#wouldn't have minded rusty interupting THAT scene

[roslinadama-sinequanon]

Saying Good-Bye to Yesterday-Chapter 10

Well, it’s taken quite a while to get this chapter posted, but it’s finally here.

 In this chapter, Rusty reflects on the way his feelings toward Andy and Sharon's relationship with Andy have changed over the years. 

You can find it here:

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13004092/10/Saying-Good-Bye-to-Yesterday

here:

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13004092/10/Saying-Good-Bye-to-Yesterday

And here:

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“So, your Mom is getting married. How do you feel about that?”

Rusty looked up from the chessboard, a flash of surprise crossing his face as he met the curious gaze of his psychiatrist. Blowing out a deep sigh, he shook his head with resignation. “I don’t know why I should be surprised you already know. It’s not like you can keep any secrets around here.”

Dr. Joe’s lips twisted with wry amusement. “I’ve been invited to the engagement party. But that doesn’t answer my question.”

“How do I feel about it?”

“Yes.”

“Well, my Mom is happy, so of course I’m happy.”

“Of course you’re happy?“

“Yes. Why are you looking at me like that?”

“How am I looking at you?”

“Oh my God. Like I’m not telling you the truth.”

“Are you?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. Because there was a time that wasn’t the case.”

“What wasn’t the case?”

“You being happy about it. There was a time that your Mom was happy about her relationship with Andy and you weren’t quite so sure about it.”

He shrugged. “That was a long time ago.”

“Not so long.”

Rusty slumped back in his seat and gave Dr. Joe a long look. His feelings about his mother and Andy were complicated and had gone through many changes over the years as he‘d watched them grow from adversaries to friends, from lovers to engaged. Back when Sharon had first taken him in, she‘d also just been promoted to leading Major Crimes, and as an outsider, with an inside view, he’d been a keen observer of the dynamics running through the division.

It hadn’t taken long to notice that Sharon most often relied on the blunt, no-nonsense Andy Flynn, rather than her second in command, Provenza. Which he supposed made sense because Provenza had been slow to overcome the grudge he had over her getting the job he assumed would be his.

And, when it came to finding his biological mother, it was Andy she approached for help. The brash lieutenant was sarcastic and didn’t give an inch, but strangely enough, Rusty rather liked that about him. It was honest. Andy didn’t pretend to like him and he never tried to bullshit him. He hated people who tried to bullshit him. Later, when they’d found his mother and convinced her to return, Andy was the one that Sharon asked to accompany him to the bus stop to greet her.

What happened at that bus stop was something he tried very hard not to think about. Though he hadn’t known it then, that night was the final severing of any kind of mother/son relationship he would ever have with Sharon Beck. And Andy Flynn had been sitting right by his side when it happened. He’d been worried about how Flynn might react when he met his mother. She was the kind of woman for whom the caustic detective would normally have nothing but contempt. A drug addict who’d run off with her drug addict boyfriend. A dirtbag who’d abandoned her thirteen-year-old son to the streets. Those were the kinds of judgments he’d never been shy about making. Instead, rather than condemning the woman, Andy had been surprisingly kind and gone out of his way to help calm his nerves while they waited.

Then the bus arrived and nothing played out the way it was supposed to. His mother was supposed to walk off that bus, pull him into her arms and apologize for all the years she’d neglected and abused him. All the years she’d brought violent and dangerous men into their lives.

She was supposed to get down on her knees and beg him to forgive her for walking away and leaving him behind to fend for himself. She was supposed to magically transform into the kind of mother he‘d always fantasized about having.  It was supposed to be the moment he’d been dreaming about for two years.

Instead, he stood next to Andy watching as the passengers began disembarking from the bus, his excitement quickly turning to dread as the line of people began to dwindle down. When the last of them stepped off the bus and it became more and more apparent that his mother was not on board, his stomach clenched painfully. For a moment, he thought might throw up. Andy gave him a hand gesture, urging him not to panic just before he hopped on the bus to see if maybe she was still on board. But he’d known Andy wouldn’t find her, maybe he’d known all along.  His mother had taken the money Andy sent her and disappeared, probably used it for drugs, and every hopeful fantasy he’d had about their reunion came crashing down around him, causing him to run before he burst into tears like a baby.

