No Chance by Lisa Suzanne

CHAPTER 16: BRETT

“You hungry?” I ask, changing the subject.

She nods, and I walk over to the fridge to rattle off our options. “Salad, sandwiches, hummus and veggies.” I look through the contents of the freezer, too. “Creamy potato soup, chili, or mac and cheese.”

“Any of that would be lovely,” she says.

I narrow my eyes at her. “We ordered enough food for three, so don’t be shy. And don’t give me that noncommittal crap. What do you like?”

“Mac and cheese,” she says. “And a small salad. And I hate potatoes.”

I freeze where I’m standing then slowly turn to look at her. “You hate potatoes?” I can’t mask the awe in my voice. “Like even French fries?”

She lets off a soft chuckle. It’s rare to see a smile out of this girl, and I’ve yet to hear her laugh, so it feels like a real win when I get one of those little grunts. “Fries are okay. Tater tots are fine, too. But just regular old sliced up, cubed, baked, or mashed potatoes?” She wrinkles her nose. “No thanks.”

“Who hates potatoes?” I muse as I pull out the bowl of salad and the mac and cheese.

“A girl who had to eat them for every meal in her third foster home before she’d be excused from the dinner table,” she says, and it’s hard to imagine what her childhood must’ve been like. “Sausage potato hash for breakfast, mashed potatoes with lunch, baked potato for dinner. Every night for the entire nine months I lived there.”

“Oh,” I say dumbly. This girl...she just keeps throwing me for a loop. She keeps saying things that I have no idea how to respond to, things I’ve never even thought about, things she’s lived through that have never once been on my radar. I pull the woe is me card with the fucked-up relationship I had with my parents, but she didn’t even have parents. “Seems like a valid reason.”

She grunt-chuckles again, and my chest pulses with an unfamiliar feeling.

I knock it dead away as fast as I can.

“Do you keep in touch with anyone from foster homes?” I ask.

She shakes her head. “Nobody worth keeping in touch with.”

“Was there anything good about it?”

She tilts her head in this way I’m already starting to get used to. “I made some friends at the time, I guess. Each house had their own good things and bad things.”

“How many homes did you live in?”

She sighs. “Five. My first house was hard because I’d just lost my parents and my sister. I was scared. The second house was the worst. There was an older boy who bullied all the younger kids, so I just tried to stay out of his way. Then there was potato house, and then the fourth house had six kids. The fifth one was the one where Brie and I were reunited, and by that time she was sixteen. We stayed together there until she aged out, and then she legally adopted me.”

“I can’t even imagine,” I muse. I hated my childhood, hated the home where my parents raised me, but at least I had a home. It’s easy to take that shit for granted when you don’t know anything else.

“What about you?” she asks, deflecting. “Do you have any siblings?”

I shake my head as I grab some paper plates down from a cabinet and use the tongs to make a pile of salad on each one. “Nah. My parents knew they couldn’t do better than the first, so they didn’t bother trying.” I shoot a wink at her, but let’s be honest: I’m using humor as a self-defense mechanism.

The truth is that they shouldn’t have had any kids at all. I don’t know if they ever really wanted kids or if I was an accident. I never asked. It’s a lot for a person to know, I guess.

Nothing I ever do is good enough for my father, including the Grammys and the platinum records. Instead of a congratulations, he wanted to know how many more we needed to sell to hit diamond status. He wanted to know why we didn’t get that fourth Grammy we’d been up for.

And my mother is too busy with her little society clubs and making sure she has the perfect image to care what the fuck I’m up to. She was always strict with me as I grew up, but mostly when it came to appearances. My top button was undone. My hair was messy. My tie wasn’t straight. And she had a damn hernia when I was caught smoking in the parking lot in seventh grade.

Yeah, the kid who smoked cigarettes and was hospitalized for alcohol poisoning at fourteen grew into a man who gets caught with his pants down in public and made headlines when he was arrested for possession.

I may have some great accomplishments under my belt, but my parents have only ever seen the faults.

And that’s exactly why I swore I’d never have kids.

I have no example to follow to know how to raise a kid the right way. It’s not just that I’m selfish and I like to party. I’m physically missing the elements that make up a parent. I guess the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. I was an accident, and here I am trying to make things right for something I didn’t even know I did until a few nights ago.

“Seems like they gave you a healthy dose of confidence,” she teases.

If she only knew the truth...the confidence is a ruse. Just like mommy dearest pretends everything is perfect in her little housewives club, I do the same. I pretend my history is untainted. I paint the picture of an idyllic childhood. The only one who really knows the truth is my best friend...the guy who knows everything about me. The guy who knew it was a bad idea to invite my kid and his aunt with us onto our tour bus, but he allowed it anyway because deep down he knew it was the right thing, too.

“Something like that,” I say, and I can’t help but wonder what she thinks my childhood was like. It was vastly different from hers, but in the end, neither of us have any family left in our lives...except for one little boy who we both share now in very different ways.

And somehow that instantly bonds us even though it’s not a bond I ever wanted to share with another human.

Tommy joins us for lunch, which takes our conversation back to the shallow end.

“Gummy bears?” she teases him when he sits. He claims the chair across from her, leaving the one next to him as my only option since some child seat contraption is strapped down to the one next to her.

“You don’t fuck with a man and his gummy bears,” he says.

She holds up both hands innocently. “I won’t touch them, but you better stay off my Twizzlers.”

“You’re both disgusting,” I say. “Who eats candy with no chocolate on it?”

“Chocolate dipped gummy bears,” Tommy muses. “You might be onto something there, kid.”

I laugh. I appreciate the ease of the conversation between the three of us as we eat lunch. Tommy can get along with anybody even though he can also be a total asshole. We’ve had some knock-down, drag out fights, too. It’s not all unicorn glitter and rainbows, but he and Tyler and Dustin are my family now, and I appreciate the fuck out of those guys.

Which is why this change has been particularly difficult on me. We’re opening our family, allowing it to grow and expand, and it’s not something I was prepared for.

And something else I’m not at all prepared for is the territorial feeling that washes over me in waves as Tommy gets that tiny smile out of Hannah.

My hackles rise.

I want him out of here. I want him back in his room, sulking on his bed as he watches a movie by himself. He isn’t allowed to make her smile, no matter how small it is.

I shake out the thought.

It’s completely ridiculous. I’m glad anybody is lightening her load, no matter how small. I just wish it was easier for me to figure out how to do that when it comes so naturally to Tommy.