Bear, Otter, & the Kid 03 - The Art of Breathing (49 page)

He looks over at me. Takes my hand in his. Brings it up and brushes his lips against my palm. “Because,” he says, “if we’re going to have any future, you need to know everything, Ty. I’m not a catch. Not by any stretch of the imagination.”

“Future?” I’m dazed by his words, and the inside of the car starts spinning.

“What do you think this is?”

“I don’t know,” I admit. “These past few days have been… weird.”

He laughs. It’s a good sound. A rough sound. “Yeah.”

“Dom, I don’t know my future, much less anyone else’s.”

“No one does.”

“I know. But mine’s a bit more uncertain than others.”

“Why?”

“I’m lost,” I say, trying to keep my voice level. “And I don’t know how to get back. Bear says I’m not and I want to believe him, but here I am, sitting in a car in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere going to see the one person who almost destroyed me with the one person who was able to put me back together, and
I don’t know what to do
. I’m lost, Dom. I’m so fucking lost and scared that I’m doing the wrong thing, that I won’t be who I’m supposed to be. That I’m not what Bear wants. Or Otter. Or you. That scares me most of all, that I can’t be who you want me to be, and I don’t understand this right now. I don’t. You touch me. You kiss me. You say things about pasts and futures, and they’re all I’ve ever wanted to hear from you, they’re all I’ve thought about for
years
, and even when we’ve been apart, even when I didn’t see you every day, I thought about you. Because it has always come back to you. Without you, I didn’t have a home. Without you, I was barely breathing. And I’m lost, Dom. I’m so fucking lost, and it’s so hard to
breathe
and—”

He brings his big hand up and curls it around the back of my neck. He pulls me forward. Our foreheads touch and all I can see is him. All I see is Dom, and it’s like I’m nine years old again and there’s a big kid watching me and all I want is for him to be my friend so I can finally say I have a friend all my own, who belongs to just me and no one else. He breathes out and somehow, I’m able to breathe him in. My lungs expand and there’s only him. Just how it’s always been.

“You’re not lost,” he says. “Not anymore. I’ve found you now, Ty. I’ve got you and I will never let you get lost again.”

“You promise?” I cry at him. “Ah God, you promise?”

“I promise,” Dom says. “I promise.”

And, somehow, I believe him.

We sit there, his hand around my neck, me clutching his arms, and just breathing. In the dark. In the middle of the night. In the middle of nowhere. On our way to see the one person who almost destroyed me.

But I’m with the one person who was able to put me back together, the one person who, for a time, belonged just to me. It may not be that way anymore, because there are others now who depend on him. Others who need him as much as I once did.

And I don’t know what the future holds beyond this moment. I don’t know what will happen tomorrow. Or the day after. I don’t know what my mom will say. What Bear and Otter will say. What I’m going to do with my life. What I’m going to do to make things right. I just don’t know.

But for now, none of that matters. For now, I’m again with my best friend in all the world, and he holds me as if I’m something precious. As if I’m something fragile. And if nothing else goes right, if all the world crumbles around me in an earthquake I can no longer stop, I’ll look back and say at least I had this moment. This moment when it’s just Dom and me and everything is finally out in the open and laid bare for all to see.

Well, almost everything.

Unable to stop myself (of course), I ask, “So, you’ve got to be at least bi, right?”

All Dom does to reply is laugh.

I’
M
DRIVING
.
The sun is rising. We’ve just crossed into Montana. We’ll hook around and into Idaho and eventually into Coeur D’Alene. Kori texted me at some point with her address. Seems it wasn’t hard to find, but then nothing can stay lost for very long these days, especially on the Internet. Maybe I’ll stop. Maybe I won’t. Maybe I’ll just keep driving until the car runs out of gas. And maybe then I’ll just walk until I can’t walk anymore. I don’t know. It’s one day at a time for me now. That’s all I can do, but I think it’s for the best. One day at a time.

You don’t have to do this
, the text read.
I hope you won’t. But here it is.

I hope I won’t do it, either. But it feels necessary. It feels like the end of one thing and the beginning of another. And I want this to end.

