Bear, Otter, & the Kid 01 - Bear, Otter, & the Kid (MM)

by TJ Klune

  “Everything else good?” he asked happily.

  “Well….”

  “What?”

  I got up as quiet as I could and peered out the door to the registers. Anna stood with her back to me about twenty feet away, flipping through a magazine. I went back to the chair and lowered my voice as best I could. “Anna’s working tonight.”

  “She is? Has she tried to talk to you at all?”

  “No.”

  He laughed. “Have you been in the office all night?”

  “No!” I said. Then, “Yes.”

  “Maybe you should go talk to her,” he said thoughtfully. “She did say she still wanted to be a part of your life, and I know the Kid misses her sometimes.”

  “He does?” I asked bewildered. That was the first I’d heard of it.

  “Yeah, he brings it up every now and then. He asks how she’s doing and if I’ve talked to her.”

  “Have you?”

  He snorted again. “What do you think, Bear?”

  “I don’t know, Otter. What would I say to her? Sorry we broke up, and I haven’t spoken to you in a month, but don’t worry about me, I’ve had a dick up my ass?”

  He laughed loudly. “Don’t be so crass,” he playfully admonished me. “If you can’t think of anything to say, then maybe you shouldn’t. But I think you guys are going to hate yourselves down the road if you don’t try to work something out.” He paused. “But don’t go working too much out. I think I would have a problem with that.”

  “Right,” I scoffed. “That’s going to happen.”

  “Good. So, what have you got to lose?”

  “I hate it when you’re right.”

  “You must hate it a lot, then. I’m always right.”

  I groaned. “You’re such a fucking dork.”

  “Yeah, but I’m your fucking dork, and don’t you forget that. And tell Anna to keep her grubby hands off of you. I’ve never hit a girl, and I don’t want to start now.”

  I laughed. “Okay,” I said. “I’ll go talk to her.”

  “Alright. You can tell me what happens when you get home.” I couldn’t help but feel a little giddy when he said that: home. Not when you get here or your house but home. Like it was his home too. Down, boy, I told myself. You’re not setting up house just yet.

  “Bye, Otter,” I said, blushing furiously.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Hey yourself,” I said back.

  “I love you.”

  Home, I thought again. “I love you too,” I said quietly, and he hummed contentedly and disconnected.

  I hung up the phone and looked down at the paperwork before me. I knew that if I started working on it again that I would not move from that spot until she was gone. What Otter had said, that me and Anna would regret it down the road, bounced around in my head. Would we? Would one of us look back one day and feel a pang of guilt at not at least attempting to build back the bridge that we had once had between us? Granted, anything we put up now would never be as grand as it was, but didn’t she deserve to at least have something? I remembered what she’d said to me that last night we had fought: You’ve broken my heart, but it was mine to give. If she could give that to me, then I could do my best to give her something in return, no matter how small.

  Sighing, I pushed my way up from the chair again and walked out to the floor. I glanced down the aisles as I approached her and saw that the store was empty. She heard the sounds of my footfalls and looked up, surprised. I smiled weakly. She looked startled for a moment then smiled back, just as small. I felt a pinprick of relief and closed the distance between us until I stood only a few feet away.

  “Hey,” she said.

  “Hey, yourself,” I said back, remembering how Otter had just followed that exchange with I love you. I laughed silently to myself, wondering what Anna would think if she could hear my thoughts.

  “What’s up?” she asked me.

  “Nothing. What’s up with you?”

  Anna cocked her head to the side, as if trying to gauge my sincerity. “Same old, same old,” she said slowly. She glanced back down at her magazine and then back at me, trying to decide which she should focus on.

  “That’s good, right?” I said, obviously sounding extremely intelligent.

  “I guess.”

