Michael

Do you want the full, completely honest truth about what's going through my mind?

Of course you do.

I see a lot of myself in Garrett, I really do. He's a resilient kid who just wants to help everyone else other than himself, and when he needs help he won't ask anyone for it. Especially the ones he's closest to.

When I looked at him in Faith's room, beaten and worn down, I saw my childhood self in his eyes. The pleading "Help Me" look is all I needed to see to make me know that this kid wasn't okay.

And he really wasn't.

I would adopt him in a heartbeat, but there's only one issue:

Faith would have kissed her adopted brother.

Imagine the rumors in a middle school hallway.

I would ask Linc to take him, but that would mean that she's dating her cousin.

Sweet home Alabama.

He just has a mild concussion, which is probably the best we could have hoped for. He handled it well; even though he can't play in the baseball game tomorrow, he'll get to come with us to watch Mike's team (also his) play their first game.

The hospital knows about the abuse and can handle it better than us, so they let us know that they would make some phone calls to report the case and, if circumstances are bad enough, get it into a courtroom in front of a judge. And then the judge would decide who gets custody; the system or his adoptive parents.

I won't let him go back to that house if I can help it.

We get back home and Faith and Garrett go back upstairs to do whatever they want, and I go back to the couch to find Linc still sitting on the couch. "Where the heck were you?" I throw myself down on the couch and sigh. "Saving a kid's life," I reply, and Linc actually pauses the TV and looks at me. "Whose?" I take the remote from him and play the next baseball game. "Garrett's."

"How?"

I sigh. "Did I tell you who he's related to?"

He shakes his head just as the Padres DH hits a line drive to center. "He's Whip's son." He turns to me with wide eyes. "So? That kid should mean a lot." I put my head in my hands at his sheer ignorance. "And who was Whip's dad?" He thinks for a minute and puts it together. "Shoot. Now I get what you're saying."

"So anyway, the kid's adopted. His adoptive dad beat him so bad he can barely lay down, and he's got a concussion from it too. The belt buckle literally cut his back." He stares down at the couch and puts his hands on his knees. "Crap, man, I didn't know." I look at him and smack him on the shoulder. "Don't mention it in front of him. He'll be staying here for a long time, or at least until he can find a foster home or somewhere safe for him to live."

We all come downstairs for lunch, which is just some turkey sandwiches. Nothing fancy. Garrett sits down at the table and stares down at his feet, seemingly trying to hide his face. He grabs his sandwich and takes small bites, putting it back down when he's only about halfway done. "What did you guys think of this weekend?" Sara's referring to the weekend at my loft; not Baja, because that's still kind of a rough topic. "I thought it was pretty cool," Garrett says quietly. It's kind of a huge deal that he's talking. There were times after I had gone through the same thing that I wouldn't say a word for a week.

After lunch, I decide to go grab Garrett and just drive around the neighborhood so I can tell him some things. "You know, I know what you're going through," I say, and he just stares out the windshield. "No offense to you, Mr. Scofield, but I don't know that you do." Little does he know, I've probably had it worse than him.

"I was a foster kid my entire childhood. My parents died in a car accident and I was left in the system. I can't count how many homes I was in until I finally got out of the system. They all treated me like garbage; locked me in closets, beat me at every chance they could find. It got so bad that I had a crazy fear of the dark because of the closets. I slept with a nightlight every night until I was out of college, if I'm being honest. Come to find out, one of the worst homes I was in was actually my real father's. That hurt the most." He looks at me with a quizzical look. "How did you ever get out?"

He's probably asking so he can do it himself.

"Linc, my brother, waited until he could become my guardian when he was eighteen. He finally went to the courts and requested to get me out of the system, and I guess they were kind of reluctant to let him do that because he was barely eighteen. I was only ten."

He looks down at the floorboard of his seat as I turn to go back home. "Thanks, Mr. Scofield, but I should probably go home now." I stop the car in our driveway and look across the car at him. "I'm not going to let you go back home." He looks down at his shoes on the floorboards. "I thought you might say that."

"You're going to stay here until we can keep you out of there for good."

At around 4 o'clock, Linc leaves and goes back to his own house.

Finally.

I mean, don't get me wrong, I love my brother, but when he practically lives at your house he kind of gets annoying sometimes.

And he ate the whole bag of my favorite pretzels.

I decide that I'm going to cook tonight. I'm going to make my "famous spaghetti" (Mike's words). Then the guys are coming for "Bro Night" as Fernando calls it to watch an old football game that we taped since there's nothing else on.

I wonder what Faith will think of spaghetti.

I start to boil the water for the pasta when Faith and Garrett come downstairs. "Dad!" Faith walks into the kitchen. "I'm going to try something, but I want to make sure it's okay with you first." I give her a questioning look. "Okay. Ask away."