He’d had two choices that night. Run away again and disappear into the night like so many other homeless, broken teens. Or, recognize that he was not that homeless, hopeless boy anymore. That he had a place to go. A woman who had opened her home, her pocketbook…and her heart to him. A woman he was quickly learning would never let him down.

Back at the condo, he’d finally forced himself to look at his childhood without the blinders he’d been wearing for two years. The blinders he’d put on the day he realized that his mother had truly abandoned him. Because he had to believe it wasn’t her fault. No mother would just walk away and leave her child behind. It was Gary’s fault, he’d made her do it, and one day she would get away from him and come back and they would live happily ever after. He had to believe that. Had to cling to some kind of hope that he might return to a life that had never really existed because the life that he was living on the street was about as bleak and ugly as it got. Now he knew that happily ever after was never going to happen, even if his mother did one day return. Because the truth was, the life that he’d led before she left him behind had been anything but happy.

Looking at his past square in the face, he saw a young boy living with his addicted mother as a squatter in an abandoned, condemned crack house. It was filthy, reeking of vomit, urine and body odor. No one ever cleaned. Cockroaches crawled all over the place and a rat had even bitten him once while he slept. His mother and her boyfriend of the week stayed up all hours drinking and shooting up. By morning, they were too wasted to even wake up. So, he did his best to find something to eat, more often than not finding nothing, and left for school. Because if he didn’t go to school the authorities would come looking and they would take him away from his mother and he‘d never see her again. Whatever kind of mess she was, she was all he knew. All he had.

But when he got to school, his homework wasn’t finished because he hadn’t understood much of it and the help that he’d needed wasn’t there. So, he’d just given up and not bothered with it. Moving from school to school to school didn’t lend itself to a great education. But that didn’t bother him as much as the kids who wrinkled their noses at him and called him names because he smelled bad. He couldn’t find any quarters in his mother’s pockets to go to the run-down Laundromat around the corner and do their laundry, so he’d been forced to wear dirty clothes. And he hadn’t showered in days because the abandoned house they were living in had its water cut off.

Then, when school was out, he had to go home, such as it was. And he didn’t know whether to hope his mother and her boyfriend were still passed out, or awake. Because awake could sometimes be so much worse. Awake meant that when he let the door slam shut he got a beating for making too much noise. And while he was getting that beating he was being called a “little shit” a “bastard” a “noisy motherfucker” and, the worst, for him, a “faggot”. Too young, too weak to defend himself, he’d slink off to a corner filled with pain and anger. His mother, the one person in the world who should have protected him, never defended him, never stood up for him. In fact, if she even bothered to check and see how he was, she would blame him for the beating, telling him he should have known better than to make so much noise and set off Bob, Mike, JC, Coot, Gary, whichever man she was currently in “love” with.

And then, after she’d left him behind and he‘d gone through a string of abusive foster homes and a year on the streets, he’d ended up here in this beautiful high rise condo in the heart of wealthy Los Feliz where everything was always neat and clean and smelled good, like scented candles and the fresh flowers that always graced the tables. He not only had a bed with clean sheets and blankets, but he also had his own bedroom. He was living with a woman who not only took care of herself but took care of him as well. A woman who brought him grocery shopping and asked him what kinds of food he liked to eat and then stocked her refrigerator and cupboards with his favorites. A woman who made sure he had healthy meals right down to the apple she put in his lunch sack every day.

For the first time in his life, he did not have to worry about where his next meal was going to come from, or if there would even be a next meal. Nor did he have to worry about dirty, torn clothes. This woman took him shopping and bought him new clothes. Not just his school uniform khakis and light blue polo shirts, things he actually liked, and they were always freshly laundered so he had clean clothes every day.

Yes, this woman had rules and there were boundaries and no he didn‘t always like that, but she always spoke to him kindly and with respect. She didn’t lash out and call him names, even when he knew he might have deserved a few when he was being particularly rude and disrespectful to her. She had conversations with him, gently leading him toward making the right decisions rather than forcing them on him. She talked a lot about his future and offered to help him with school applications so he could get a good education at some fancy private Catholic school she wanted him to attend. She even offered to hire a tutor because thanks to his haphazard schooling he was so far behind other kids his age.

