Creed jumps at the opportunity. “So you have been keeping secrets from me!” he admonishes his brother.
Otter looks startled. “Uh, what? Secrets about what?” He looks at me, and I want to frantically wave my arms, but I can’t move. I can’t breathe.
Creed glances back at me victoriously then turns back toward Otter. “Bear said that you guys decided to tell me something. I was feeling all bad and shit for calling you a fag—er, gay, sorry—and Bear said you guys wanted to tell me something.”
“He did?” Otter says, unable to keep the surprise out of his voice. He looks to me again, and I try to show him inside of me, to see the storm that is brewing on the edge of the ocean. I try to speak, to scream, to make any kind of noise to show my dissent, but I’m frozen in my spot and for the life of me I cannot move. Get it over with, it whispers, as I shove it back down. Get it over with before it’s too late. And then it’s gone, the voice silenced and locked away within my depths.
“Bear?” Otter asks me. “Are you sure?”
Three little words. Are… you… sure. Three words that I’ve heard put together before in my life (words that I myself have used) but never before have they sounded so ominous, so full of change. As I look between Otter and Creed, all I can think about is how I wish it was fall and Creed was back in Arizona and we’d never had this conversation. I wish that Creed had decided to stay an extra day in Portland. I wish… God, how I wish so many things. But do you want to know what I really wish? I wish I could look at my best friend and my… boyfriend… and tell them both what they want to hear. The secret place locked inside me cracks, and the chains it is bound in shake, and the rust flakes off and for a moment—one shining, breathtaking moment—I think it will explode, sending its splinters ricocheting throughout me. But the bonds are strong, the secret place fortified. It cracks, yes, and it shakes, oh yes, but I’ve been a good craftsman and it holds.
It holds.
“I said that we decided to tell him about how Ty found out you were gay,” I say smoothly, hating the slickness of my voice, ignoring the flash of annoyance I see cross Otter’s eyes. I turn to Creed. “Ty heard you and Otter talking one time we were over here about how Otter was fighting with his… boyfriend.” (Oh, Bear, it whispers.) “He said he wasn’t trying to eavesdrop or anything, but what can you do?” I shrug. “Kids will be kids.”
Creed looks back and forth between me and Otter suspiciously. I’m about to go on spitting more half-truths when he laughs. “So it kind of was me,” Creed says, knocking back the rest of his beer. “Well, shit, Bear: I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to have to give the Kid the idea like that.” He looks back at Otter. “Maybe he’s right,” he says. “Maybe I do need to watch what I say.”
“It’s okay,” I say. I take a quick look at Otter and see disappointment play across his face, skulking, mocking me. I beg him silently to look up at me, to understand where I’m coming from, to remember his promise of a short while ago to take this at my speed. He sighs, and his shoulders slump, and he finally looks at me, and even though there is that promise between us, it does nothing to cushion the hurt I see in his eyes. I want to rush across the room and take him in my arms and whisper apologies, to utter that old cliché of how it’s not you, it’s me, but that won’t do. That’s apparently not who I am. He walks to the fridge and grabs a bottle of water and walks past me, and for a moment, time slows down. It’s one of those moments where it feels like you’re the only two people left in the world. Everything seems to eek along, and the place around you dissolves into nothingness, and it’s a gasp in time that’s supposed to make you feel more connected to someone than anyone ever before. Now try having one of those moments when time slows, and the person walks by, and your eyes meet, but it’s not the slow beating of your heart that catches your breath but the shadow that you’ve seen crossing that person’s face a few times before, a shadow that you know you’ve caused and that you know you could do something about if only you had the guts to do it. If only….
“Wait,” I breathe, reaching out and catching his arm.
Creed, there’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you. You see, a lot has gone on since you left. A lot has gone on for years, actually. I’m the reason that Otter left. Whether he agrees with me or not, I’m the reason he left, and I’m the reason he stayed away. Something happened between me and your brother, Creed, and it happened right after my mom left. I was scared and I was sad, and he came to my house the night before he left, and I did something that I shouldn’t have. I kissed him. I kissed your brother. But that’s not what I did wrong. What was wrong about it was that I let it affect me so much that he left. I could have stopped him. I could have stopped the last three years if I had really wanted to. And don’t get me wrong; part of me did want to stop him. But everything else was crumbling around me, and I didn’t know what else to do. I know that I can’t keep using that as an excuse, no matter how hard I try.