  An awkward silence dumped itself between us. I wrung my hands harshly, and she sat with her head still tilted to the side. I tried to think of something to say and was dumbfounded when I couldn’t think of a single word. Here was a girl that I had known since I was eight, a girl who I’d grown up with, slept with, conversed with, did everything with. And here I was, a month later, not able to say a goddamn thing. I groaned inwardly as I began to realize that this was a very bad idea. I thought of eight or nine ways to retreat, but she spoke again.

  “How’s the Kid?” she asked.

  “Oh, good!” I said relieved. “He’s all finished with school now so he’s… good.”

  She nods her head agreeably. “That’s good.”

  “Yeah, it’s good.” Stop saying good! “He wanted me to say hi,” I lied, as he never said anything of the sort to me.

  “Well, tell him hi back for me.”

  “Will do,” I said, sweating. It seemed like a good time to run away. I waved jerkily and had turned to flee back into my cave, when she said my name. I froze, wanting to keep moving forward and slam the door behind me and hide until she left. But I turned.

  Her face had softened, and her eyes were kind. “How’re you?” she asked.

  “I’m fine,” I said, forcing a smile.

  “Well, I’m happy for that, then,” she says quietly. “I’ve worried about you, Bear.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re the type to never worry about yourself. Someone’s got to do it for you,” she said sadly.

  “You don’t need to do that,” I said. “I can take care of myself.”

  She shook her head. “That’s not what I meant. I know you’re perfectly capable of taking care of yourself. And of Ty. I mean, you’ve done it for years, right?”

  “Right,” I said, not knowing what else to say.

  She sighed. “So I ask myself why I worry about you when you obviously don’t need me to. You’ve never needed me to, but here I am, doing it anyways.”

  I winced. “Oh, come on, Anna. You know that’s not true.”

  She looked away. “But you know it is. It’s not that you didn’t want me to. It’s just that you didn’t need it. I think that was part of our problem.”

  “I guess,” I said, not really sure what she was talking about.

  “How’s Otter?” she asked, quickly changing tact. It made me wonder if she was trying to catch me off guard, trying to make me say something. To trick me.

  “Uh, fine, I guess,” I said, acting like I hadn’t just spoken to him a few minutes before, hadn’t just heard him say how hot I sound, hadn’t just said I loved him.

  “Do you get to see him a lot?” she asked.

  I shrugged. “I’m over at Creed’s a lot. He’s always there.” I stopped, letting her fill in the blanks to whatever mad-lib is going through her head.

  Anna nodded. “That’s good.”

  “What is?”

  “That you’re hanging out with Creed. You know, before he leaves,” she told me, averting her eyes slightly. She only does that when she’s not being completely honest, and for the billionth time, I wondered what she knew, or what she thought she knew. It would be so easy, I told myself then, to just open my mouth and tell her everything and end the goddamn speculating that was apparently running rampant through her head. But no matter how hard I tried, no matter what I did, my lips stayed glued shut, and I said nothing.

  Then the doors whooshed open again and a couple of teenagers walked in and nodded a greeting toward us, and Anna smiled at them, and I took that moment to look at her without her knowing. She was beautiful still. I smiled painfully as I suddenly remembered everything about her. It wa
s like that part of me had gone into storage, and I was looking through the boxes for old time’s sake. She caught me looking and stared at me questioningly, but I shook my head and muttered something about how I had to go. She shrugged, but I caught something in her eyes, something just underneath the indifference. I don’t know what it was, but it was there. I turned my head and walked away. I could feel her eyes on my back. I got into the office and closed the door and sank down against it to the floor, my heart beating rapidly. I tried to conjure up that look in her eye again so I could rack my brain for what it was, but all I saw was that gold-green, and I wanted to go home. Home.

  When it was closing time, I waited for Anna to walk out the door, and I locked it behind her. When I turned, she was still standing behind me, watching me with those big eyes of hers. I looked down at my feet, unsure of what to say. I felt like I should say something because it wasn’t just me I was watching out for, but the Kid as well. He needed as much of us around him as we could possibly get, and I knew that Anna was an integral part of his life. I tried to think of what I could say, what I could do, that would make her understand that he (I? we?) needed her to be there. Nothing came to mind, and I started to drown under a great wave of sadness. I heard her chuckle softly, and I looked back up.