For me. For Dom. For us, if there can be an us.

But this has to end. This thing.

I think Dom’s asleep until he says, “Stacey knows.” His voice is low.

“What?” I ask.

“About you.”

“Does she?”

“For a long time. After you left, things got… difficult with me.”

“You were lost,” I whisper.

“Yeah. For the longest time.”

“We screwed up, huh?”

He snorts. “That’s one way to put it.”

“Was she mad?”

“Nah. Not her. I think she knew before I ever said anything. I wasn’t the… easiest… person to live with after you left. Then Ben came and I pushed you away. I had to make sure they were okay. That I’d do right by them.”

“What happened?”

“You were always there. Turns out it’s hard to push someone away when they’ve taken your heart. She knew. I thought I was doing the right thing, but she knew. She finally asked me one day what I was going to do to get you back.”

“What did you say?”

“I thought about lying. That I didn’t know what she was talking about. But by then, we were already over and we both knew it. We made better friends than anything else. So I told her I didn’t know what to do.” He laughs to himself. “She told me to man the fuck up.”

“And did you?”

“I was getting there,” he says. “But then I heard you were coming back and I waited. I told myself that you’d come back and I’d find you and we’d hash this out and we’d see what we’d see. So I waited.”

“Until you could arrest me, huh?”

He smiles. “Something like that.”

“I was scared.”

“You were shaking.”

“I was so mad. At you. And at me. And then you arrested me.”

“I dream about that.”

“Arresting me?” Kinky fucker.

“No. That moment. When I saw you again for the first time. That defiant look on your face. The way you stuck out your chest, trying to make yourself look bigger. You know what I thought right then?”

“Probably how long you should tase me for, huh?”

“No,” he says. “I thought, ‘We’re inevitable.’”

“Yeah, Dom,” I say hoarsely. “You and me, huh?”

“Sure, Ty. You and me.”

“Stacey knows.”

“Yes.”

“Bear knows. And Otter.”

“Do they?” No concern in his voice. “I thought they did.”

“I think Bear’s known for a long time.”

“He’s smart.”

“Sometimes. Dom?”

“Ty.” My name on his lips is something I’ll never tire of hearing.

“Stacey.”

“Yeah?”

“She’s okay?”

“She is. She told me something once. At the end of me and her.”

“What?”

“She told me if you truly love someone, you could let them go.”

“Oh.”

“Or, she said, you fight like hell to get them back.”

“You and her?” My heart breaks for the woman I long considered to be an enemy. I never wanted this, not if it meant others being hurt. Not truly. But something in his voice causes my heart to race, my skin to prickle. And then he speaks again and everything changes.

“No, Ty,” Dominic says. “She was talking about you and me. And you can trust me when I say I’m going to fight like hell. Because no matter where you’ve been or how long it’s taken you to come home, we’ve always been inevitable, and that will never change.”

I can say nothing in return because my voice no longer works.

Sometime later, before he drifts off to sleep, he finds my hand with his and holds it tight.

We drive on.

Where Tyson Meets His Match

I
T
’
S
A
little house in a little neighborhood. Not bad, but by no means the greatest either. There’s a small fence around the front yard. There are flowers and bushes along the house that look as if they could stand to be watered. The lawn needs to be mowed. There’s an old car in the driveway, but it’s missing a tire and is up on a jack. It’s late afternoon, and I can’t tell if anyone is home.

Dom had wanted to come, almost to the point of arguing with me. I told him if he meant what he’d said in the car, he’d let me do this. A little manipulative, sure, but I don’t want him to see her for a very simple reason. He’s never met her. Therefore, he can never be tainted by her. Should this go wrong (and there’s no reason to suggest it won’t—ever the optimist), I don’t want him to see her. She hasn’t gotten to him yet. And if I have anything to say about it, she never will.

He wasn’t happy, of course. He wants to protect the ones he loves.

Loves.
Jesus Christ. That’s something I’m still not able to wrap my mind around. Either this has been the best trip in the history of ever or it’s about to go ass up.

