‘huh’ is unacceptable.”
He sat up, watching his mother settle into the chair she’d insisted he have next to the window. “Um, what?”
She fixed him with a firm eye. “I beg your pardon?”
“I beg your pardon?” he parroted. He must not have Grandfather’s chops yet. Excuse me, we say “gravitas,” not “chops.”
“I said Grandfather is expecting you to join him for dinner.” She arranged herself, adjusting the folds of her dress. “In an hour.”
Fuck. He’d hoped his years of private dinners with the old guy, full of veiled comments and probing inquiries into his activities, were over. “Do I have to?”
Mother tilted her nose up slightly, but made no correction to Tierney’s “inelegant” question this time. “I’m certain I don’t need to answer that.”
Tierney swallowed his sigh. No way he was getting out of it; he should’ve known that already. Sucks. “Thanks, Mother. I better get dressed, hu—right?”
“Yes.” But she sat there a second, regarding him. “Don’t worry, darling. You haven’t done anything to make your grandfather disappointed in you . . .”
He could hear the have you? she didn’t tack on to the end of that statement hanging in the silence between them. “Nothing he knows about,” Tierney muttered, too low for her to catch.
“Don’t mumble,” she admonished him, then went on in a gentler tone. “Is something wrong, darling? You look a bit rough.”
Heart thumping, he nearly said it. That little candle of hope started flickering again, encouraging him. Could he actually tell her? What would she do? What was it he even needed to say? Or ask. Are Terrebonnes allowed to like dick? He opened his mouth, ready to try.
“Drinking is no way to get through college,” she said before he could let free whatever words wanted out of him. “Remember, even at a state school, you’ll make friendships that can turn into valuable contacts in the future. You don’t want them thinking you’re only interested in partying. If there’s some reason you’ve been imbibing so much, some sort of problem . . .?” She lifted her brows.
Tierney snapped his jaw shut, shaking his head. Thank fuck. How could he have thought she’d understand?
“Well, darling.” She sighed, pushing up out of her seat and clasping her hands. “Please try to remember how important this period of your life is. Drinking is fine, but not in such excess. Not all the time.” She smiled briefly, but then her lips turned down again. “If there is a problem, maybe you could have yourself examined by a professional?”
A professional what? Homo-exterminator? Could someone just gas or cut it out of him? He nearly laughed, but then Mother would want to know why, and Tierney was still too close to the edge. If he got into an argument with her it would all come spilling out. That’d be just like him.
“Fine, Mother,” he said. “If I have a problem, I’ll get it taken care of.” By the guy in the left-hand stall.
That was good enough for her. Her expression read pure relief as she excused herself and left. God fucking forbid he have a problem she had to deal with.