  She smiled at me. “Always thinking of things,” she said softly. “You’ve always done that. It’s one of the things that made me fall….” She paused, almost as if she was thinking she’d be better off not finishing. But then she did: “It’s a thing that made me love you.”

  “I still love you, Anna,” I whispered. “Just… just not in the way I feel like I should.”

  “Why, Bear? What is it about you that makes you not able to love me?”

  There she was, giving me another opening, another chance to level the playing field, to be completely 100 percent truthful with her. And that’s when I knew for sure that she understood what Otter meant to me and what I meant to him. It was a realization that I could’ve come to a long time before, if I hadn’t been so damned scared about what it could mean. I’d had my inklings, my suspicions that she knew about me and Otter, but that was the moment when I could no longer doubt what it was she saw in me, in us. I opened my mouth to finally be honest with her because, I told myself, didn’t she deserve it? Out of everyone in the world (aside from Otter, of course), hadn’t she earned the right to know? I’d lead her down a path in which there was no alternative, no other way around. Because, you see, as soon as that epiphany struck me about her, another one hit just as fast: I knew that regardless of how it would have happened, regardless of how long it would have taken, Otter would have found me again, or I would have found him. I’d always thought the idea of fate was for fools and Celine Dion. It would seem, though, that it was only a matter of time.

  “Because I can’t,” I said, hating myself for not being able to give her what she asked for. “It has nothing to do with you, Anna. It’s something about me.”

  She nodded and looked away, but not before I saw the hurt in her eyes, hurt that I had once again caused. I cursed myself silently, wondering what in God’s name it would take for me to finally be able to tell the truth. Anything would be better than seeing that look on her face. Anything. Even if I told her, and she looked at me the same way, at least then she would have had justifiable reason to do so. Maybe she could… maybe she would—

  “Anna?” I said, my breath hitching in my chest. “Anna, I—”

  “No, Bear,” she whispered, shaking. “I can’t do this now. I can’t. I thought you were ready to—to tell me. I thought you could one day open up and tell me all that you’re hiding from me.”

  “I’m trying,” I said harshly. “This isn’t something that’s easy for me!”

  Her eyes flashed. “It’s not making it any easier if you keep it all to yourself!” she shouts. “How can I ever hope to be there for you if you don’t trust me!”

  I couldn’t look at her. Eventually I heard her footsteps as she walked away.

  As soon as I got home, Otter saw the look on my face and swept me up in those big arms of his and cradled me like I was nothing more than a child. It’s okay, he whispered in my ear. It’s okay. As I began to calm, my thoughts strayed to the revelation I’d had earlier, the one about him and me. I knew then that I had to do everything in my power to make sure he stayed with me. I had to do everything to make sure I never lost him. Call it fate, call it destiny, call it a cyclone of raging hormones, I don’t care. Much like I think that Ty would be lost without me, I knew I’d be lost with Otter.

  So time passed, and there were good days and there were bad days. There were days where the sun shone so bright that it felt like I was staring directly into it. There were days when I could feel the ocean lapping at my foot and thunder rumbling in the distance, never coming closer, but always making its presence known. There were days that I felt as high as I’d ever been in my life, but they were followed by the feeling of falling into a chasm that never ended. Through it all, though, he was there. He tethered me to him, my magnetic north, while my mind went here or there. I always knew. Somehow I always knew.