For the first time since he could remember, he was not in the parenting role. For the first time, he had someone taking care of him. Someone who checked in on him at night before bed and who got him up in the morning to go to school because she was already up and dressed, impeccably so, for work. No drug-hazed mornings for Sharon Raydor. He had someone who cooked for him rather than him having to cook for her because she was too strung out and sick to be hungry as had been the case with his mother.  Sharon Raydor WAS the parent; she had herself and her life together and did not need anyone taking care of her the way he had always had to take care of Sharon Beck.

Sitting in what had become “his” bedroom he’d finally faced the reality of his life as it had been, as it was today, and where it might be in the future. And, with that reflection and the recognition that his future might very well be right here, he was able to let down a few of his defenses with Sharon, even filling out paperwork for that private school she wanted him to attend.  But, he’d put up a few walls with the lieutenant he’d run away from that night. The naïve eagerness for his mother’s arrival that he’d expressed to Andy while they waited for the bus was humiliating. When he thought about all those things he‘d made Andy promise; to be nice to her, to not question her decision to abandon him, to make sure there wasn’t a mini bar in her room, it made him cringe. He felt like an idiot, and Andy had witnessed it all.

To his credit, Andy had never mentioned a word of it. And, when his biological father had shown up on the scene and turned out to be a selfish prick with a quick fist, Andy had been nothing but supportive.

Then, just he was putting his biological parents behind him and was starting to feel more comfortable in his new life, his friend Kris had ratted him out, telling Emma Rios about the threatening letters he‘d been receiving. In an effort to keep Rios from persuading Chief Taylor to send him off into witness protection, Sharon elicited the help of her second in command. With that shift, Lieutenant Provenza suddenly became the central male figure in his life.

That gravitation toward Provenza continued after Sharon attended Nicole’s wedding with Andy. Because something had definitely changed between them that day. There was a new dynamic when they were together. Overnight the close professional relationship they shared had suddenly, and unexpectedly, become personal.  

Andy was no longer Lieutenant Flynn, he was just Andy, and Andy, much to the chagrin of Provenza, was the only member of the team to refer to their Captain more informally as Sharon. That had certainly not gone unnoticed and neither had the fact that the two of them had begun doing things together outside of work. Sometimes Sharon would call to say that they were working late and she was going to run out for a bite to eat with Andy or she’d go off to some movie she’d been dying to see with him, or to a baseball game or an art gallery opening. He’d even heard her on the phone asking him to be her plus one at some charity event, which had really surprised him because those were the kinds of things she usually asked Gavin to attend with her. Andy even started showing up occasionally on Sunday afternoons to munch on nachos and watch football with her, his favorite garlic guacamole and cranberry lime seltzer water now stocked in her fridge. Which, if he was being completely honest, wasn‘t all bad because it kept her from bugging him to watch with her. Despite her best efforts Sharon had yet to turn him into a football fan.

All of this made him look at Andy through new eyes. Though he despised analyzing his motivations, he did recognize that he was, by nature and circumstances, suspicious of people. In his experience, people weren’t ever what they pretended to be. Well, except for Sharon. Sharon was the only genuine person in his life, the only one who‘d turned out to be the real deal. Most people, he’d found, had ulterior motives for everything they did. So, once Andy had become a bigger fixture in Sharon’s life he’d started wondering if the man’s helpful intentions had been more about making a good impression and helping Sharon than about helping him, and he’d continued to turn more to Provenza for advice. Given Provenza’s more adversarial past with Sharon, he knew the man was completely unbiased and not looking at things just from her perspective. The same could not be said for Andy. Andy was always protecting Sharon and her perspective.

But he’d been okay with their friendship, even as he could see a growing connection between them. A certain softness in their eyes when they thought the other wasn’t looking, a way that Sharon had of always reaching out to touch Andy, and the tender way Andy talked to her, not at all the tough, cynical guy he was at work. Things you would have to be blind not to see.

Or in denial.

But there had been nothing romantic, nothing sexual. And he found that platonic dating was fine, especially when it kept his mother focused less focused on him, giving him greater freedom.

Then, Christmas a couple years ago when Andy and Sharon had been struggling to define their relationship to Nicole, he’d had to go and rock the boat, bringing to their attention everything that he’d been witnessing, and something had clicked. For his mother anyway. He was pretty sure that Andy was well aware of what was going on. But with his mother, he’d seen it all play out on her face. Oh, she’d tried denying it, but the look in her eyes contradicted her protests that they were not dating. She knew it was true. They’d been dating all right, just not in the romantic sense.