"I'm going to try to shoot a basket."

I stop, mid-stir in the boiling pot of spaghetti noodles. "Are you sure you'll be okay? If you think you're okay, then by all means, try it. I just don't want you to hurt yourself again." She looks at the pot of noodles for a second. "I'll try one time to see what happens and if it's not too bad then I'll at least know." I shrug.

"Knock yourself out." She and Garrett walk outside to the basketball hoop.

I'm going to watch from the window just to make sure she'll be okay. Sara comes up behind me as I watch her take a ball from the bin in the garage, and then dribble it out to the hoop at the end of the driveway. She puts her arms around me and leans her chin on my shoulder. "She'll be fine," she whispers in my ear, and then I turn from the window for a split second to pull Sara into a hug. "I know," I whisper into her ear. I look over Sara's shoulder to Faith shooting the basket from well inside the paint. She shoots, makes it, but it looks like it hurt a little bit.

Okay.

Maybe it hurt a lot.

She puts her right hand on her knee and bends down, obviously in pain from the shot. I go for the doorknob to go help her but Sara puts her hand on my chest to stop me. "I want to see what he does." Garrett bends down to where she is and looks her in the eyes, his hand rubbing her back as she slowly starts to recover. "Man, that looked like it hurt pretty bad." Sara kisses me and walks back into the kitchen. "Oh yeah, and Mr. Master Chef?" I peer around the corner to look at her. "You better hope you have another box of spaghetti. You let this go too long." I walk over to the pot of soggy, limp pasta. "Great. I'm lucky that I left the other box in the cabinet."

I dump the other box of pasta into the boiling water, this time being more careful to watch it. I look in the pantry for the aprons that normally hang in there as a kind of joke, but then I find the one that Linc left here one day. The one that says "Kiss the Cook" on the front.

I haven't seen this apron in forever.

I put it on as a joke and take the pasta out of the pot to strain it. Sara walks back into the kitchen as I'm straining the noodles into the sink. "How's it going, Master Chef?" I turn around to face her and grin. "It's going great! I'm almost done," I say, and I can tell she's reading the apron. "Hmm. Interesting." She moves over to the sink where I just finished straining the pasta, and lays her hands on my shoulders. She leans up a few inches and I kiss her, long and slow. My hands move to her hips as I pull her to me, breaking off the kiss. "Wear that more often," she says with a smirk. "Will do. I mean, if that's what I get, I'll wear it everyday." She laughs and walks upstairs.

I finish the spaghetti and put it in a dish on the countertop. "Mike, go get Faith and Garrett for dinner!" He runs down from his room and out the front door. "HEY! Get your butts inside for dinner!" I raise my eyebrows. I did not expect it to be that, um, forceful.

"They're coming, dad."

Linc, Sucre, and LJ come in the door at the perfect time to eat with us. "Ooh, is that my bowl?" Linc is eyeing the big glass dish of spaghetti that's supposed to be for all of us. "No, Sherlock, that's for all of us." He gets a confused look on his face. "You mean to tell me that the tiny bowl right there is supposed to be for all of us?" I shrug. "It's not my fault that you eat half your body weight every day."

Everyone grabs a plate of spaghetti and sits down in the living room to eat and watch the old football game. "You do realize that we have Hulu and could get a live game?" I give him a look that says, "Did you seriously just say that?" I blink at him a few times and he gives a shrug of indifference at me. "Lincoln. You can't be serious."

"Why not?" I start massaging my temples. "Linc, it's June 7th. Not football season," I tell him, and then he realizes what was wrong with suggesting a live football game. "Ohhhh. Right."

The game is the 2019 superbowl where the Pats beat the Rams 13-3.

The only reason we've had it for 3 years is because Netflix started keeping the past superbowls; not to mention that it's the best game the Pats have played in a long time.

As we turn on the game, I realize that this includes the pregame. "Pregame or no pregame?" I leave this decision to the other guys since the girls typically don't care about the sports games. "I mean, I really don't care. It was a good pregame." The TV is on in the background, playing the pregame events as the other guys try to decide whether to watch it or not. "I don't really have an input. I've never seen that pregame," Faith chimes in from the corner of the couch. I think this over for a second and then put the remote down beside me. "Pregame it is," Sucre says, and Mike silently pumps his fist from beside Faith.

I'll admit, it was a good pregame. Better than most games, even better than most superbowls.

The women (minus Faith) have mostly retreated to the kitchen to do something else. I can't figure out why women can't find football (or any sport) interesting. Cheating, pro athletes that get paid millions a year to suck at what they do, injuries, blind referees, what else could you ever need?