Drive away
, it whispers.
You’ve got what you wanted. At least the foundation of it. Drive away now. Pick up Dom at the shitty motel and drive home. Go back to Seafare and the Green Monstrosity and Bear and Otter and let them worry about things for a little. That’s what they’re there for. Then you can focus on Dom and whatever is supposed to happen. All you have to do is drive away.

It would be so easy. I’d start the car. Put it in drive. And leave. This would all be behind me, and I’d never wonder about it again.

They’re nice, these thoughts. But they’re wrong.

I’d think about it. And I’d dream about her. And I’d always wonder.

But wouldn’t it be better to wonder? If you wonder, you might not know, but at least there would be no more sorrow. There’d be no more hurt.

That’s true. But I have to know. I have to know for myself. And for him. If we’re to have any future, then I need to know all of me.

If you’d have told me a few days ago that I’d be sitting in front of Julie McKenna’s house after hearing Dominic Miller say he loves me, I’d probably have asked you just how finely cut the cocaine you’re snorting is. It’s been that kind of a week. God. My life is so fucking strange.

Do it. Do it now. I’m either going to do it or leave. So just fucking do it.

I open the car door.

I remember her laugh.

I close it behind me.

I remember her smile.

I’m halfway across the street.

I remember her smell.

I’m on the sidewalk.

I remember how Bear sat in front of me, telling me she was gone.

My hands curl into fists at my side and my throat constricts.

Bear says,
Breathe.

Otter says,
Breathe.

Dom says,
Just breathe, Ty. All you have to do is breathe. You breathe because it’s all inevitable. It’s all so inevitable. I promise you that you won’t be lost anymore.

I breathe. Most people don’t know just how precious the art of breathing truly is. I breathe because of Bear. I breathe because of Otter. I breathe because of Dominic, who I love. Of course I do. And I’ll tell him. I’ll tell them all. And we’ll figure everything out together and everything will be as it was and as it should be. It’s inevitable.

I don’t breathe because of her. Maybe I did at one point. Maybe that’s all I did. And maybe in the memories I have of her, there are good ones, times when she was my mother and I was her son and nothing else mattered. She left, but there
was
good in her. There was. I remember it. I remember the way her hair tickled my face when she kissed my nose. I remember the way she swung me up in the air. I remember the way her hand felt in mine as we listened to the waves on the beach. I remember that kite. I remember her.

But mostly I remember Bear. And Otter. And Dominic. They are my brothers. They raised me. They loved me for who I was and for who I’ve become. I’m lost, but Dom promised he’s found me, and Bear says the same. These are the men I aspire to be. These are the men I need. These people are my family, and they’d never leave. They’d never leave me behind.

And maybe that’s enough.

Maybe that’s all I need.

I touch the fence. It needs to be sanded down and repainted. It’d look just like new.

I watch the house, willing any sign to come from it to show me I shouldn’t just leave.

There’s nothing.

That’s it. I’m gone.

“What are you doing?” a voice asks from behind me.

I turn.

Standing near the driveway of my mother’s house is a young girl of maybe eleven or twelve. She’s pretty, her dark hair braided and falling on her shoulder. She’s dressed in shorts and a white shirt streaked with dirt. There’s no fear on her face as she watches me, just curiosity.

“Uh, just… looking at houses,” I say lamely. “I like… fences.”
Oh, because that doesn’t sound creepy at all.

“Oh?” she asks. “How peculiar. Is there something about this particular fence that does it for you?”

“What? No! I’m just going for a walk. Around the neighborhood. To see the sights.”
Yeah, that sounds so much better. Good job. You’re doing great!

She shrugs. “Free country, I guess. Though I don’t know what sights there are to see here. It’s pretty bad.”

“Nah. I used to live in worse. The apartment my brother and I used to have had bugs all the time.”

“Like cockroaches?”

“Sometimes.”

“I don’t care about cockroaches,” she says. “Did you know they can survive a month without food?”

“I’d be okay if they didn’t survive at all,” I say.

“I like bugs,” she says. “I’m going to be an entomologist when I grow up.” She points down to her shirt. “I was digging back in the woods, trying to find
Rosalia funebris
.” She looks me up and down. “That’s a banded alder borer beetle, in case you didn’t know.”