And then she’d come home one day and told him that Andy had asked her out on a date. A date. She’d never used that word before when it came to going out with Andy, it had always been, “I‘m going to a movie with Andy” or “I‘m going to a Dodger game tonight with Andy.”  But even with this new terminology, he still hadn’t worried too much, figuring it would just be more of the same. After all, middle-aged people weren’t into romance and sex, right?

How wrong he’d been. The night of the date Sharon was as nervous as he’d ever seen her. She’d tried on at least five dresses, including a new one, asking his advice on each one. After the fourth dress he‘d had enough, groaning, “I don’t know why you’re getting so worked up, it’s just Andy, he sees you every day.” She’d given him a glare, then turned back to her bedroom muttering, “I knew I should have called Gavin.“ This unsure woman plagued by nerves was someone he didn’t know. It was a side of Sharon he’d never seen before.  The only Sharon he knew was calm, cool, self-confident and decisive.

Later that night he’d been sitting on the couch doing homework when she came home from the date all starry-eyed, like some teenage girl swooning over her latest crush, her fingertips playing over her lips in a way that suggested she was reliving a kiss. That was when it really hit him. When he realized that his mother’s relationship with Andy had taken a dramatic turn and that romantic dating was definitely a whole new ballgame.

And yes, that did make him a bit squeamish. In the three years that he’d lived with Sharon, he’d never seen her in any kind of romantic or sexual relationship. Even when Jack had come to stay for a few days back when they were still married, Sharon had made him sleep on the couch and there had been no affection whatsoever between the two.

So, when Andy had to move in with them temporarily because of a dangerous blood clot in his carotid artery and suddenly his mother was all flirty and giggly and she was cuddling up to him while they watched TV, sharing soft, mushy looks with him and kissing him goodnight, it felt awkward…disconcerting …as if he didn’t know her anymore. Because he’d never seen this side of her. Ever.

Still, when Sharon had explained the seriousness of a clot in the carotid artery and that it could be life-threatening, the cold dread that settled like a weight in his stomach made him realize how much he had come to care about Andy. The idea that he could actually die had scared him enough to offer Andy his bedroom after Sharon had assured him that he would not be sharing her room.

Which was another thing that was really strange.

In the 13 years that he’d spent with his biological mother, he couldn’t ever remember her dating anyone the way that Sharon was dating Andy. No man had ever treated her with the kind of respect that Andy treated Sharon. No man had ever shown up at her door with lavender roses because purple was her favorite color. And certainly, no man had ever taken her out for a night on the town and then gone home without getting the one thing he‘d come to believe every man wanted…to get laid. When his mother met a guy there were no traditional tokens of affection, no dates, it was straight into bed.  

And then, just as he’d grown a little bit more comfortable, things changed yet again. Not too long after Andy’s surgery on the clot had healed enough for him to be able to move back into his home in Valencia, he had taken Sharon away down to Orange County for a weekend at the beach. He wasn’t a dumb kid. He knew what that meant, but he didn’t dwell on it. Out of sight, out of mind and all that. But when she came home from that weekend, she had approached him with a conversation regarding “overnight guests to the condo“. After clarifying that she was not referring to him having overnight guests, it hit him like a ton of bricks. She meant that Andy might start spending the night…in her bedroom this time. Once the initial shock wore off he told her he was happy for her, as she said he should be, but he‘d still felt conflicted about it. He liked Andy, and of course, he wanted his mother to be happy. But…just the idea of them doing that made him shudder. Not so strange, Dr. Joe had later explained, “No child ever thinks of their mother as a sexual being and it certainly isn’t easy coming face to face with the man she is having sex with. Watching a parent fall in love is quite a strange phenomenon that with divorce rates being what they are, more and more kids are having to come to terms with.”

But it was more than that for him, and he couldn't put his finger on why he felt the way that he did. Not until the day that he came home early because he'd had a fight with TJ after having told Sharon he would be out late.

He walked in the door, his mind still on the fight, when he heard a soft, low moan come from the direction of his mother’s bedroom. He paused for a moment, not sure what he’d heard. Then he heard it again, this time with an added sharp cry of pain. The door was wide open to the hall so he had no problem hearing her. With a surge of panic, he started to rush forward, sure that she was injured, but just as he reached the doorway, a deep, harsh male groan brought him up short and he froze. Then he heard it, the telltale thumping of her padded headboard against the wall, the low creaking of the bed and the soft sighs of “Andy…Andy…Andy…“  telling him everything he had to know about what was going on in that room. Mortified, he stormed off toward his own bedroom, the shout of Sharon’s name seeming to reverberate throughout the condo. It was that last cry of completion that caused him to slam the door to his room harder than he’d intended.

