Bear, Otter, & the Kid 03 - The Art of Breathing (4 page)

BOOK: Bear, Otter, & the Kid 03 - The Art of Breathing
3.72Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Bear looks like he wants to speak, but his lips thin out into a bloodless line instead. He knows I have to get this out of me, like it’s bile or poison, but it’s hard for him to hear. I have to make it better for him, to not let him doubt himself. This isn’t about him, and I don’t want him to think he pushed me too far.

I look him in the eye. “And I’m okay with that, Papa Bear. It’s not that. It doesn’t have anything to do with
that
. If you didn’t think I could do it, then I wouldn’t have. You had faith in me, and I didn’t want to let you down.”

He makes a little noise in the back of his throat and opens his mouth to speak, but closes it again and shakes his head, gripping my hand tightly.

“Then what’s going on, Kid?” Otter asks, saying the words his husband cannot.

“This is…. God, this is so dumb. This is just….”
Say it. Breathe and just say it.
“This is just the last time I’ll be here to celebrate Dom’s birthday,” I say, the words pouring out in a rush. It feels like a dam has broken and everything comes gushing out. “I don’t know why I’m focusing on that. I don’t know why I keep thinking about that. But I do. I can’t stop. It’s like these little pinpricks of fire across my brain. Just when I think it’s done and over with, it pokes again. It burns again. It’s all there again until it’s all I can think about. And I don’t know why it’s happening now, I don’t want it to be happening
now
, but it is. It is happening. I’m graduating in a month. I’m turning sixteen in a month. We’re moving to New Hampshire in four months. It’s what I wanted. It’s what I expected. I wanted Dartmouth. I wanted it and I got it. That’s what I should be focusing on, that’s what I should be reaching toward, but I can’t. I can’t fucking focus because all I can think about is how this fucking birthday is the last time I’m going to be here with him. Next year he’s going to turn twenty-three and I’ll be thousands of miles away and I can’t fucking
focus
.”

Bear opens his mouth to speak, but Otter grabs his hand and shakes his head.

Just breathe. That’s all I need to do. That’s all this is about. All I need to do is breathe. Like I was told. Eddie taught me that I’m bigger than my fears. I’m better than my fears. Hold it in for three seconds. One. Two. Three. Let it out for three seconds. One. Two. Three….

“Because he’s going to be fine, right?” I continue, ignoring the slightly high-pitched sound of my own voice. “He’s going to be fine and it’s not even going to matter. He’s probably getting too old for someone like me, anyway. I’m just a kid. I mean, my
name
is the Kid. He’s got other things to focus on. He’s got other things to worry about. He’s a cop now. He’s got to focus on that. He’s got to focus on that so he can go home every day safe and sound. That’s what
he
needs to focus on. Besides, he’s got all his cop friends and all his new buddies, and they’ve got to be the ones who take care of him now. They’ve got to be the ones to watch his back. I’m just some kid. I’m just—” My breath catches in my throat, but I push through it. “I’m just a little guy, you know? There’s not much I can do about it.”

“Kid…,” Bear starts, but then he stutters a bit. “Tyson,” he tries again, “why haven’t you brought this up before?”

I look at him incredulously. Hasn’t he heard a single word I’ve said? “Do you hear how I sound, Bear? Like I’ve got a mouthful of crazy! Of
course
I haven’t brought this up before. It’s ridiculous.”

His brow furrows and his jaw twitches. “And I distinctly remember a promise you made to us that you wouldn’t let things get this far. That you’d talk to us before you could start to panic.”

“I’m not panicking,” I mutter, even as my heart thuds in my chest. “I just thought….”

“You thought what?”

I look down at our hands. I touch his thumb, the knuckle between my fingers. “I just thought I could handle this.”

“That’s not part of the deal we made,” he reminds me. He sounds a bit pissed off but like he’s trying to hold it in. That makes me feel worse, but I don’t know how to tell him that.

“Bear,” Otter says quietly, knocking his leg gently against my shin. “Let’s let him finish. Okay? We’ll figure it out, but he needs to get it all out.”

Papa Bear looks like he wants to argue and sputters a bit, but then he deflates and nods. I don’t want him to pull his hand away. I don’t think he will, but I latch on to it just in case.

