Mind Games

And Ty, obviously deep in the music, didn’t see Bunk’s charge until the dog bounded onto the porch.

“Whoa. Hey, big guy.”

“Sorry,” Thea called out as Ty took off the headphones. “He’s looking for his friend.”

“Yeah, got that. He’s crashed. Naps don’t come around here often, but he’s been up since … I don’t want to think about it.”

“We’re just heading down to my grandmother’s. The rain holed us up for a couple days.”

“Tell me.” His fingers worked on the silent strings as she walked closer. “We played Adventures in Endor five million times. I could hate you for that. But then I’d have to hate the Marvel Universe, Disney, Sesame Street, the makers of Candy Land, and a variety of cars, trucks, and construction vehicles.

“Too much energy.”

“Rainy days and preschoolers.”

“Make me want to beg my parents for forgiveness.”

“You’re working.” She nodded toward a pile of sheet music with handwritten notes and lyrics. “We’ll get out of your way.”

“No—if you’ve got a minute. You’re an actual adult human, and I started to wonder if I was the only one of those left on the planet.”

“We’ve got a minute. Want to talk politics, world events, environmental issues?”

“Really don’t. But I did want to … about the other night.”

“It was great.” She stepped onto the porch, took a seat.

Bunk deserted her to wander out to the play set and sniff for Bray.

“I wanted to say, with Bray, the move—it’s looking like a serious move. I mean, I bought a new couch, and I’m looking into pre-K, so—”

“You have your hands full,” she finished. And why, she thought, did she find him even more appealing for setting up boundaries?

“There’s that. And … Bray mentioned his mother died. You’ve never asked about her. Any of you.”

“It’s for you to say or not. My family knows about loss, and how personal it is.”

“Yeah, you would.” Though his fingers stilled, he continued to hold the guitar. “She was a roadie on our last tour. Starla. She changed her name to that, legally. I don’t know the name she was born with. She’d never say. Anyway, we were together for a while, toward the end of the tour, then back in Philadelphia. Nothing serious, just…”

“I’m an adult human,” Thea reminded him. “I understand.”

“We got along fine, until we didn’t. She got really pissed when we decided to break up. Code Red, I mean. Or take a long break as we thought of it at first. We’d been at it, and hard, for almost ten years. Blaze was a mess—you’d have read about it—stoned more than half the time. Scott had a kid on the way, Mac wanted to try something on his own. I wanted to write and just be for a while. We didn’t have a blowup like a lot of the press reported. We just needed a break, so we took it.”

“It’s a lot of pressure, the traveling, the performing. And so much of your life so public.”

“Sounds whiny, but yeah. So rather than blow up, we talked it out, took the break. Blaze got into rehab, and I don’t know if he would have otherwise. But Starla liked the rush, and wasn’t going to give it up. She took off—no hearts broken.”

“You didn’t know,” Thea realized. “You didn’t know about Bray.”

“She didn’t either, not when she took off. That’s what she told me when she came back, when Bray was eighteen months old. I believed her. When she found out she was pregnant, she’d been with a couple other guys, so wasn’t sure who, you know? But she decided having a kid would be an adventure. She liked the rush,” he murmured.

“He looks just like you.”

“Yeah, there’s that. She said he came out looking like me, so she put my name on the birth certificate. I’m grateful she did, even went to a lawyer, drew up papers, but that was later, after she found out she was terminal.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Fuck cancer.” He hissed out a breath. “She hadn’t bothered with screenings, doctors, any of it, until it was too late. She said they’d given her six months, and she couldn’t take care of Bray anymore, and she hands me this baby who looks back at me with my own eyes. She stayed a few days, then left a note, how Braydon was the one pure thing she’d done in her life.”