He threw himself on his bed fighting waves of nausea, his fists clenched at his sides. He wasn’t sure why he was reacting this way. His biological mother had slept with dozens of men, even prostituting herself when times were lean. He’d learned to live with it. But dammit, this was different. This was Sharon. His adopted mother was as different as day and night from his biological mother. And he needed it to be that way.

A few minutes later, his mother knocked on his door and entered his room wearing a short silk bathrobe he’d never seen before. Something a woman would wear for a man. Her skin was flushed and he could swear he could smell Andy on her. His stomach roiled. That smell still lived in his nightmares.

“You’re home early,” she said, sitting on the edge of his bed. He grunted. She brushed a lock of hair back from his face and he flinched. She sighed.

“I’m assuming given the way you slammed your door that you heard us when you got home.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” He rolled away.

“Well, I think we need to talk about it. I did warn you that Andy might start spending the night here once in a while.”

“Spending the night is a little different than having to listen to porn.” He felt her tense, saw the little flicker of hurt in her eyes and wished he could take back what he’d just said.

Sharon took a deep breath, trying to regulate her temper.  “Look, Rusty, I’m sorry you’re upset. I’m sorry you had to hear that. If we’d known you were going to be home early, of course, we would have been more discreet. But this is my home and if I want to have Andy stay over; I will. What you heard was not porn it was lovemaking. There’s a difference.”

He gave a derisive snort and rolled his eyes. “Sure there is.”

“Look, I know it had to be awkward to hear us that way, but why is this bothering you so much? Why are you so upset?” She set a hand on his shoulder and he sat up his eyes flashing with anger.

“I guess I just thought you were above all that, okay.”

She flinched, her brow creasing with confusion. “Above it? What do you mean by that? You think I‘m not human?”

Rusty shrugged. “What am I supposed to think? For all the years that I’ve lived with you, you never had a boyfriend until Andy. You didn’t even let your husband sleep with you when he stayed here.”

“Because we were legally separated and that part of our relationship had been over for a very, very long time.”

“That’s what I’m saying. You didn’t need any guy that way. You just always seem so perfect.”

“Oh my God, honey. I am so not perfect. You’re right, in the past few years, I haven’t had any men in my life until Andy. But I am not a saint. I am not a nun. I am a woman. I have needs like any other woman, any other human being.”

He grimaced. “Can we please stop using the word ‘needs’?”

Her lips pursed in an effort to conceal her amusement. “Fine. But I need you to know that I am not perfect, not by any means. Do not put me on a pedestal.”

“A pedestal?”

“Yes. Because you know what happens when you put people on pedestals?”

He shook his head negatively.

“It deprives them of their humanness. It keeps you from seeing them clearly. I have imperfections and flaws. I have challenges and struggles. I have insecurities. And, yes, I’m sorry to say, I have needs. And when you think a person doesn’t have those human qualities, when you think they are above that, it’s dangerous. Because now you’ve created a standard of perfection that no one can live up to and that can only lead to disappointment. The way you’re feeling right now. And that isn’t fair to me, because I have never claimed to be perfect.”

The anger left Rusty’s eyes. “I guess I just never see you that way. You always seem to have everything so together. You always seem to know what to do and what to say.”

“Well, maybe it seems that way. But I have made plenty of mistakes, dear child, and there are times I don’t exactly know what to do or what to say. This is one of them. I’m sorry if hearing Andy and me embarrassed you.”

He shrugged again. “It’s nothing I haven’t heard before. But, Sharon,” he sat up drawing his knees into his chest. “I don’t get it. You have this great condo, you have a lot of money, a car, you can buy whatever you want, you‘re okay on your own. What do you get out of it?”

She quirked her head to the side, confusion again creasing her brow. “What do I get out of it? I don’t know what you mean.”

“I mean, you don’t have to do it.”

My God, was that really what he thought? “Sex? You’re talking about sex?”

He nodded and her face softened with sympathy.

“Oh, honey. Sex should never be about doing something you don’t want to do just to get something in return. It’s not a transaction, or at least it shouldn’t be.”

