Bear, Otter, & the Kid 03 - The Art of Breathing (31 page)

“I’m sorry,” I tell her, there on our little beach. “I’m sorry I’ve been away for so long. I didn’t mean to. I didn’t forget about you. Never. Not once. Not even for a minute.”

The smell of salt and grass. Wind blows through my hair. I wonder just how far her ashes have spread. She’s probably global by now. Just like she’d always wanted to be.

I sit down on the beach next to the little cross Anna made so long ago. Take off my shoes. Dig my toes into the sand.

The last time it’d been just me and her was the day Otter planned to propose to Bear. I remembered the poem we’d written together, him and me, telling him to not be scared, that even though it wasn’t technically legal, it was still better than eating a beagle.

Before her speech turned slurred and the side of her face drooped, before she collapsed to the floor, her head bouncing off the carpet with a noise I can still remember, before everything changed, she’d looked at me and said, “I have a feeling today is going to be the start of something wonderful for you and your brother, Ty. And you both deserve it so much. I don’t think I know two people who deserve it more.” She smiled sweetly at me. “Remember, okay? Remember that. You’ve been through the wringer, and times might get tough again, but everything good that happens to you is because you deserve it. You have your brother. And Otter. And Dominic. And Anna and Creed, and all the rest. That is what this whole thing is about. Family. That is all you need. It doesn’t matter where life takes you, as long as you remember them and this moment. That will make you who you are.”

I kissed the back of her hand. She laughed. It was the last time I heard that sound.

“I fucked up,” I tell her now. “I’ve gotten away from what I was supposed to be. And I don’t know if I know the way back. I’m lost, Mrs. P. I need help because I’m lost.”

“Nah,” someone says from behind me. “You’re just… off track, I think.”

Bear.

I don’t turn. “Dom called you?”

He sighs as he sits down in front of me. I look down when our knees bump together. “Yeah,” he says. “He was worried about you. I thought it was best for everybody if I came here instead him.”

“Oh.”

“Ty.”

“What?”

“You’re not lost. I would never let you get lost.”

“Feels like it. Like I’m… floating. Off course. I don’t know. You were right not to tell me, I think. About Dom. Apparently I don’t handle things very well.”

“No,” he says. “I wasn’t. I didn’t handle that very well at all. Otter…. Otter thought we should tell you. I didn’t. I should have listened to him.”

“You didn’t think I was strong enough.” I don’t say it with any recrimination. Just stating the fact.

“No.” He grabs my hand and holds it tight. “No. Not that. Never that. You are the bravest person I know. That will never change.”

“Then why?”

He chuckles darkly. “I think it was selfish, mostly. You’d been hurt before. Let down. So many times by people in your life. I didn’t think you deserved it again. But that’s all I was thinking, I guess. I. I. I.
I
didn’t want to see you hurt.
I
didn’t want to give you the news to cause you pain.
I
didn’t think you deserved it. You were strong enough, Ty. It was me who wasn’t.”

It’s either now or never. And if I can’t tell my brother, then I might as well not tell anyone at all. “I loved him,” I confess. “That’s why everything happened the way it did. I thought we’d be….” I can’t finish.

“I know,” Bear says. “I’ve known for a long time.”

“You did?” I look up at him in surprise.

Bear watches me sadly. “Ever since the party before we left Seafare. You were in the bathtub. I didn’t know what set it off, but I knew it had something to do with Dominic. I left you with him and you came out, ready to leave.”

“Found Dom and Stacey. In the hall. He was… smiling at her.”
The way he used to smile just for me.
It all sounds so ridiculous now.

“Ah,” Bear says. “I can see how that could hurt.”

“That’s not the only reason I wanted to leave.”

“No?”

“No. It was for me too. I think I needed to leave. To see what else was out there.”

“It worked out okay, then.”

I snort. That’s a euphemism if I’ve ever heard one. “I don’t know if that’s quite right. I’m pretty sure I’m about to get kicked out of Dartmouth. If the literature is to be believed, I’ll always be an addict now. I hear voices in my head, and I still need the bathtub because it gets hard to stand. What about any of this worked out okay?”

“You’re alive.”

I gape at him, only because I can’t think of a single thing to say in response.

