When Steve was a kid sleeping over at Tommy’s house, he would periodically check in with Tommy’s parents to make sure they (1) still liked him, (2) didn’t want him to go home, and (3) didn’t think he was being loud and annoying.
Very clearly things someone (his parents) had said to him so Tommy’s parents always patiently reminded him that they (1) love him, (2) love when he’s here, (3) think he’s no louder than their boys and he’s definitely not annoying.
He kinda grows out of it as he got older but it always comes back when those boys were up to no good.
Maria Hagan is in her kitchen, scrubbing mud out of one of her son’s cleats when she hears the front door open and then ease shut. Tommy calls in a very measured voice that they’re back from a school friend’s birthday party and are going to bed. This is followed by - “Steve, don’t-“
It’s really the only warning she gets before Steve is next to her, thirteen and smelling like he swam in a pool of beer. She opens her arms and he falls into a hug, asking, “Are you mad at me?”
“Of course not, sweetie,” She tells them, giving Tommy a look when he reluctantly comes into the room. “But you’re grounded. Both of you.”
Maria watches her fifteen year old and his friends act suspicious at the family reunion they’re hosting, disappear, and come back red-eyed and giggly. Ten minutes later, her husband comes up to her and informs her that the kids are high, “Steve asked if I was disappointed in him.”
“Did you say yes?” She asks and gets only silence back. She wouldn’t have been able to say yes either. It doesn’t stop her from calling her husband a, “Coward.”
There’s a fallout in Tommy’s friend group and one less mouth at her kitchen table. She tries not to let it feel like she’s lost a son.
Life goes on. A couple years go by. And then she’s walking out into the emergency room lobby to alert Eddie Munson’s family that he’s going to surgery and - “Steve?”
She ignores that he hasn’t called her that since he was five years old because there are cuts on his neck, bruises. He’s dirty and bleeding. She says, “Sweetie…”
And it’s all she needs to say before she has her arms full of dirty teenager. He squeezes her tight, shoulders shaking, asking, “Do you hate me?”
She hugs him right back, “Never.”
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