“I want to go,” I tell them. It’s a truth, though I don’t know how complete it is. “I
need
to go.” That’s more of a truth. I don’t know if that makes it better or worse. “I know it’s a lot to ask, uprooting all our lives here. If I thought I could accomplish the same things in Seafare, I would stay. I don’t want to live anywhere else. But I have to. If I’m going to make anything of myself, I have to go. I have to see what I’m capable of. I have to see what I can do, because, Bear? Otter? I think… I think I can do a lot. I think I can make changes to the world. I think I can make it better. And I have to find out.”

“Ty, we
know
you can do it,” Otter says. “You know that. We’ve always believed in you. Your brother and I know that you’re going to do great things, no matter what you decide to do.”

Bear’s voice is harder. “Did Dominic say something to you? Is that what brought this on?”

I roll my eyes. “Really? What about him suggests to you he’d be petty like that? He’s all rah-rah Team Tyson like everyone else. He wouldn’t say a damn thing.” And he wouldn’t. As a matter of fact, Dom’s been pushing me more than anyone else about my future, telling me that I need to make something of myself, that I need to become someone like he didn’t. I try to tell him that of
course
he’s someone, because he’s someone to me, but he keeps pressing the issue. It almost hurts to hear, even if he means well.

“Why is that such a bad thing?” Otter asks, reading between my words.

I’m struggling to find the right words again. “Because… he’s…. Look, Bear, you’ve been here with me my whole life. Otter almost as long. And Creed and Anna and… Mrs. Paquinn.”
Oh, how I wish you were here right now.
“It’s all the same. But… Dom… he
hasn’t
been here the whole time. I… just don’t know that I’m done with him. There’s got to be more to say. He’s got to show me that….” Tears start to burn my eyes, and I can’t finish.

“You want him to tell you to stay,” Bear says, having one of those flashes of insight that only he can do with me. Dom may be my best friend and the one I want to tell my secrets to. Otter may be the father I never had. But it’s my brother who knows me better than anyone else in the world. Maybe that’s why I’m so desperate to have him near right now. I need him to listen and say the things I won’t, even if I can’t quite face them.

“No,” I say, though it’s a lie. “I don’t know. I’m all he has. What’s he going to do without me? Who’s going to remind him to eat? Who’s going to tell him that his clothes don’t match when he tries to wear plaid and stripes at the same time? Who’s going to remind him that his phone bill is due?”

Bear and Otter exchange one of those maddening looks, and I don’t know what it means. “Kid—Ty—you can’t make a decision on your future based upon your friend,” Bear says, and for a split second, the smallest moment in time, I hate him for his words. “You’ll never get anywhere in life like that.”

My eyes snap to his. “You make decisions based upon Otter all the time.”

He shakes his head. “That’s different and you know it.”

“How? How is that any different?”

“Otter’s my husband, Kid. He’s more than just my friend.”

“That’s not fair! Maybe Dom is—”
more to me too
, I almost say, but I stop myself, horrified at the words even as they try to spill from my mouth. I can’t look at that now. I can’t. Not with everything else going on. “Maybe Dom is very important to me,” I finish lamely, not looking at either of them, fearing what they’ll see in my eyes.

“We know he is,” Otter says. “He’s important to us too. He’s a part of this family as much as the others. You know that. But Bear is right. You can’t decide your whole future based upon the actions of one other person, especially if that person wants the same thing for you that everyone else wants, including you. And Bear, Ty’s right as well. We weren’t always like this. We weren’t always a couple, but we still made decisions with each other in mind, no matter how subconscious they were.”

“That’s different,” Bear insists. “You and I… we… that’s not going to happen with Dom and Ty. They’re not going to end up like us.”

That stings and I don’t know why.

He sighs. “Look. Maybe we are coming into this too fast. Maybe Ty’s not ready yet to go to college. We can always request a deferment and stay here another year and he can go to community college or to the U of O. Hell, he can do some kind of work-study or get a job flipping burgers.” He looks up at me. “Kid, we can do what
you
want to do, okay? I’m not very good at this whole parenting thing, and it seems like all I’ve thought about is what
I
want for you. Not what
you
want. Not completely.”

“You’ve done just fine,” I tell him roughly. “Better than anyone ever.”

He smiles, though it has a melancholic curve that I want to wipe away. “And you’re growing up. You’re just… one day you’re just going to be this…
man
… this great man, and I know I won’t understand where the time has gone.” He squeezes my hand. “I just want to do right by you, okay? I want you to be able to do what you need to, to be okay.”