He shrugs. “We made it this far and we’re alive, aren’t we? There were times I didn’t think we’d be able to say that. To be where we are and say that. So while things can be shit, you just remember that you’re alive, and if you’re alive, that means you can take another step. And if you can take another step, then you are nowhere near close to being done.”

I’m unable to stop the smile that forms. “Listen to you, Papa Bear. Dispensing advice that’s not only logical, but coherent.”

He rolls his eyes. “It’s been known to happen once or twice.”

“What about that time you told me it was okay to pour a glass of ice water on Otter to wake him up?”

He laughs. “God, I wish you were little again. You were such a gullible little shit.”

“I still don’t think he’s forgiven me.”

“Hey.”

I look up at him.

“He wanted to come too. I told him it might be better if it was just me. For now.”

“I know.”

“He worries. Maybe too much. I know he’s worried about you.”

“I didn’t mean to give him reason to be.”

“He knows that, Kid. But it doesn’t matter. That’s just who he is. In his mind, we belong to him, and that means he worries. It’s not a bad thing. It just is. You should have seen his reaction when he came home the day the wedding invite came from Dominic.”

“Mad, huh?”

Bear laughs. “Furious. I had to stop him from buying a plane ticket to fly back to Seafare and kicking Dominic’s ass.”

“Really?” I don’t know why this surprises me. It sounds like something Otter would do for someone he loves.

“Really. Dominic’s family, Ty. But you… you’re different. I think part of Otter sees you as his son. And he’s a bit overprotective of us, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

“Yeah.”

“We’ll figure this out, Kid. I promise.”

And I believe him, for the most part. How can I not? Bear has never lied to me before, not when it counted. There’s still way too much to work through, but this could be a start.

He still holds my hand. I’m almost twenty years old, but I don’t give a flying fuck. He’s Bear, and this is what we do. “Pretty stupid, huh?” I say. “Falling for your best friend.”

He laughs. “Not so stupid, though it can feel like it. Trust me, I would know.”

“I’m not you,” I say, though I don’t know if that’s exactly true anymore.

“No?”

“Not… not like I should be. I need to fix this, Bear. In my head. I’ve got to fix this.” It seems like we’ve been here before. Round and round we go.

“You want to talk to someone again?” he asks.

“Like Eddie?”

“Uh. Sure. Or maybe someone a little more… qualified.”

“You were going to say ‘sane,’ weren’t you.”

“No. Well, yeah.”

“I know Eddie.”

Bear sighs. “That you do.”

“He showed me how to breathe.”

“That he did.”

“He also asked me if I’d ever had any inappropriate thoughts about Otter.”

Bear groans. “That man, I swear to God.”

“I’ll talk,” I say. “And then we’ll figure out what to do. Where to go from here.”

“And if you need to go,” Bear says, “somewhere far away from here, and you need me there, too, you know I’ll follow you. Right? It doesn’t matter when or where. I’ll follow you, Ty.”

My voice is a little rough when I say, “Yeah, Papa Bear. I know.”

“Otter will too. It’s not about just us. It’s about you, too. We’ve stuck together this long. What’s the rest of our lives?”

“You’re going to make a good dad, you know? I’m sorry if I didn’t say that. You know. Before.” That was eloquent.

He grins, obviously pleased. “Yeah? You think so?”

“Yeah.”

“Me and babies, huh?”

I grimace at the thought. “Brave new world. You’re going to be covered in so many different bodily fluids.”

“That’s… disgusting.”

“It’s being a father.”

“Maybe Otter can do the… sticky things. I can… make lunches or something. Apple slices and juice boxes. Maybe laundry.”

“You’re going to make a great soccer mom,” I tell him.

“Out your ass, Kid,” he says.

We laugh and listen to the wind. The birds. The waves and the grass. At least for a little while, it’s just me and him, me and my big brother. It’s like I’m a little guy again, sitting at his side, his hand in mine while I play with his fingers. It’s how it started, this life. Our life. For the longest time, it was only Bear and me. Against all odds. Against the world. He stopped the earthquakes because that’s what brothers do. He was my home. He will always be my home.

Of course, she was too.

“I miss her,” I say.

He knows who I mean. “I do too. Every day. She’d be proud of you, I think.”

“Maybe. I think she’d tell me it’s time to move my ass, though.”