But something funny happened, Creed. Otter came back. Otter came back and something in me shifted, something in me broke free. For the first time in a long time, I saw myself through somebody else’s eyes. It was blinding because it was like looking into the sun. I’ve never had anyone look at me that way before. Something in me changed, and I’ve been struggling with it since. It’s an uphill battle every day, and I don’t see the end in sight, and that terrifies me. But if you want to know the truth, I want you to know. I love him. I love Otter. I think I always have, and I think I always will. It sounds weird, I know, coming from me. I’m the last person you’d expect to hear say something like this. I just don’t want to keep it in anymore. I’m tired of fighting it, and Otter told me the fight for me was all he’s ever known, and I couldn’t do that to him anymore. Not when he finally came home to me. Not when I could make this easier on the both of us. I am in love with your brother, Creed, and it’s all going to be okay. Nothing will change between you and me because of this. You’re still my best friend, you’re still my brother. Can you see that? Please tell me you can….
“What, Bear?” Otter asks me quietly, waiting. Creed looks over at us curiously. The words can spill out, I know they can. I know they can.
“Nothing,” I mutter, dropping his arm. Otter looks at me for a moment longer, his eyes filled with sadness. He then shrugs subtly and walks out of the room. I watch him go. It feels like forever that I’m watching him go.
“So the Kid knows?” Creed says, completely oblivious to the crashing of the world. “Like I said, I’m sorry, dude. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“I’m sorry too,” I whisper softly.
9.
Where Bear and the Kid Plot and Plan
(And Write Bad Poems)
“WHAT am I going to do?” I groan into my hands. “It’s like I can s
ee myself being open and honest about everything, but I don’t recognize that person. And I’m afraid that if I can’t do it, Otter is going to get frustrated and leave. How the hell did I get myself into this position?”
I sit on the couch at my house a couple of days later, after the fiasco that was Creed’s homecoming. I’ve been kicking myself for the last forty-eight hours, replaying the look on Otter’s face over and over again until I can’t bear to see it again. So of course, right when I think I’m over it, he pops back into my head, his eyes showing what no words can convey. The guilt has been eating me from the inside out. I can’t sleep. I can’t eat. I can’t function on a normal day-to-day level like I should be able to. The last two days have gone by in a fog of Otter-ness, and unless I get some kind of reprieve, I’m going to go insane. I haven’t seen him since I took Ty home that night. We’ve talked on the phone, but I’ve had to work late the last couple of days, and I’ve gotten no chance to grovel at his feet for forgiveness. Trust me, it’s not been lost on me how I sound. I’ve never acted this way before, not even with Anna. With her, if I ever did something stupid, and she was upset with me, I always knew that she would get over it. I just needed to give her her space, and eventually she would call me, whether it be the next day or a week later. That’s how we functioned. But now with Otter, only two days have gone by, and there’s been one short conversation where nothing of consequence was said, and I’m ready to crawl up the fucking walls. I sound so lame.
The face that belongs to the ear I’m bending sits back in his chair, his little legs dangling off the edge, not quite reaching the ground. Ty puts his hand under his chin and rubs his jaw thoughtfully. I can see he’s thinking, devising something, and I can’t help but feel a small sliver of hope rise through me. That’s immediately killed by the thought of how I’m waiting for my nine-year-old little brother to solve the crisis of my newfound sexuality and my… boyfriend, who apparently I’m pining for like I’m twelve. Hey, at least I know I’m pathetic.
“So we’ve determined that you’re not ready to tell people yet,” the Kid says matter-of-factly. “And we don’t know when you’re going to be ready, right?”
I nod.
“And we know that Otter promised you that he would do this on your terms (however unfair that is), and that he would respect your decision not to tell anyone about you two, right?”
I nod again, ignoring the commentary.
“So you think Otter is mad at you because you had the opportunity to say something, and you didn’t. And you’re mad at Otter because you feel like he’s pushing you toward that something even though he promised you not to. But at the same time, you’re respectful of the position you’ve put him in because he hasn’t had to hide who he is and who he’s with in years, and you can see it’s straining him.”
I nod, loving the Kid more than I could ever tell him.