“Heard he got fired from the pier,” Sam said. “Something about having a bad attitude with his boss at the arcade.”
“Yeah,” Tanner said, and shook his head. When he’d been fifteen, he’d gone to school, then football practice, and then he’d bagged at the grocery store for gas and car insurance money before finally going home to handle the house for his single mom. In comparison, his son’s life was a walk in the park. “That’s not why I’m pissed.”
“Is it because he was taken to the police station for filling the principal’s car full of packing peanuts?” Cole asked.
“I bet it was that he posted a pic of his handiwork on Facebook after,” Sam said.
“He says he didn’t do it, that someone hacked into his account and put up the pic to get him in trouble.” Tanner scrubbed a hand down his face. “But even if he did, Jesus. At least I was always smart enough not to document my own crimes.”
Sam shook his head. “Not always, you weren’t. Seventh grade, when you had a thing for the mayor’s daughter. You stole the town’s Christmas tree lights and used them to decorate her front yard, and then when everyone freaked out about the theft, you got caught in the act of trying to return the lights.”
Cole started laughing at the memory and spilled his own beer. Tanner supposed it was wrong of him to hope that he choked on it. “Okay, fine,” he said. “So the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”
“Maybe it’s karma,” Sam said. “You were wild and stupid and now he’s following in your footsteps.”
Sam was only kidding but the way Tanner saw it, Troy’s bad ’tude was all on him. He could remember all too well the inner fury of being a kid who’d been dumped by his dad. And no, Tanner hadn’t dumped Troy, but the kid didn’t see it that way.
Tanner had been a teenager himself when he’d found out he was going to be a father. As a seventeen-year-old with no means to support himself, much less the girl he’d slept with on the beach after a party one night, he’d done the best he could. This had involved marrying Elisa to give her and their baby his name, throwing away a lucrative football scholarship to ship off to the navy, and growing up pretty damn fast.
Elisa had dumped him shortly after Troy’s birth and moved with the baby to Florida to live with her grandparents, but Tanner had still done what he could, making sure that he’d provided for the both of them along with his mom.
When he and the guys had first come back to Lucky Harbor from the Gulf of Mexico, he’d asked Elisa for custody, or at least partial. She’d refused, and for the past two years Tanner had done the best he could from three thousand miles away, visiting Troy as often as possible, calling, emailing…
And then two weeks ago Elisa had changed her tune, showing up in town with Troy in tow, as well as Boyfriend Dan. Suddenly she’d been all about sharing custody of their son.
No idiot, Tanner had jumped right on that, but there’d been problems he hadn’t foreseen. Such as Troy’s bad attitude, resentment, and basic hatred of all authority figures—of whom Tanner was apparently the king.
“If the kid’s anything like you,” Cole said, “and we all know he’s exactly like you, then keeping him busy is the key. He just lost a job. Why don’t we give him one?”
“I like it,” Sam said. “The boat needs a massive detailing, the dock needs a good bleaching, and the equipment needs its seasonal going-over—every single inch of every single piece of equipment with a fine-tooth comb.”
“And you trust a pissed-off-at-the-world fifteen-year-old to do all that?” Tanner asked in disbelief.
“It’s better than us doing it,” Sam said pragmatically. “He’s already grounded from anything except school, right? He probably thinks his life is over. You’d be doing him a favor, and you need that. You need him to owe you.”
“It’s a great idea,” Cole said.
Actually, Tanner couldn’t think of a worse idea. But his so-called friends just grinned at him. “Shit,” he said, and they out and out laughed at him. He pointed at Sam. “You’re next, you know. You’re getting married in a month. This kid thing is coming for you, and I can’t wait. I’m going to laugh my ass off.”
“That’s just mean, man,” Sam said.
“You’ll get the hang of daddy duty,” Cole told Tanner, clapping a hand on his shoulder. “Sooner or later.”
God, he hoped so, but sooner would be better than later. The problem was, Tanner had undeniable survival skills, an arguable amount of life skills, and absolutely no known dad skills.