I glanced around the table. Everyone else looked pained to be sitting there. “Uh… what’s Thursday and why do I need to bring drinks?”

Tina grabbed the piece of paper out of Bette’s hand and forced it into Bette’s lap. “Bette is organising a dinner party for Thanksgiving. You’ll be there, right?”

Thanksgiving? Jesus, I hadn’t had Thanksgiving in… fuck, I couldn’t remember the last time. Certainly not since coming to LA, and I think that nice family I had in my second foster home… yeah, she had made this huge turkey for the three of us… that was before my nightmares had started there and freaked them out. I ate enough turkey that night to last me the rest of the year. I remember my mom trying to cook a turkey one year. Between the current boyfriend, the bird in the oven, and the blow on the coffee table, she was kind of funny to watch run around the apartment all day, somewhere between stressed, tweaked, and giggly over the experience… the meat had to be the driest I had ever had. I remember running out of corners of napkins to hide the meat in…

Alice slapped my arm, “Yo, Shane! You with us?”

I shook my head a bit, “Yeah… uh, Thursday… I think I might be busy that night…”

Tina shook her head, “No. No, I refuse to believe that. Whatever you have planned can wait till the next night. The ladies at Milk will be there Friday night. Thursday night you’re skinny little butt will be at our dinner party, celebrating Thanksgiving with the rest of us.”

I was a bit taken back. Tina was never this forward, this pushy. In the time I had known Tina, she had almost pulled back from me since that first night of interrogation. We had a sort-of unspoken truce going. After the whole restaurant incident, and with her moving in with Bette, she started slowly easing towards me. While Bette and I still had long talks together, slowly Tina started sticking around for them, usually sitting by quietly, but with time, had started slowly joining the conversations. While I don’t think I ever formed the same relationship with her that I had with Bette, she had started to become as important to me. But usually when I took a stance, she accepted it silently, even if her body language and facial expressions told another story. To have her flat out argue with me was a bit of a surprise. I couldn’t figure out if I was annoyed or impressed with her sudden rush of confidence in dealing with me.