He stared at her blandly. He knew he was seriously screwed up when it came to sex. But the one thing he‘d always been sure of was that it was all about quid pro quo, a transaction, as Sharon said. His mother used sex to make money for food and drugs; she used sex as a way to put a roof over their heads by finding a man with an apartment and ingratiating her way into staying with him. She used sex to keep those same men from throwing them out on the street and to keep them from beating her. At the time, it had sickened him and he hated those guys. But then he’d gone and done the very same thing.  He’d sold his body to survive, for food and shelter. And every time he did it, he hated himself more and more. Hated them. Hated their dark, dirty needs. Hated the sounds they made and the smells they left on him. He hated them because they had stolen his childhood, his self-worth and had turned the act of sex into something dark, shameful and degrading.

Sharon continued on gently, “I know that what you went through on the streets has probably warped your views on sexuality but----”

“Mom, I really don’t want to talk about this with you, especially after you‘ve…well,” he gestured toward her attire.

“I know discussing sex with a parent is uncomfortable, I get that. I’ve been through it with your sister and brother. But I want to make sure that you know there is nothing wrong with having sexual needs. All people have them, it’s part of being human. It’s the way people act upon those needs that can twist and pervert them into something ugly and painful”

His chest tightened at the flicker of pain in her eyes, evidence that she too had experienced a darker side to sex.

“Sex, at its best, is not a transactional act. It’s something to be shared, a need to express your love in a physical way, a desire to give your partner pleasure and to accept the pleasure they want to give you in return. Really it’s about sharing the most intimate part of you.” A flush of embarrassment stained Rusty’s cheeks, but Sharon continued on because she was pretty sure this was a conversation he’d never had before and it was important that he understand.

“I don’t sleep with Andy because I feel like I have to be with him that way. I’m with Andy because I want to be. And, I know you may think this sounds corny or old-fashioned, but there really is a difference between sex and making love and one day I hope you will have that experience.”

And so, with that, Andy began spending more and more nights at the condo. Rusty grew used to seeing him come out of Sharon’s bedroom, sometimes in just his boxers, and even seeing him in her bed. It had been quite jarring the first time he’d knocked on their bedroom door, was told to “come in”, and Andy was lying there in bed, Sharon’s head resting sleepily on his bare chest. But now it just seemed normal.

Then, one night during supper, they’d tossed him another curveball. Andy was looking to sell his house in Valencia to find a place closer to theirs in Los Feliz. Okay, no big deal about that. But then, all of a sudden they were talking about moving in together and buying a house together. In an instant, he was that little boy again, sitting on the outside, ignored and forgotten while his mother focused on her new man.

Things had simply never gone well for him when Sharon Beck brought a man into their life. Each time she hooked up with a new guy she would get so wrapped up in him it was like she forgot she even had a son. One day after she‘d moved them in with her latest boyfriend, just to see if she’d notice, he disappeared for two full days. He thought for sure she’d be frantic with worry and would cover him with hugs and kisses when he returned. But when he walked through the door, she hadn’t blinked an eye…because she hadn’t even known he was missing. Had simply assumed he’d been up and off to school each morning. He was 9 years old at the time.

And, as if that wasn’t bad enough, because the men his mother hooked up with were usually drug addicts or drug dealers, or sometimes pimps, they were almost always violent. They treated her like dirt and treated him even worse. They beat her and they beat him, and no matter how awful things got she always took their side. And in the end, when Gary the dirtbag got sick of having him around and told her to dump him at the zoo, she had done just that. Nothing in his life would ever hurt more than that betrayal.

Of course he knew that Sharon Raydor was not Sharon Beck, not by a long shot. But when she‘d come to him and said Andy was moving in, all those old feelings had resurfaced, flooding through him in a series of waves. As much as he knew that Andy wasn‘t Gary, that he wasn‘t going to suddenly start knocking him around and that his mother wasn‘t going to get so fixated on Andy she’d forget about him, it was hard to let go of those old feelings. And if he were really examining his emotions, as Dr. Joe made him do, there was something else he was feeling, something Joe told him was a little more expected.

Jealousy.

