Who We Are

by T. J. Klune

  “And I’m not crazy,” I add.

  “Who is Tiffani and why is she a whore?” Dominic asks me quietly, his eyes almost amused.

  “Dominic, don’t get him started!” the Kid begs. “You don’t know what you’ll unleash!”

  So I explain my entire logic line to Dominic and the Kid, who by the very end has his face pressed hard in his hands, like he’s trying to smother himself to get away from me, and Dominic nods with each of the points I make. His dark eyes do a little dance when I say the names of the Kid’s kids. For a moment, I think he’s just humoring me (but who cares if he is?

  He’s, like, only fourteen, and I can do grown up stuff when and if I want to without having to ask anyone permission. Okay, I usually ask Otter first, but that is so not the point. Crap. I usually ask the Kid too. Fine. That was a bad example. Whatever). But when I finish, Dominic is not running in the opposite direction, screaming as he flails his arms over his head. He’s not even looking slightly petrified as people normally do when I open my mouth and words fall out. No, he’s watching me like he’s taking me seriously, and before I can call him on it, he turns to the Kid and says gruffly, “Makes sense to me. Tiffani is obviously a whore.”

  The Kid’s jaw drops as he glances between the two of us, starting to sputter in such a way that only he can do, so filled with righteous indignation that you would have thought we had lambasted every core ideal he’s ever fought for. Maybe there’s something to this Dominic besides an uneasy façade.

  Before I can tell the Kid to calm down, before I can so much as form a thought to put his mind at ease, Dominic reaches out a hand and drops it on the Kid’s shoulder, and wonder of all wonders, the Kid silences almost immediately. I’m sure this has to be a momentary thing, that the Kid will start up again, his protestations louder, his eyes wider, and his stance almost combative, but it doesn’t happen. The Kid stops talking, takes a deep breath, rolls his eyes, and shakes his head.

  And that’s it.

  Who the fuck is this kid?

  Apparently, he’s God, the voice says, slightly amused. Because only God himself could have shut the Kid up that quickly. And that easily. Lord knows you’ve never been able to do that.

  It’s right. Holy shit, maybe he is God.

  “Do you want to come in and have some Kashi?” I hear myself ask. “If that sounds gross, it’s probably because it is. I have Lucky Charms, instead.”

  “Papa Bear never had a childhood,” the Kid explains darkly. “So he’s trying to have one now. It only gets worse from here. Trust me. Pretty soon, he’ll have you watching SpongeBob and your brains will be leaking out your ears.”

  “You used to love SpongeBob,” I remind him. “You even had that SpongeBob blanket when you stayed—”

  “Bear,” the Kid groans, drawing my name out for six or seven syllables.

  I’m further amazed when I realize he’s blushing. “Do you have to tell him everything? We’ve talked about this. Better seen, not heard. You know this.”

  I grin evilly at the Kid and he looks fearful. “I’ve even got some pictures of the Kid as a baby,” I tell Dominic conspiratorially. “There’s one of him playing in the bathtub when he’s like four, where he made a beard out of soap on his face and he used to call himself Major Awesome of the Awesome Brigade.”

  The Kid starts after me, and I take off running back toward the house, laughing at him over my shoulder, a look of pure murder on his face as he shrieks after me, his voice high-pitched and hilarious. We reach the door and I throw it open, sidestepping the Kid neatly. He runs past me before he can stop himself, his shoes sliding on the tile in the entryway, and I pull the door shut in his face, holding the handle as he yells at me through the door, trying to jerk it back open.

  Kids. Mother Nature’s hilarious miracles.

  “You coming?” I call out to Dominic, who’s still standing where we left him, that quiet smile still on his face. At hearing my words, the smile fades slowly, and he looks over his shoulder, glancing down the street as if undecided. “Look,” I tell him. “I don’t want you to do anything that’ll get you in trouble. Do you need me to call your parents or something? Clear it with them? I should probably meet them at some point if you’re going to be around here. Gotta make sure they’re okay with it, you know?”

  He turns back to me quickly, schooling the troubled look on his face a little too late for me to miss it. Dominic smiles quietly at me again and walks toward me, waiting to speak until he’s standing next to me, looking at the door that’s still shaking against the Kid’s wrath. “They won’t mind,” he tells me, averting his eyes. “I can tell them later.”

  So he’s big. And quiet.

  And a liar.

  Great.

  THE Kid calls a truce momentarily as he watches with an almost religious euphoria as Dominic takes his first bite of Kashi and pronounces it palatable. The Kid immediately runs to the fridge and pulls out every bit of his diet we have in the house, sure that his new friend ( best friend, I hear him whisper in my head) will want to try tofu at nine in the morning.

  Dominic just watches him, sampling everything the Kid puts in front of him, quietly telling him it tastes good. He even looks like he means it.

  I’m about to tell him where I hide the Lucky Charms when my cell phone rings, playing a polyphonic rendition of “Achy Breaky Heart.”

  Fucking Otter, I think as I grin and reach for the phone. I leave the boys at the table and look down at the display. Speak of the devil.

  “You know,” I say as I answer the phone and head up the stairs, “it was cute the first four hundred times you did it, now I just really hate that song.”

  “Is that so?” he growls in my ear. Uh-oh. Either something’s wrong or something is very right.

  “Uh-huh,” I say carefully. “So… what’s up with you?”

  “Where are you?” Otter asks me.

  “In the bathroom,” I tell him, obviously not checking my hairline in the mirror. “How’s work going?”

  “I didn’t call you to talk about work,” he snaps at me. “Where’s the Kid?”

  “In the kitchen with his friend Dominic. Dude, he’s not imaginary, but you should totally see him. He’s got to be like the biggest fifteen-year-old I’ve ever se—”

  “Later,” Otter says, his voice low. “Our bathroom?”

  “Well, yeah, I’m not going to—”

  “Lock the door.”

  Without even thinking about it, I do. The lock clicks into place, and I glance at myself in the mirror again, seeing that my neck is flushed, my eyes a little wider than they were just a moment before. I know this voice now, this one that’s breathing heavily into my ear. I can’t believe what the fuck we’re about to do, especially given the fact the Kid and Dominic are literally like twenty feet away. This is so fucking wrong.

  “You know,” Otter says heatedly, “when I left you this morning, you looked so fucking edible curled up in the blankets. I was awake awhile before the alarm went off, just watching you, wondering if I should wake you up.”

  “Yeah?” I manage to say, my dick already half-hard, pressing against my sweats. “Why didn’t you?”

  “Because I was in no mood to be gentle with you,” he grumbles. “And you looked like you needed gentle.”

  Oh fuck. “I don’t always need it gentle,” I tell him as quietly as I can.

  “You know you can….”

  “Can what, Bear?” Otter asks. “What can I do?”

  I swallow past the desire lodged in my throat. “Whatever.”

  He laughs, and it sounds harsh in my ear, raking against my skin, causing me to shudder. Say what you want about the man, but he knows exactly what buttons to push. “I’ll keep that in mind,” he tells me. “You hard yet?”

  “Fuck you,” I snarl at him. “You know I am.”

  “Grab your dick, but don’t jerk off.”

  Rational thought tries to break in for a moment, and I curse myself for allowing it. “Aren’t y
ou at work?” I ask him as I thrust my hand down the front of my sweats, squeezing my cock but not pulling on it. “People can hear you!” I bite back the moan threatening to burst out.

  “Only one in the studio today. Where’s your hand?”

  “Where do you think? We can’t do this, Otter. The Kid and Dominic are in the kitchen! They’ll fucking hear me.”

  “Then you better shut up and let me talk, don’t you think? But, I do have to say I like the little noises you make. There’s times when I’ve got you spread out in front of me, your face pressed into the pillow, that hot ass of yours sticking straight up into the air.” His voice drops again. “Those are the times I just want to break you in half. You should see yourself like that.

  Like the only thing you want is me. Like the only thing you see is me. God, how you fucking moan my name.” He groans softly. “Words can’t do it justice, Bear. Maybe next time I’ll record it so you can see exactly what I’m talking about.”

  “Ah… Jesus.” This isn’t something we do very often, the dirty talk, the words I can barely get out, knowing how stupid I sound when I say them.

  But Otter must have his master’s in smut because the words that pour out of his mouth sometimes are not something that I would ever hope to hear repeated outside the bedroom. But he knows exactly what kind of an effect it has on me, the bastard. Lately, it’s turned into a sort of game, to see who comes first. The score is currently eight to zero. Yeah, who do you think has eight?

  “You like that, don’t you?” he asks me, his breath quickening. “Want to make a movie with me, Bear? We could play it later, when I’m fucking you again, so you can watch yourself getting fucked. See what you look like when I’m buried in your ass?”

  “You’re not going to win this time,” I tell him through gritted teeth.

  “You’re gonna go first.”

  “Bear,” he sighs in my ear, his voice having just the right timbre, the right amount of love and cadence that I jerk my hand once up my shaft and spill over my hand, a strangled noise bursting from my throat as my hips buck, knocking against the sink. I try to curb it so he doesn’t hear, but he hears it anyways, chuckling deeply as he listens to me finish.

  “How the hell do you always win?” I snap at him, leaning over to catch my breath, my hand sticky and warm. “You totally cheat, don’t you?”

  “Jerked off before I called you,” he says, laughing louder now.

  “That doesn’t count!”

  “Otter, nine. Bear, zero.”

  “I’m going to get you back, you know.”

  “Really?” he says, sounding way more interested than he probably should, given what we just did. “And what would that entail?”

  “Oh, you’ll find out,” I promise him, a sneer on my lips. “And you’re going to regret ever trying to fuck with me.”

  “Jesus.” He sounds like he’s squirming. “You know how much I fucking love you, Papa Bear?”

  I do. But I’m an ass. “How much?”

  “More than anything,” he says softly.

  So not fair. “I love you too,” I mumble back, ignoring the blushing Bear in the mirror.

  “Wanna go again?”

  My phone beeps. Another call coming in. I glance down at the screen.

  “Shit, I gotta take this. It’s Erica.”

  He sobers instantly. “I thought we weren’t supposed to hear from her until next week?”

  “I don’t know,” I tell him, a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach.

  “What if….” I don’t know how I’m going to finish that, but somehow Otter knows what I’m trying to say.

  “You answer it, Bear. Answer it, listen to what she has to say, and then call me back. It’s going to be fine. You’ll see. She probably has some good news.” Otter, the eternal optimist.

  “When can you come home?” I ask him, hating how I sound, but suddenly needing the big guy here with me, to protect me from what, I don’t know. It’s strange to think how fiercely independent I used to be before I traveled to the safer lands of Codependency. I was never one for middle ground, it seems, as I’ve gone from one extreme to the other. But it has to do with the fact that I know Erica doesn’t call early. She’s a stickler for a set schedule. If she said she would call next week, then that’s when she was going to call. Something had obviously happened. It’s the only reason she’d call before she was supposed to.

  “Talk to her,” he tells me gently. “Then call me back, and if you need me, I’ll come running. You got me?”

  “I got you.” I clicked over. “Hello?”

  “Derrick, it’s good to talk to you again,” Erica says, in that tone of voice that says she doesn’t have time for bullshit. Strangely, she’s one of the few people in my life that I make an active attempt to keep my mouth shut around. “How’s things?”

  She’s not really asking to get a response, just out of politeness. One might think that she comes across as kind of a bitch, but I suppose you have to sound like that if you’re going to be a lawyer.

  “Good,” I say, trying to keep my voice even. “You weren’t supposed to call until next week.”

  “Are you freaking out?” She sounds amused. Okay, maybe she is a bitch.

  “Should I be?”

  “You are, aren’t you? You’re totally freaking.”

  “You never call early,” I remind her.

  “Why do you automatically assume it’s bad?”

  “If you were in my shoes, you wouldn’t have to ask that question.”

  “Oh. Right. I didn’t know you were having a pity party. My invitation must have gotten lost in the mail.”

  Fun fact: everyone in my life thinks they’re a comedian. “Are you trying out new material or something?” I ask her irritably. “Like, to use this in opening arguments to get the jury on your side? If so, you should probably try again. I would vote to put you in jail along with whoever’s on trial.”

  “I can see why Tyson wants to live with you,” she says. “You’re so much fun. I can feel your emo-angst through the phone. It feels like tears.”

  “Aren’t you supposed to be professional? I could totally fire you, you know.” And I have half a mind to, because she’s obviously dragging this out as long as she can just to fuck with me.

  “You could, but you won’t. I’m too good at what I do,” she says breezily. I can hear the clackclackclack of her keyboard through the phone.

  She’s probably not even paying attention to anything I’m saying.

  “Your ego’s showing.”

  “You can’t handle the truth!”

  “Is that the only reason you became a lawyer, is so you could say that line?”

  “Of course not,” she scoffs. “I became a lawyer to make lots of money and drive a fancy car. But, as it turns out, family law isn’t that big of a moneymaker. I need to be a corporate whore before that will apparently happen. Life is so unfair.”

  “Now who’s filled with angst?”

  “Enough chitchat,” she says. “You ready?”

  Sweat pops out and beads on my forehead. I look down and see come drying on my hand, cold and congealed. Tyson laughs loudly from the kitchen, the sound bringing a smile to my face before it drops back off again.

  “You’re starting to breathe heavily,” Miz Erica Sharp says. “If I hadn’t met that pile of sex you call your boyfriend, I’d swear you were flirting with me.”

  Wow, if she thinks that’s breathing heavy now, she should have heard me two minutes ago. “Just fucking tell me!”

  “Tyson has been assigned a social worker. She’ll be in contact with you later today or tomorrow to set up a first visit.”

  I don’t know how to take that. I hear one thing and a billion other things flash through my mind. Of course we knew this was coming, that it was part of the process, but I’d gotten it in my head that it was going to be down the road a bit before this ever happened. I can’t decide if that’s good or bad.

  “Uh… okay? And what does
that mean?”

  She laughs. “It’s a good thing, Bear. That means your petition for custody of Tyson is moving forward a lot quicker than we could have hoped for. Regardless of what people think, the courts like it when families stay together. So the fact that your case is being pushed forward this quickly is a good thing. Stop being all dire all the time.”

  She has a point, even though I won’t let her know it. You can only get knocked down so many times before you start shying away from a raised hand, even if it’s extended in kindness. While I know we’re better off than we ever were before, it’s still hard to get our expectations set too high, as we always seem to be waiting for the other shoe to drop. It’s a shitty outlook to have, but it’s a habit the Kid and I have not yet broken. Of course, I should be the one leading by example, but knowing the Kid, he’ll be the one dragging me along. I don’t know what it’s going to take for me to get over myself, but I would do so gladly.

  “I just want this to all be over,” I mutter. “I just want the Kid to be mine.”

  “He is yours,” she tells me as gently as she knows how. “All that’s going to change is that a piece of paper will agree with you and won’t allow anyone to say otherwise. Try not to forget that, okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Have you called the therapist’s office yet?”

  Uh-oh. “Uh… I was going to do that as soon as we got off the phone.”

  She sounds exasperated as she sighs. “Bear, you are taking this seriously, right?”

  How the hell can she ask that? “Of course I am!” I snap at her. “Isn’t it pretty fucking obvious by now?”

  “Two things: one, try to watch the language when the social worker is in the house. I’ve heard she can be kind of a hard-ass, and we don’t need anything knocking you down on her list.”

  “Oh, dang,” I say. How fucking stupid is that?

  “Better. Two: it would be pretty obvious to me had you already called and set up the appointment like I told you to do. Do I need to call Otter? Or Mrs. Paquinn? Or Anna or Creed? Don’t make me tell on you.”

  And she would too. Our lawyer is a tattletale, and my family is nosy as all hell. They’ve all already gotten on my case about my signing the initial petition a day later than I was supposed to. (Creed: “It’s only a signature, dude. The first step and all that jazz.” Anna: “Won’t you feel better once this whole thing is over with? Just sign the damn thing!” Mrs. Paquinn: “I would forge your signature if I thought it would help, but I can’t do that because that would be bad karma and my face would probably fall off and I’d forever be known as The Woman Who Pissed Off Buddha” (don’t ask).