I don't think I want to really give the fact that the Patriots are guilty of all these problems too much thought.

Especially the "deflategate" problem in the 2021 season.

Yep.

It happens again.

That was really interesting to watch Linc argue about. We would actually start arguments with him about it, like "Hey, Linc, I think the Pats got suspended from playing until deflategate gets figured out." That one particular comment would make him so mad he'd eventually storm out of the room saying something about how stupid the sports press was.

When kickoff happens, you can hear the sound of the crowd going crazy.

Linc walks into the kitchen and grabs the bag of pretzels from the cabinet. "Africa will freeze over before you stop eating," Sucre says to Linc. "What?" We all ignore him and turn back to the game.

For some reason, the superbowl commercials always interest the women. I get it, they're pretty good, but you'll pass up the entire game to watch the commercials? Crazy stuff. At halftime, all of us guys just sit and aren't really sure what to do since we can't bet on scores or winners since we already know what ends up happening. Then, just as the game comes back to start the second half, Linc sits back down on the couch and the TV goes into static. "Sink! Come on, man!" Mike stands up and puts his hands on top of his head like the world is ending because the TV won't work. Linc stands up and looks at where he was just sitting and picks up the remote. "Relax, children, I can fix it." He pushes a few buttons and then ends up on some random cooking channel. "I don't want to learn how to make the best lemon bars right now, Sharice," Linc says as he tries to figure out the problem with the TV. The kids try to cover their laughs with their hands over their faces, but that doesn't work for long after Linc hits the bottom of the remote on the arm of the couch. The kids, along with everyone else in the room, start laughing at how mad Linc's getting over something as simple as a TV remote not working. "Here," Garrett says quietly amongst the laughter. Linc looks across the room at the kid and holds the remote out for him to take. "You found American baseball in Mexico, so I guess you can probably find an American football game in America." Garrett takes the remote from Linc's outstretched hand and pushes a few buttons. The TV goes back to the game, exactly where it was before. Linc holds his hands up like the kid just worked some crazy magic or something. "Thanks, kid." Garrett nods at him and goes to sit back down by Faith and Mike on the couch.

When the game ends, the guys and their wives head home around ten, leaving just Sara and I with the three kids. "You guys can stay awake, but your mom and I are going to bed. Just stay inside, please, since it's dark outside." The kids nod and run downstairs to watch a movie or something.

Mike can be the moderator.

Sara and I go upstairs to lay down. She lays in bed as I go to brush my teeth and change out of my jeans. I lay down beside her, pulling her into my chest. "Do you ever worry anymore?" She turns her head up to look at me like this is an odd question. "What do you mean?" I shift and turn onto my back. "I don't know. About anything from before, or something like- dare I say it- Kellerman comes back?" She looks at me as I turn my face down to hers. "Sometimes, in the far corners of my mind I do. But I have a feeling that that's not what you worry about the most," she replies, and she's right. It's crazy how she knows me better than I know myself sometimes. "Okay, I guess it's not," I reply as I run my fingers through her hair. "I know what it really is, Michael. I've been around you enough to know what you worry about without you saying it." I look into her hazel eyes. "I guess nineteen years is long enough for someone to know something like that," I say with a grin. I lean down to kiss her, and then in the middle of the kiss I realize that I don't know if she really knows what I worry about.

"Do you want to know what I really worry about?" She wraps her arms around my neck and moves closer to me. "Is it something to do with a particular boy and girl in our house?" I move my head to put my chin on the top of her head. "Yeah, it is. I don't know if I want her to be someone else's favorite person yet." Sara moves away from me and turns away. "What?" Sara replies, "I thought I was your favorite person." I know she's just joking at this point. "You still are. But can I have more than one favorite person?" She turns around and pretends to think for a second. "I guess I can allow it," she jokes sarcastically. I pull her into me and she lays under the comforter beside me. "Love you," I whisper into her ear. "Love you more, Michael." My fingers run through her hair and down her back as she falls asleep against me.

Sometime during the night I wake up to a noise from somewhere in the house. I decide not to think anything of it until I hear it again from Faith's room, and that's when I decide to go investigate it.

The door stays open, even though Mike's in there, so I peer around the corner to see Garrett and Mike playing video games with each other as Faith sleeps on the bed behind them. "Why can't you just keep your hands off of her? Like, she's my sister, I get that you think she's hot, but you don't have to kiss her or anything." I hear this conversation from around the corner of Mike's room and wonder where Garrett's going to come back.

"Yeah, well at least I didn't kiss a girl and hide it from my parents."

My eyes widen and I try not to laugh at the boys as I walk back to bed.

Sara will have some interesting stories to hear in the morning.