For four years he’d pretty much had Sharon all to himself. Sure, she had Emily and Ricky and he’d had to work through some of that jealousy when they came home for visits, but they didn’t live close enough to be an everyday presence. And, sure, she had friends that she spent time with, but for the most part, until Andy, her life had pretty much revolved around work and him, especially during the time when his life was being threatened. In the beginning, he’d chafed over what he’d considered her helicopter parenting. For as long as he could remember he’d done whatever he wanted when he wanted and hadn’t had to answer to anyone.

But now, it was different. He liked having a mother who loved and worried about him. Though he wouldn’t admit it to her, it made him feel all warm inside when she immediately placed a hand on his forehead to check his temperature when he said he wasn’t feeling well, or asked what time he was coming home when he went out then checked on him to make sure he‘d returned safe and sound, because for the first time in his life he had someone who really cared about him. And he was afraid of losing that.

Because now there was Andy. Andy was part of the decisions she made. That had never been more apparent than when she’d turned down what could have been a dream job for her, head of security for the NFL because it would take away from the time she could spend with Andy and possibly put a strain on their relationship. He had become such a big part of her life, their life; there was no getting around that. And while it hadn’t been an easy transition, he‘d successfully navigated through it all and, before too long he’d come to realize that having Andy around wasn’t so bad after all, even if he did hog the TV watching ESPN every night. His moving in, once Rusty had come to terms with it, had been a good thing in many ways. Now that his mother had a partner, and they were off doing things together, it took some of the focus off him, gave him greater freedom. And, unlike the way his biological mother had brought men into their lives, Sharon, and to be fair, Andy, had both gone out of their way to make sure that everything went along as it normally had and that he still felt included in their lives. It had been a bit awkward at first. At times he felt like a third wheel, unsure if they really wanted him around or if he was in the way. But they kept extending him invitations; to eat meals with them, to watch TV with them, to go out to a movie with them. And Andy played chess and video games with him while his mother still made his favorite meals and worried about him when he was having a bad day. It felt an awful lot like he was finally part of a traditional family.  

But when Andy found a house up in the Hollywood Hills that he thought Sharon might like, the old fears had rushed through him. Was he in the way? Was he cramping their burgeoning relationship? Would Andy want him gone so he could have Sharon all to himself? He couldn’t help but wonder if maybe they’d like their own place, a place where they wouldn’t have to worry about him walking in while they were making out on the couch or to have to be quiet when they were doing….other things. He’d expressed some of those fears to Buzz, well, everything but the sexy stuff,  and Buzz had told him to get it all out there with Andy. So, he did. Andy had quickly and forcefully, disabused him of such notions, even chuckling over the idea of what Sharon would do to him if she ever thought he was trying to find a way to get rid of her child. Then, Andy had suggested that he join them to look at the house so they could decide as a family if the house was right for them or not.

A family.

That day had been a changing point. From then on, he’d started to view Andy, not as an interloper, not as the man stealing his mother’s attention, not as the man his mother was sleeping with, but instead, as the man his mother loved and with whom she was sharing her life. A man who had become important to him as well. Andy was someone he could turn to for advice. An ally who was willing to help him navigate through the minefields when his mother was set against something he wanted, and who, conversely, wasn’t afraid to tell him to back off when he felt he was pushing her too hard. He was also an honest, but caring source of information about addiction when it came to his biological mother.

Somehow, over time, Andy had become his father figure, and that bond seemed to grow stronger every day. He didn’t trust many people, but Andy had proven himself trustworthy. And when it came to him as a partner for his mother, Rusty no longer had any reservations. Andy loved his mother, he respected her, and there was no denying that he made her happy. Since he’d come into her life she was so much more light-hearted, she laughed more, she teased more and she was far more relaxed. He liked seeing her that way.

So, by the time Andy came to him hoping for his blessing in asking Sharon to marry him, there had been no hesitance at all in his response. His rather exuberant yes had been a no brainer. Maybe it was because he knew Andy so much better now, or, maybe it was because he was getting more mature, but whatever the reason, none of those old feelings of insecurity had resurfaced when they announced they were indeed getting married. This time there were no red flags warning him of possible disasters, nothing to mar the surprising content he felt over their relationship becoming official and permanent.  

“Earth to Rusty?”

Dr. Joe’s amused voice yanked Rusty out of his trip down memory lane. “Uh, what?”

“I was saying that it wasn’t all that long ago that you had reservations about your mother and Andy.”

“Maybe it wasn’t that long ago, but it feels like it was. I can honestly say that I am happy about this marriage. For them. And maybe even for me. “

TBC