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—“that we’ve always called him.”
“We?” he asks.
I lower my eyes. “My mother and I. It started when—”
it sounded like he called you a bear oh oh his first word
—“he was a baby.”
He nods and looks like he’ll say something more but opens the door instead and follows me out. Otter sees us coming and stands.
“Oliver!” Eddie bellows. “It’s your turn.”
Otter eyes him warily. “Give us a moment?”
Eddie nods and walks back into his office.
Otter reaches and grips my chin, forcing me to look him in the eye.
“You okay?” he asks, looking frustrated. “I heard yelling and I wanted to come in, but I didn’t know if I should. Did you need me in there?”
I shake my head gently, not wanting him to let go. “I think I handled myself, big guy. He’s not as bad as he seems. I think.”
Otter looks like he doesn’t believe me, like he wants to wrap himself around me and not let anyone at me ever again, and this causes my heart to skip a few beats in my chest, because I almost want him to do it. Fuck me.
Maybe I am a submissive bottom bitch dumpster whatever, after all.
But I’m drawing the line at a baseball bat.
He leans forward and kisses me gently, his tongue briefly touching mine before he moves past me and toward the office. “I totally believe in Santa Claus,” I hear him say as he enters the doorway.
“You do?” Eddie asks, sounding impressed. “That’s fascinating. Please, shut the door and tell me more.”
I turn toward the Kid, who’s watching me with those big eyes of his, and I can’t help but think of a time when I was only Derrick and he was only Tyson and how we didn’t come alive until we’d been given our true names, that I was—
I WAS sitting with Tyson on my lap, watching TV as he slept against my chest, waiting for my mom to get home from wherever she was so I could start my homework. Tyson—
is nine months he’s nine months old
—had been fussy all day, and the moment I laid him down, he started crying again, only to quiet when he was in my arms. I wondered briefly if he had nightmares while he slept, and for some reason that scared me, so I figured if he could lay against me while he was asleep, he would know that I was there and that nothing in his dreams was real.
I stared at the television blankly, feeling every breath he took, every twitch of his arms and legs. He sighed in his sleep and smacked his lips, raising a tiny hand in a stretch above his head, letting it fall and rest on my shoulder. I bent down and kissed the top of his head gently, and he yawned then, opening his eyes, first one, and then the other, staring up at me until he smiled and lay back down.
Mom came home two hours later, her eyes glassy, smelling like smoke and booze. I didn’t ask if she’d been driving because I knew she had. She would’ve just told me it was none of my business, so I chose to ignore it. I was starting not to care anymore. She slammed the door behind her and dropped her purse on the ground. Ty startled against my chest at the noise, his hands bunching against my shirt as I stood.
“I have homework to do,” I told her, keeping my voice as level as possible. “I need you to take him for a bit.”
“Homework,” she slurred as I followed her into the kitchen, that ever present cigarette dangling from her lips. “Fat lot of good it’ll do you. I say fuck it! Live a little, Der! You want a drink? I’m going to have a drink.”
“I just need you to take Ty,” I pleaded. “Just for a little while.”
“Put him down in his crib, then,” she snapped as she pulled down her bottle of Jack. “I’ve had a long fucking day. I don’t want to put up with a screaming kid right now.”
“You have to! You have to because—”
you’re his mother
—“he doesn’t want to lie down, and I’ve got a test tomorrow I have to study for!”
