“I told them not to,” he says. “Don’t you get angry with them.”
He knows me too well. “Why?”
“Why?” he asks. Then he spits my own words back at me. “It doesn’t matter. Not anymore.”
I don’t know what to say.
“I have to get Ben home.” He turns back toward the house. “He eat?” he calls up to Bear. My brother nods, his arms across his chest. “You got the car seat?”
Bear reaches down by the door and picks it up. He walks down the steps and through the gate of the yard. Ben reaches for Bear, and Bear laughs, handing off the car seat to Dominic, trading it for the kid.
“Everything go okay with Anna?” Dominic asks as he fastens the car seat in the back of the cruiser.
Bear nodded. “Everything went fine. He’s been coloring with JJ inside.” He grins at Ben as Ben puts his hands in Bear’s hair. He babbles at him, and it hits me that I used to do that. Bear used to hold me just like that, and I’d tell him everything that ever came into my mind. I’d pull on his hair, and he’d listen and I’d talk. And talk. And talk.
They kept this from me. All of them. Even him.
“That’s Tyson,” Ben says to Bear.
“Oh?” Bear asks. He glances over at me, trying to see what he can see.
“I didn’t tell him,” Dominic says quietly. “There wasn’t time.”
Bear nods tightly. “We have some things to talk about, then, I guess.”
Dominic takes Ben from Bear and puts him in the car seat. He murmurs something to his son, and I hear Ben grunt. I almost open my mouth to inform everyone that he’s putting his son in the back of a cop car, but that doesn’t seem to be the best thing to talk about right now.
Bear looks at me, a question in his eyes. You okay?
I look away.
Dominic closes the rear door. “Thanks, Bear,” he says.
He stops before he gets into the car. He glances back at me. There’s no real discernible expression on his face. “It was good to see you again. Stay out of trouble this summer.” Like he’s talking to a child. An acquaintance. He says nothing else as he climbs inside the cruiser pulls away. Soon it disappears from sight.
“You didn’t tell me,” I say to Bear. This no longer feels like a dream.
“I did what I thought was best,” Bear says plaintively. “What I thought was right. I will do whatever I can to keep you safe. To keep you from hurting.”
“No more,” I say without looking at him. “You don’t decide for me anymore.”
I leave Bear out on the sidewalk.
LATER THAT night, I’m wide awake and staring at the ceiling, filled with all thoughts of him. Kori lies curled up against me, breathing deeply. I try to push Dominic away, but he won’t leave.
And it hits me. I don’t know why I hadn’t noticed it at the time.
His hands. Cuffing me. Opening the door. Hands on the steering wheel. Touching my wrist. Picking up his son.
There was no wedding ring.
12. Where Tyson Writes Bad Poetry and Gawks at Frat Boys
THE DOORBELL rings in the Green Monstrosity, and I open my eyes. I’m alone in the bed. I don’t know where Kori went, but it looks like she’s been gone a long time. I am starting to drift to sleep when the doorbell rings again.
I groan and sit up, sliding my feet over to the edge of the bed. For a moment, they don’t quite reach
the floor and it’s like I’m nine years old again, and I think I’m in the shitty apartment and I’ll look over and Bear will be sleeping on the bed next to mine and nothing will have changed. I’m upset with him, probably more than I’ve ever been in my life, but I don’t want things to go back the way they were. Not for me. But especially not for him.