And can’t you see I need you to make the decision? You can’t leave me with a choice, Bear. You can’t. You just can’t, because I don’t know what I’ll choose. I’m scared of what I’ll choose. I need you to decide, and I might resent you for it, and I might even hate you for a time, but you’re my big brother and I need you to choose for me.

“Okay” is all I say.

“But it’s not something that can wait, Kid,” he warns. “If you decide we stay here, then you need to make the decision fast. We’ll need to give Dartmouth as much time as we can. I don’t think it’ll be an issue, given how much they were drooling over you, but I don’t want to take any chances. I’ll also need to see if I can re-up my teaching contract with the school district here and pull out of the one in New Hampshire.”

“And I’ll sit around and do nothing, like I always do,” Otter says with that crooked grin on his face.

“You guys would do that for me?” I ask in a small voice, feeling like a jerk that it’s even on the table.

“I’d do
anything
for you,” Bear says, suddenly fierce, with that gleam in his eye that comes out every now and then when he talks about me or Otter. “You know that. And until you turn eighteen, these are decisions we’ll all make. Together. After that… well….” He looks away. “We’ll see what happens after that.”

And it’s like I’m nine again, it’s like all I am is the Kid again, a know-it-all too-smart-for-my-own-good Kid again. I launch myself at him and he catches me, and I babble something in his ear that doesn’t make sense, but he understands it anyway as he holds me close.

 

 

“Y
OU

RE
BEING
kind of quiet,” Dom rumbles at me, looking over from the driver’s seat as we head toward the Green Monstrosity. “When you’re quiet, it scares me, because it usually means you’re planning something and I’m going to end up in jail again.”

I snort. “You should have seen the look on your face when I threw red paint on the security guard at the boutique. It was pretty hysterical.”

“I was still trying to get over the fact that you told me it was supposed to be a peaceful protest rally, but then you threw that paint balloon and screamed ‘fur is murder’ at the top of your lungs.”

“Hey, at least that’s when you decided for sure you wanted to be a cop. Jail cells apparently offer unique perspectives. You’re welcome.” I try to keep any traces of bitterness out of my voice about his chosen profession. We haven’t exactly seen eye to eye on that. Not that he should have listened to me, anyway.

“Except for the fact that we sat next to a transvestite hooker named Diamondique for three hours, sure. It was a blast.”

I sigh, almost content. Almost. “Ah, the good old days.”

Dom reaches over and cuffs the back of my head lightly with a big hand. “For
you,
maybe. Bear and Otter didn’t think so when they posted our bail.”

“Why do you think I called Anna first? It felt neat to be able to say I wanted to get my attorney on the phone and have her show up. She went all hard-core on all of them. Everyone was scared of her.”

“All while pulling a crying two-year-old,” Dom points out.

“JJ was not a happy camper,” I agree, suddenly wishing the reminiscing was over, even if Creed and Anna’s son is the coolest kid on the planet. It feels a little raw right now. I glance surreptitiously at Dom, taking him in, trying to see if just his presence is enough to help me make up my mind. I haven’t told him yet what we talked about in the Green Monstrosity a few days ago, only because I don’t want him to know he could influence me in any way. Bear is right about one thing: I shouldn’t allow this one person to be the deciding factor on my future.

Too bad it already feels like everything rests on him.

Dom is still Dom, and I think he always will be. He’s still quiet; his voice is still a rumble, broken from all those years ago when his father murdered his mother in front of him. He told me that story when I was thirteen, after I shouted at him for almost an hour straight because of his decision to join the Seafare Police Department. I couldn’t handle the idea that he could get hurt, that he’d be put in harm’s way every day and I’d have to wonder and worry until he called me to put me at ease. But when he finally told me the one thing he’d kept from me? What he’d done to try and save his mother? I couldn’t be angry anymore. I just couldn’t, especially when he said that he just wanted to protect others so the same thing wouldn’t happen to other kids like him. I crawled into his lap and wept against his shoulder. I wept for him, yes, and to show him I understood, but more for the pain he came from. Only Dom could take something so horrific and turn it into a positive. I remember him wiping away the tears before cupping my face and saying, “So you understand? You see why I need to do this?”

BOOK: Bear, Otter, & the Kid 03 - The Art of Breathing
3.72Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Betrayed in Cornwall by Bolitho, Janie
Punto crítico by Michael Crichton
Full House by Carol Lynne
Moving On by Jennii Graham
A Love for All Time by Bertrice Small
The Shadow of Malabron by Thomas Wharton
ARC: Peacemaker by Marianne De Pierres