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Ingredients: water… sugar… peaches. Simple enough. But I’d read it at least five hundred times by the time he opened the pantry door and came in with me, shutting the door behind him.
“What are you doing?” he asked, the laughter in his voice evident.
“Reading about peaches.” I glared at him. It should have been obvious.
The “duh” at the end of my sentence was, of course, implied.
“Why are you reading about peaches?” He cocked his head to the side.
“They’re interesting,” I retorted.
“Huh. You know, when people ask why we’re together, I tell them about stuff like this and they look at me weird.”
I snorted. “Please,” I scoffed. “This is me keeping the magic alive.”
He chuckled and took the peaches from my hand and put them back on the shelf. “Bear, do you know what Wikipedia is?” he asked me gently.
“An asshole,” I hissed.
Then he told me what Wikipedia was. And how he knew the Kid had a Wikipedia account. And how I probably shouldn’t have ruined his shirt.
Psychological warfare.
That little bastard.
ROUND 3: I went online and bought my own shirt and had it rush delivered.
It was awesome. Puppies, the OTHER white meat. He pointed out to me that I had accidentally put it on backward in my rush to show him. I had wondered why my neck was itchy. Winner: the Kid.
Round 4: Tyson came inside from playing and told me he’d been asked out on a date by a boy who lived down the street, and he was thinking about going. I had a heart attack and a stroke and seriously flirted with incontinence. Winner: the Kid.
Round 5: Telling him I felt bad about the puppy-shirt thing, I told him we could go pick out a dog at the pound now that we had a yard for it.
Instead, I took him to the dentist. Winner: Bear “Rock Star” McKenna.
Halftime: Otter took a white undershirt of his and wrote on it with a black marker: I think you’re both stupid and wore it around the house (which in of itself is not all that funny, except that I’d found his first attempt at writing the shirt in the trash can, and he’d initially written “your” instead of “you’re”) . The Kid and I agreed that he was the stupid one. Winners: the Kid and me (because Otter’s not funny at all).
Round 6: Okay, I’ll admit, by round six, I was running out of ideas. It didn’t help that there was so much more on my mind. Fuck, we had court to worry about, stupid custody hearings, whether or not the Kid was going to skip to the fifth grade or not. As much as I felt the Kid deserved whatever he got for the whole hair-loss incident, I just couldn’t do it anymore. So, being the better person (and don’t give me that look, I was being the better person) I ordered him another MEAT ISN’T NEAT shirt. I swear to God, we’re the reason that stupid vegetarian clothing website is staying in business. So, yeah. It came and he opened it, a look of extraordinary distrust on his face as he parted the tape. But that look on his face that followed? You know, that look that showed he felt the sun rose and set upon me? That’s the look I hope for. That’s the look I live for. He shouted incoherently as he’s prone to do as he launched himself into my lap and babbled in my ear.
Look. You’ve been with me a while. I know sometimes I can go on and on… and on. I overthink things. I make stupid mistakes that lead to actions that could otherwise have been avoided. I hear voices in my head that make me sound like I’m crazy and maybe I dwell on them too long. Okay, okay: way too long. Geesh. I know this. I understand this. But really? It all has a point. It has a reason. It has meaning. I’ve learned things in the past few years, things that I didn’t think were possible. I could never have imagined that I’d be where I am now, at this point in my life. It’s scary. It’s wonderful. And I know it doesn’t matter what’s out there against us, even though it sort of does. It doesn’t matter what doubts I might have, even though I still have them. What matters is the Kid in my lap, playing with my fingers as he sounds like a kid. What matters is Otter’s hand at my back, rubbing gently while he watches the two people he says mean more to him than anything else in the world. This is us, okay? For better or worse, this is us. For all of our wrongs and for all of our rights, this is us.
This is who we are.
2.
Where Bear Hears
The Kid Plead His Case
SO, WELCOME back.
To be honest, not a whole lot has happened since you were last here. I mean, good Lord, it’s only been about two weeks. But in those two weeks, there was the Great War with the Kid, where, as I’m sure you could tell, I came out the winner. There was the Big Move (It’s About Time). There were days when I couldn’t believe this was actually happening, that we were moving into the Green Monstrosity with a doorbell that sounded so very much like our own. The only thing that really sucked about the whole thing was the look I’d caught on Mrs. Paquinn’s face as she walked through our empty apartment, and it was a moment that almost completely broke me apart. I promised myself that we’d see her a few times a week and that she’d come over whenever she wanted to.
But she had covered up that look, and I did the right thing and pretended I hadn’t seen it. It didn’t stop me from hugging her longer than was completely necessary and kissing her cheek and inviting her over the next night for dinner. She had sniffled a bit near my ear, and her eyes were shiny when she pulled away, but her smile was there and her grip was strong. It helps, I think, that we’re only going to be, like, five minutes away. It was still hard to drive away from her, though.
Then there’s Anna Grant, the former love of my life, the one who I thought I’d be with until the world ended. It was her I hurt the most in the fallout of this past summer. It was her that had been lied to the most. It seems that she’s on the road to forgiving me, but I’m having a hard time forgiving myself. It’s not easy when I see her and always feel a dark smattering of guilt. It wasn’t easy for me when I’d seen Creed and her in the two days following Creed’s party, when everything had finally been laid out in the open for all to see. I told myself, as I watched them out of the corner of my eye, that I wasn’t jealous, but even that felt false. The problem was I couldn’t tell who I was jealous of, her or Creed.
Creed. My big brother (ha!). Creed who’d hugged me good-bye before going back to Arizona for the fall semester. His touch had been a bit stiff, his eyes slightly guarded, and I felt a little sad then, wanting to fix this thing in him that I’d broken. I don’t really know what the issue is, whether it be how long I kept me and Otter from him, or whether it’s just the fact that it’s me and Otter, his older brother. I thought about it, late one night, wondering how I’d feel being in his position, like maybe if the Kid and him got together when Ty was older. That caused me to cringe and gag a little, so I think I could understand. But I think a lot of things have been left unsaid between the two of us, and while I want to be the bigger man (for once) and broach the subject, I think maybe the distance will be good for now, and I’ll let him come to me. It’s not avoidance if you actively plan to pursue it.