“Yeah. That sounds like her.”

And it does. Our Mrs. Paquinn. How much like her it sounds. Sometimes I like to pretend I can hear her voice. To hear what she’d say to me. To hear her laugh again, not just for the first time or the last time, but for all time. I like that. Even if it’s just pretend.

“Otter’s probably pacing at the front door, huh?” I ask finally.

Bear chuckles. “Wearing a groove as we speak.”

“He’s pretty great, huh?”

“Yeah. I guess he’s all right.” But that smile on my brother’s face says it all.

“Where do we go from here?” I ask him.

And somehow I know what he’s going to say, because it’s just like that time in this very place so long ago that I found him here when he thought all was lost. He’d said the same thing to me.

“We go home, Kid,” he says. “They’re waiting for us.”

“All of them?”

“No,” he says. “Not all of them, but enough. For now.”

And it is. I say good-bye to Mrs. P, telling her I’ll be back soon, before I follow Bear up the sand dune to the car.

We don’t say much on the way home. We’ve said enough already.

As soon as we’re in the driveway of the Green Monstrosity, the door opens and Otter comes out and circles to my side of the car. He opens the door and says, “Hey.”

“Hey, yourself,” I say back.

He pulls me out, wraps his arms around me, and lifts me off the ground. “I’ve got you,” he says so only I can hear. “No matter what. I’ve got you.”

And I believe him.

This is my family. We might not always get along. We might hurt each other sometimes. Things might seem unfair because we’ve loved, only to have lost. And there are days when it feels like we’re broken and there’s no way we’ll ever be put back together. Not with these earthquakes. Not with this ocean. Even now, after all that we’ve been through. But they’re mine, I think, and I belong to them.

The three of us fit together. We always have. Bear, Otter, and the Kid. It will probably always be this way, even if I’m not a Kid anymore.

It’s time I start remembering that.

Where Tyson Learns the Benefit of Therapy

“Y
OU
KNOW
,”
Bear says, “it wouldn’t be that hard to find a new therapist. If you really wanted to.”

“I thought you liked Eddie,” I say, dropping my cereal bowl into the sink.

“Bear still hasn’t gotten over their first meeting,” Otter says, flipping through the newspaper. “It scarred him irrevocably, and he’ll never be the same. At least that’s what he says. I think he’s just a bit of a drama queen.”

Kori laughs quietly, her hair pulled back into a ponytail. We’ve only been home a few weeks, yet she’s gone from Corey to Kori and back again more times than I’ve seen in years past. Something has to be bothering her, but I’ve been so wrapped up in my own drama (what else is new) that I haven’t had time to ask her about it. We’ve only got a couple of weeks left until we leave for Tucson, and I need to see to it sooner rather than later.

“Drama queen?” Bear says, the outrage in his voice clear. “He asked me if I wanted to be sodomized with a baseball bat!”

“I don’t think that’s exactly how it went,” Otter says.

“Though that’s probably not too far from the truth if it’s about Eddie,” I remind him. Eddie Egan isn’t exactly what I would call a typical therapist. His ideology tends to be a bit warped. To be honest, I’m surprised his license hasn’t been revoked. But he’s the one who’s known me the longest out of the therapists I’ve been to, and he’s really not all that bad. Most of the time.

“You guys know the weirdest people,” Kori says. “Why would a therapist want to know if you wanted to have baseball-bat sex?”

“I don’t know,” Bear says. “It was just this whole… thing. And it’s not my fault all these kinds of people keep flocking to us. I’m the normal one here.”

We all stare at him.

“What? I
am
.”

“Normal is not something I’d use to describe you,” I say.

“Definitely not,” Kori agrees.

“And that is said with the utmost amount of love,” Otter says without looking up from the paper. “Well, as much love as can be given while saying you’re abnormal at the same time.”

“I hate you all,” Bear mutters.

“This is why I have to go to therapy,” I explain to Kori. “The family dynamic is such that there was no hope for me to have a sane adulthood. I’m a product of my environment.”

“If that’s true,” Bear says, “you probably would have turned out to be a serial killer or a hooker, with the environment you had. You’re lucky you’re reasonably well-adjusted. For the most part.”

“Reasonably,” I repeat. “That’s a relief.”