The Best Deceptions (Want You Bad sequel)

Chapter 29

**HIIIIIII. Sorry this took so long to write. I am, in fact, the worst.

I smiled at the photo of Sutton and his dad, Fred, with an Elvis impersonator, all three doing the trademark lip curl, sending him a quick reply before tapping Garrett's thigh to show him the photo, taking his attention away from the show we had been watching. "They have arrived in Vegas." Fred had decided he wanted to take a spontaneous weekend trip to Las Vegas before he became a grandfather and had begged Sutton to go with him. I reassured Sutton a trillion times that I would be okay, I wasn't due for another week, but he only agreed to go on the trip if someone stayed with me, and Garrett had volunteered.

"That's really cute. Is that the Elvis that married you and Louis?"

I snorted a laugh. "How ironic would that be? But no, this Elvis is a little slimmer."

"Maybe he tried Jenny Craig?"

I rested my head on his shoulder. "Has Ellis texted you back?"

I felt his body move in a heavy sigh. "No. They're seriously mad at me this time." He and Ellis had been fighting more and more frequently the past few months, and Garrett was spending more and more time with me and my family.

"What's going on, Gare? You've gotta stop holding all this shit in."

"Well, I stepped down from my position as a peer-to-peer counselor and am back to focusing on session studio work and giving drum lessons."

"Okay," I sat up and shifted slightly to face Garrett, trying to be as comfortable as my beach ball belly would allow. "Why did you step down?"

"I don't know if this is going to make sense so bear with me, please."

I nodded. "Pregnancy brain is killing me lately, but I'll do my best."

"Okay, I felt like once I monetized sobriety and helping people, I was being selfish. Helping just to help, I thrive on that. But once I started getting compensated for it, it just felt wrong. So I'm still going to meetings and stuff like that, I just cannot make sobriety a profession. Especially because most of the people that I was dealing with weren't there because they wanted to be there; they were court mandated or there was family pressure, and once that was all lifted, they had zero intentions of staying sober. I would rather help people that want to be helped, ya know? I was just miserable, and it was taking a toll on me. Removing myself from that situation was the best thing I could do."

"Why is that bad in Ellis' mind?"

"Dude," he groaned. "I am so frustrated. They think that I quit because it was too hard, and I quote, 'When the going gets tough, Garrett disappears,' which is incredibly untrue and unfair. I tried explaining that helping people that didn't want help was draining, and Ellis just...didn't seem to listen. The lack of care from these people and just their hopelessness and helplessness was contagious, and it scared the absolute fuck out of me, Natty. I thought that Ellis would understand, but it was like talking to a wall. Then when I said I was coming here while Goose was out of town, that became a whole separate issue because we hadn't solved the previous one."

"Maybe a couple days' break from each other will be good. You guys can both clear your heads."

"Relationships are so much work, dude. Then I have to look at you and Sutton, and you guys are perfect and never fight."

I rolled my eyes. "Not true. We have disagreements all the time, we just try to stay level-headed and not get too heated with each other."

"I try that, but Ellis just gets so...so petulant."