  I’VE heard it said those couples that fight are the ones that stay together. That disagreements and arguments strengthen relationships. I’ll be the first to say that’s bullshit. Otter and I rarely fought about anything, and when we did, it was over stupid petty crap that one of us was too stubborn to let go. There were minor things, inconsequential to everybody and everything. I’m talking like me canceling plans to have to work or Otter not taking pictures anymore (I knew, though, that if I continued to press that one, that we would have a huge blowout, so I always stopped). You know: things that are easy to get over and you wonder why you were even remotely pissed off in the first place. But I don’t mean to say that we never had a big one, one that left us both shaking and licking our wounds. All I can remember is that while I was screaming at him and he was lashing out at me, I wished it was over. And when it was, both of us were wide-eyed, and I felt sick and never wanted to do anything like that again. If this was what strengthened relationships, then I was fine with where ours was.

  It all started because of Creed.

  “WHERE’S the Kid?” Creed asked me as I walked into his house a couple of weeks after my conversation with Anna.

  “He’s hanging out with his friend Gage,” I told him. I closed the door behind me and immediately started listening for sounds of my boyfriend, wondering why he hadn’t come thumping down the stairs yet.

  “Gage?” Creed asked. “I thought his friend’s name is Alex.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Apparently he made another one. I swear to God, they’re popping up everywhere. I didn’t know this many people went to his school.” Much like I was trying to work at everything else, I was making an attempt to let the Kid go do his own thing. He seemed to be shedding his former self like it was a dusty old skin that he’d been wrapped up in for too long. I was doing my very best to try not to get in the way of his newfound affinity for anything and everything Kid-like. There were more overnights, more can-he-go-out-and-plays. I was worried and scared, but constantly told myself that I wasn’t being fair to either of us. Besides, with him doing his own thing every now and then, it gave Otter and me some much-deserved alone time.

  “That’s cool,” Creed said. “You okay with it?”

  I shrugged, half-listening to him, half-listening for Otter. “I think he’s earned it. At least I know it’s something he wants to be doing.”

  Creed nodded. “Well, that’s good.” He paused, considering something in his head before he said it. He opened his mouth to speak and then closed it again.

  I crossed my arms. “What?”

  He grinned. “I may have to bow out of tonight. I kinda-sorta forgot that I’d made plans.”

  I raised an eyebrow at him. We’d said we were going to barbecue tonight while the weather was good. It was late July, and it had been hot, hot for the first time since I could remember. The ocean wa
s still cold as hell, but we could stand on the beach without worrying about freezing our asses off. But Creed leaving had its advantages. I hated to admit it at the time, but I was relieved at this turn of events, more so than I probably should have been. With Creed out of the house, it would leave Otter and me to do… Otter and Bear things.

  “Where you running off to?” I asked, trying to push the thought of riding Otter until we both came out of my head.

  He shrugged. “Just out… with some friends.”

  “Who?”

  “No one you know,” he said vaguely, averting his eyes.

  I snorted. “What aren’t you saying, Creed?” It looks like we’re both keeping secrets, I thought, not as amused at the prospect as I thought I’d be.

  He waved his arm in the air in that dismissive Creed sort of way. “It’s nothing you have to worry your little head about,” he said. “Just going to go out and see what trouble I can find.”

  I laughed. “You sure you don’t want company?” I asked, instantly regretting the offer.

  He saved me by saying, “Nah. You and Otter can hang here and have more fun than I probably will.”

  “You okay?” I asked him, seeing sweat on his forehead. Maybe he’s got a boyfriend too, it whispers. Wouldn’t that just be the sweet definition of irony. I pushed it away.

  Creed grinned again, and it looked a little false. “I’m fine, Papa Bear. Like I said, it’s nothing for you to worry about. I’ll probably get bored and come home early.”

  “Alright,” I said, eyeing him again. I looked around, annoyed that his brother hadn’t shown himself yet. “Where’s Otter?”

  Creed jerked his head, indicating that his brother was upstairs. I looked up and saw his door was shut. I glanced back at Creed, who brought his finger to his lips and motioned for me to follow him. I looked back at the door and walked after Creed. He went through the kitchen to the patio door and opened it, walking outside. I chased after him, suddenly wondering why everyone seem to be harboring secrets these days. He closed the door behind me and turned to me.