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It wasn’t jealousy I was feeling. It couldn’t be. It was just… I don’t know. It was weird seeing them together, and I almost felt it was like Creed had said that night at his parents’ dinner table, that someone else would know my best friend in a way that I never could. That had never bugged me before, and I only realized then it was because it was now my two best friends doing it with each other that compounded the situation. I felt strangely sad at the thought until I realized I had nothing to be upset about.
For once, it was that easy.
ON NEW Year’s Eve, long after Ty had fallen asleep, even though he swore he’d make it, the clock struck midnight, but I barely noticed. Otter had turned on low music a while before and started a fire and then pulled me up against him and started to sway back and forth. I started to protest, to tell him I couldn’t dance, that this was cheesy and stupid, but somehow, I just couldn’t get it out of me. I put my hands up against his chest and let him hold me and move me however he wished. It was quiet, and as the fire popped in the background and as that gold-green watched me and shone, it was almost like he was about to ask me a question, but then the clock started chiming something, and he bent down and kissed me instead, and that was all I could remember, because he was all I could see.
I KNEW something was up after the new year began when Otter and the Kid began whispering among themselves, immediately silencing whenever I walked into the room. It was getting to the point that I started trying to catch them, but they were always one step ahead of me. I accused them of shenanigans, but they just smirked and told me I didn’t know what I was talking about. It didn’t help that Otter was starting to act like he was nervous about something, and I didn’t know what the hell it could be. I wondered if I’d forgotten something important, like an anniversary, or something else.
His birthday was the twenty-second, but I didn’t know for the life of me why he and the Kid would be plotting something for me.
I tried working the Kid over, but apparently he’s against any kind of bribery, so much so that he seemed scandalized when I offered to pay him off if he would just tell me what they were up to.
“What kind of a person do you think I am?” he said, sounding horrified.
“Is that how you’re going to get through life? Buying your way?”
“Just tell me,” I growled at him. “I’ll make it fifty bucks.”
“You know, if these are the type of life lessons you’re going to b
e imparting on my impressionable young mind, you really should step back and reevaluate your position as my big brother. For shame, Papa Bear. For shame.” He shook his head as he started to walk away, and I did feel guilty for at least a few seconds, until I heard him loudly telling on me to Otter, and Otter loudly telling him that he was proud of him for being able to resist monetary temptation and that wasn’t I just a bad, awful man?
If it’d just been the Kid and Otter, I think I might have been able to keep my sanity and nosiness in check. But it wasn’t. It was everyone. Mrs.
Paquinn, Anna, Creed. Their parents. Even Isaiah seemed to smirk at me a bit more when classes resumed after winter break, even though there’s no way on God’s green earth that Otter would have called and told him anything. And then one day I came around the corner and saw him huddled up with Anna and I knew that she was a traitor, especially when I heard her laugh at something he’d said, only to realize she’d been caught by me, and she started sputtering insults at Isaiah, who replied back with only half of his usual snark.
So the world was against me.
“I don’t know why you all have to keep secrets,” I complained to Mrs.
Paquinn, who’d met me for lunch three days before Otter’s birthday. “I thought we’d learned last summer that secrets don’t help anyone.”
“If you’re trying to guilt-trip me,” she replied amiably, “it’s not working. But please, do keep it up if it makes you happy. Lord knows there’s nothing I love more than hearing you complain about things.” She sipped her tea.
I narrowed my eyes at her. “You love this, don’t you. Having this… this thing over me. You’re all doing this on purpose.”
She grinned sweetly, but I knew better. “I would think one would enjoy getting surprised.”
“Aha! So something is happening!”
“Really, Bear, you’re getting a tad bit desperate here, aren’t you? But I suppose it’s just a man thing to do. My Joseph, God love him, didn’t have a lick of patience in his entire body. It was always now, now, now, with him.”
She looked out the window of the tea shop, and it was almost like she got lost in whatever went through her head. “There’s times that I wish I’d been more in the moment with him. Times that I wish I hadn’t told him to just be patient, to just wait and see. Times I….” She stopped, shaking her head.
When she looked at me again, her eyes were clear of memory. “I know that you’re young, and that you’ve got your whole life ahead of you, but it’s these moments that mean the most. Remember that, Bear.”
I do remember that. I do. Which is why today, I have come home from work and found the house empty, a cryptic note in Otter’s handwriting, telling me that my tux has been laid out, and that Tyson is with Mrs.
Paquinn, and that I am expected on our little beach at five thirty. Sunset. It’s going to be a little cold, but I don’t care. Something starts to buzz through my body, a sense of anticipation that I can’t quite place. I don’t know what’s going to happen. I don’t know what Otter has planned, but if he’s decided to have us go back to that beach which holds one of my best memories ( Otter!
Otter! Otter! Don’t lead cows to slaughter! ) then you bet your ass I’m not going to complain about the goddamn cold.
I walk to our room and my tux is laid out on the bed, a single red rose laid across the front. I set it to the side and lift up the jacket, and a little white piece of paper flutters down to the floor. I pick it up and open it. A note, in the Kid’s neat scrawl, time-stamped from just a couple of hours ago: There better be good news when you come to pick me up! I’ve already pre-tied the bow tie for you. Don’t mess this up!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Good news? I think. What the hell is going on?
Don’t ask me, it says. Don’t we hate surprises?
I think for a moment. Only when we don’t know they’re coming.
