Dammit. I hate it when my crazy is right.
I look over at Otter, who’s watching me with careful eyes, no judgment, just waiting. His fingers are tapping rapidly against his leg, and I know he’s nervous. Shit. I told myself a while ago that I was going to do whatever I could to make this man happy, to make this man know every day just how I felt about him, that the fight for him was all I’ve ever known. It doesn’t matter what happens in there. If he needs me, I’ve got his back. And I swear to Christ if anyone so much as looks at him funny, I’ll make sure it’s the last thing they do.
Claws out, bitches, it whispers.
Indeed.
I reach over and take Otter’s hand in my own, feeling that big paw of his, rough against my palm and fingers. His hand is warm, familiar.
“Whatever we do,” I say quietly, “we do together, right?”
He grins. Fuck, is it ever beautiful. “Together,” he says, getting all gooey on me again. For some reason, those moments make him the happiest, and I’ll be damned if my heart doesn’t start jackrabbiting in my chest. He leans over and brushes a kiss across my lips.
“Do you guys need a moment?” the Kid asks wickedly. “I won’t say anything when I go inside, but if Mrs. Paquinn is here already, then I’m sure she’ll know right away what you two are doing and will accidentally tell everyone on purpose.” He’s right, it’s now or never.
Famous last words.
OTTER doesn’t bother knocking on the door, just grabbing the handle and swinging it wide open. I can hear a burst of laughter come from the kitchen, loud and bright, and it causes a stirring in the pit of my stomach. Creed.
To be honest, I don’t know where we left things. From the moment he found out about me and Otter, he seemed to have my back, pushing me to get back with his brother after the disaster that was me making my own decisions. But then something changed that day in my apartment, when Anna had told me about her and him. Something had gotten off its track, and I didn’t know how to fix it. It probably doesn’t help that I’m the king of putting things off, only responding to a text or two of his over the past few weeks, after he’d gone back to Arizona. I don’t know what his problem is.
Or, rather, I wonder if his problem is me. It didn’t help that apparently he hadn’t called and told me he was coming back into town. I was the one who always picked him up from the airport. No matter what else, it was always him and me, those sixty miles between Seafare and Portland our chance to have it be like it used to be. Anna probably picked him up this time.
That hurts more than I like to think about.
I’m walking slower than I should be, and Otter and the Kid know this, taking tiny steps while I shuffle my feet, walking past the pictures on the wall, in this hallway, in this house where everything had changed for me last summer, where things had changed for all of us. I sometimes wonder if houses can have memories, the sounds of life around and in it leaching into the wood and plaster, the brick and tile. What would this house say? It’s such a trivial thought, so obviously outside the lines of reality, but I can’t help but think what these walls could tell us, what they could show me.
I don’t know. I’m thinking stupid things. Who philosophizes about houses?
Ugh.
I’m stalling and I know it.
We round the corner into the kitchen, and for a moment things get brighter and louder, the people before us animated and smiling. Alice Thompson is rolling her green eyes at her husband, the look that says You’re full of shit but I still love you. Her blonde air is pulled back into a ponytail, her jawline angular and gorgeous. Jerry Thompson grins down at her from his towering height, and he looks so much like Otter that it chills me to the bone. His smile is crooked, the same lines forming around his eyes, although more pronounced. He reaches down and pecks his wife on the lips and mumbles something that causes her to laugh. She smacks him on the arm with the dish towel she holds in her hands. They both have always been affectionate, never worrying about showing how they felt about each other, for as long as I can remember. This was a house that felt like a home when mine felt like a prison. And while Creed and Otter both helped to make it so, their parents were the ones that allowed it, encouraged it. They were the ones I showed my report cards to, the ones who took me out and bought me clothes so I would have something to wear for my first day of junior high.
They were the ones who fed me, took me on family trips, made sure my birthday was celebrated when my mother was locked in her room with a carton of Marlboro Reds and a plastic bottle of cheap whiskey.
Fuck.
Anna Grant is standing next to Creed, looking down into a cookbook, pointing something out with a slender finger. They aren’t touching, but they are so close that their shoulders brush every now and then. Creed says something to her quietly, and I can see her flush slightly, running her left hand through her hair, something she only does when she’s pleased but doesn’t want to show it. I want to know what Creed has said to her to make her look like that, and I curse myself softly. It’s none of my business. Not anymore. And I shouldn’t care. I shouldn’t.
Right?
But it’s the last person in the room who sees us first, and she rises from her chair with an unladylike grunt, her knees popping as she grimaces. “It’s about time you guys got here,” Mrs. