by TJ Klune
I went back to the house and paced for another couple of hours, then, with no choice left, I packed up everything in the car and drove down to the beach. I grabbed Ty’s poem off the counter, just in case. The drive there was only ten minutes, but it was the longest ten minutes of my life. It only took me fifteen minutes to unpack the car, but it was the longest fifteen minutes of my life. It took me twenty minutes to set everything up, and it was the shortest twenty minutes of my life. To my horror. And then it was seven forty-five, and I changed quickly at the car and sprayed myself with a cologne that Ty had picked out. I started with one squirt but didn’t think that was enough, so I ended up accidentally spraying on six more.
I went back to the beach to wait, smelling like a department-store tragedy. As I crested the rise that looked down to where I had set up the table, the last rays of the sun shot out over the ocean, and I looked down and saw the white tablecloth flapping gently in the breeze, the candlelight flickering and the music drifting softly up toward me, and suddenly understood why Ty is a genius. It was perfect. Everything about it was just perfect. In a reality-dating-show kind of way.
I waited down at the beach, and right at eight I heard a car drive up. I picked up a flower and went and stood in front of the table, and I looked up at the hill and saw Otter reach the top, where I had just been moments ago. He was also in a tux, and I grinned with amusement as he wore no tie or cummerbund or shoes, as per instructions. He looked down at me, and his smile was so big it almost split the world in half. He walked slowly down the hill and stood in front of me, and I bowed slightly (per Ty) and presented the rose to him. He laughed quietly and accepted it and kissed me deeply on the lips, and it felt good, and I realized how much I had missed him over these past few days and how ready I was to do anything for him. If Creed had shown up right then, I would have told him everything. If Anna had shown up right then, I would have said everything anyway. Right as he pulled away, the crooked grin on his face, the gold-green shining, holding me in such a regard that I almost blurted it right then, I realized that I love him pure and simple. It’s not a matter of logic or function. It’s a matter of my heart.
So, it’s all perfect, right? Down to the last detail? Everything was going so well. And then everything happened at once.
“Uh, Bear?” Otter said to me.
“Yes?” I replied, falling into his eyes.
“There’s a seagull eating our food,” he told me, and it was the most romantic thing I’d ever heard.
“I know, Otter. And that’s why I did all this. I promised Ty I wasn’t going to say this now, but I have to. Otter, I lo—wait, a what?”
He pointed over my shoulder. I turned and saw that a seagull had landed on the table and was picking through the food that I had so elegantly and delicately placed out. My eyes opened wide, and I squawked in anger and ran toward the stupid bird that was ruining everything. Otter was laughing behind me, and I planned to kill the bird and then kill him. I reached the table and clapped my hands together loudly, trying to frighten the seagull away. It hopped up and then landed back on the table. I waved my hands at it, puffing out my chest to make myself look bigger. It startled backward and knocked over glasses and two of the candles. The candles fell over onto the table and immediately lit the tablecloth on fire. The seagull flapped its wings and started to lift from the table and proceeded to knock over the other two candles the other way and they ignited the other side of the table. I froze, staring at the table, listening to the bird fly away and listening to Otter still bellowing with laughter behind me. The CD player switched to a new song, and it was an easy-listening elevator rendition of Billy Ray Cyrus’s “Achy, Breaky Heart,” and I didn’t know how the night could get any worse. I grabbed one of the glasses and ran to the ocean, determined to get seawater to put out the fire so we could sit down and eat the food the seagull had not eaten. Or stepped on. Or defecated on. I filled the glass to the brim and was running back to pour the water out on the table when the sky above us opened up. The clouds that had seemed so far in the distance when I had first arrived here had snuck up on us, and now they broke wide open, and rain like I’d never seen it fell from the sky. I stood a couple of feet from the table, glass in hand, watching the small fires get doused by the rain. “Achy, Breaky Heart” died as the CD player shorted with a crackle, and all I could hear was the rain and Otter trying to catch his breath as the laughter died.
And that’s where we are now. Brilliant idea, lousy execution.
Otter walks over to me, still chuckling softly to himself, his hair plastered against his forehead, his tux coat drenched through to the skin. He stands in front of me and takes the glass out of my hand and sets it back on the table. He cups my face in his hand and leans forward and kisses me gently on the lips. He pulls away and grins his grin and raises my hand, and I see he is still clasping the rose and is now pressing it into my hand. I look back into his eyes.
“Otter. Otter. Otter,” I mutter.
“Yes, Bear?” he says beautifully.
“Don’t lead cows to slaughter,” I say.
He arches an eyebrow. “Come again?”
I take a deep breath. “I… love you and I know I should’ve told ya soon-a.”
His eyes widen slightly. “Wait, what? You… me?”
I shake my head. “But you didn’t buy the dolphin-safe tuna.”
“Bear, what the hell? Did you just… rhyme?”
I nod. “I wrote it. Ty helped. He learned poetry in school.”
He leans in and kisses me again, his mouth tasting like rain. He pulls back again, but only far enough so he can speak. I open my eyes, and his are open, and my God, they’re everything. “Was all this for me?” he whispers above the rain.
“Yeah.”
“And did you mean what… you just said?”
I don’t hesitate. “I did. I do. I love you, Otter.”
He presses his forehead to mine. “I love you too, Bear,” he says, and then his lips are on mine, and we are on fire, and we burn the world.
10.
Where Bear Sees
the Eye of the Storm
SO I said it.
I said it and it came out easier than I had hoped, easier than it should have been. There was a moment that night, when he entered me for the first time, that I felt as full as I’d ever been. I’m not trying to be graphic or anything, because I don’t necessarily mean that in a sexual way at all. Okay, yes, I guess I kind of do mean it that way, as there was a pinch and then pain, but then I rose above it, and it was like I was floating above myself, detached and high. I only had a dim sense of what was happening to me, but then a shock wave rose through me, and I was slammed back into my body and rode it out in a blur of gasps and claws. As I came (without even touching myself; how does that even happen?), something inside me exploded as I shot onto my chest and my pleasure-drunk brain could only think of God creating the universe. First was nothing and then there was everything. Otter held me as my body rocked and shook, and for the first time, I realized there was such a thing as good earthquakes, that as long as you have someone to tether you to them, the shifting of the world can be a wondrous thing. It still scared me shitless, but I wasn’t about to allow that to take him away from me. Not anymore.
So quickly, inevitably, the days passed.
Otter kept his promise to me and didn’t try to push me about anything. I think it’s because Ty was right, that Otter just needed to hear how I truly felt about him. Any tension that had remained evaporated, and we were able to discover what we had meant when we’d vocalized our feelings for each other. A day never went by, regardless if we had fought or not, when I didn’t know how he felt about me. I tried to make sure he felt the same.
I often contemplated on how different it was for me and him than it was for me and Anna. I still remember the first time I’d told Anna that I loved her. We were fifteen, and it was sweet and I’d meant it, as much as a fifteen-year-old male could mean it. She had given me such a smi
le, then proceeded to punch me in the arm and say that she knew. I felt like the top of the world then. With Otter, though, I passed the top a long time ago. I didn’t know that a person could feel so much for another and not burst.
As I said, Otter kept his promise to me, and as much as I knew it probably strained him at points, I couldn’t help but admire his patience. If I were him, I would’ve probably kicked me to the curb time and time again. Don’t get me wrong: he still got exasperated at times, times when I went through my panic modes where I was just sure that everyone knew about us and that they were all talking about us behind our backs. But I never saw that shadow cross his face after that night on the beach. I had been the one causing it, and I was the only one who could have taken it away.
During the next two months, things changed in my life, changed in ways I had never thought possible.
Ty came back from his camping trip the Sunday following the best date disaster that I have ever been on. I talked to him multiple times on his trip, and no matter how many times he asked, I refused to tell him what happened. He would howl at me over the phone and demand to speak to Otter. I would say good-bye and hang up. A few seconds later, Otter’s phone rang, and Ty complained some more when I answered that one as well. Otter and I drove over to the Hererra house that Sunday and were both amused to see Ty sitting on the curb, his bags next to him, scowling and tapping his knee impatiently.
“Well?” he said, opening the front passenger door to Otter’s Jeep and climbing inside onto my lap.
I hugged him. “Hey, Kid,” I said happily. “How was your trip?”
He ignored me and looked at Otter. “Well?” he said again.
Otter grinned. “Did you have a good time camping?”
Ty’s glared back and forth between me and Otter. I could hear Otter struggling to keep a steady composure. I was trying to think of sad things and gross things to keep my mirth at bay. I had started to replay where Bambi’s mom had gotten shot over and over in my head when the Kid grinned at me evilly and turned to Otter and said, “Bear likes to be spanked during sex.”
There was a beat of silence in the car, and then Otter couldn’t hold it in any longer and lost it, which in turn caused me to start laughing. The Kid sat, growling through his teeth as he stared back and forth between us like we were fucking nuts. When at last we were able to calm down (but not before Otter shot me a lust-filled look that told me we’d be talking about that later) I leaned forward and wrapped my arms around the Kid and told him how amazingly horrible it had gone. I got to the part where I told him I recited his poem, and his face broke out with such a glow that I started laughing again.
“Did you get the extra meaning from what I wrote?” he asked Otter when I finished.
Otter grinned and mussed his hair. “I sure did, Kid. That’s why we’re taking you to a steak house right now for dinner. Welcome home.”
The Kid laughed and laughed and laughed.
ANNA and I started talking again, maybe three weeks after the Kid came home. It came out of nowhere as we both still carried an unintentional intention to steer clear of one another. Every week I’d go to work and hold my breath as I pulled up the schedule for the following week, praying that we were on different shifts. For the most part, it worked out that way. If she worked days, I worked nights, and vice versa. Oh sure, our paths crossed every now and then, but only for a few moments, and nothing was ever exchanged between the two of us. I knew that she had been the one to do this, to go to the scheduling manager and request that we’d work opposite of each other. I was relieved and sad all at the same time. Those brief moments that I did see her, we were both so busy ignoring each other that we never took the time to test the waters, to see if either one of us would be receptive to any kind of contact. To be honest, however unfair it sounds, I had begun to let her slip quietly away from me. There were still times when I would pore over the schedule and there were still times when I would breathe those sighs of relief, but that was all it was. I never really believed in out of sight, out of mind, as the two people in the world that’d ever been in that position (Otter and my mom) had always been there, picking and prying at my thoughts. One of them had come home to me, the other was never coming back.
So imagine my surprise when I showed up for work one night to work the last half of a closing shift as a favor to a friend and found Anna working the late shift as well. Not only would she be working the late shift, but she would be the last one there from nine until eleven, on a Tuesday night, when we’d be the slowest. I cursed silently when I saw her as I arrived and swore loudly when Mary, the other cashier (she of Juicy-Fruit fame), poked her head into the office and said she was going home.
“Fine,” I muttered, accidentally snapping the pencil I had been using to fill purchase orders.
“You know, this might be a good time for you,” she said from the doorway, sounding amused.
“A good time for what?” I asked, not bothering to look up.
“To go and talk to Anna, Bear,” she told me. “You guys haven’t really talked since….” She stopped.
That’s when I did look up, suspiciously. “Since when?”
She had the common decency to blush. “You know,” she said, fidgeting. “Since you guys broke up and all.”
“I didn’t know that was anyone’s business but ours,” I said coldly.
Mary shrugged. “She didn’t give me any specifics, Bear, if that’s what you’re worried about. I’m just saying, you’ve been together since before you even knew what that meant. Don’t you think she deserves something?”
“Like what?” I ask, doing nothing to keep the anger from my voice. “She broke up with me!”
Mary looks me squarely in the eye. “What did you do to give her reason to?”
I looked back down at the paperwork in front of me and began writing again. “Nothing,” I grumbled.
She sighed. “Bear, just—just don’t be all machismo on this. Sometimes the best thing a guy can do is admit he’s wrong and try to make amends. Do you know how many times Frank and I have broken up?” Frank was her biker boyfriend, the only biker in all of Seafare. He was big and burly (a bear of a man, if you will) and had steel-toed boots and chaps and a leather coat with fringes all over it. But saying you’re the only biker in Seafare is like saying you’re the smartest kid in remedial English. Big whoop.
“It’s not the same,” I told Mary, wishing she would drop it. “It’s done this time.”
“Do you want it to be done?” she asked me curiously.
I hesitated, only for a moment, but I instantly felt guilty. I did want it to be done, and I knew we would never go back to where we were, but that it was more me than her. Even if she would take me back, and even if I wanted to go there again, I knew that for the rest of my life, I would know that something was missing, that I was missing a crucial piece of me that completed the puzzle. Awww, that’s so sweet, Bear! it chuckled. This is going so much easier now! Good job. You’re welcome.
“I do,” I said to Mary quietly, and she didn’t say any more, and when I looked up again, she was gone. I heard her voice as she called good night to Anna, and then the doors whoosh opened and closed, and Anna and I were the only ones left, for another two hours. I started staring at the clock, counting down the seconds.
At nine thirty, the phone rang. “Thanks for calling The Food Warehouse. This is Bear. How can I help you?” I said glumly, staring at the clock as a few more seconds clicked by.
“It sounds so hot when you say that,” a voice said huskily in my ear.
I grinned and rolled my eyes and for a moment, everything was fine. “You think that’s hot? Maybe I should read off the produce order, and we can see where this goes.”
Otter chuckled. “Bring it home with you, and we’ll talk. How’s work going?”
I glanced up at the clock again. It was still nine thirty. “Meh,” I told him. “It’s better now. What are you doing? How’s the Kid?”
I heard Ott
er switch the phone from one ear to the other. “Well,” he said, “he was going to wait up until you got here, but I got him drunk and then gave him Nyquil and then chained him to his bed. We may just have to get naked when you get done.”
“You drugged my little brother so you could sleep with me?” I asked, amused.
He snorted. “It’s easier to do that than drug my little brother so I can sleep with you. Creed wouldn’t fall for that in a million years.”
“Thanks for watching him tonight.”
“Oh, please. You think you had to twist my arm to get me to come over here? I’m getting ready to knock Creed into next week, so it was good for me to get away for a while.”
This was news to me. “Huh?” I asked. “Why, what’s he doing?”
There was a pause, and then Otter sighed into the phone. “He’s being… Creed.” He laughed, but it sounded forced. “He keeps asking me what’s going on between me and Jonah.”
“Jonah?” I said, flabbergasted. “Why would he ask about him?”
“I don’t know. He brings him up every now and then, asking me if I talked to him lately. He thinks that my so-called ‘return to normalcy’ has to do with the fact that Jonah and I are talking again. Which we’re not,” he added quickly.
I felt a small twinge of jealousy, but I pushed it away. “Well, whatever,” I said, trying to keep any bitterness from my voice. “Let Creed think what he wants. You can come over to my house anytime.” I heard his grin through the phone, and I closed my eyes, picturing his face, crooked smile and all. Heat brushed slowly through my body, and I marveled again how quickly he could make me feel that way.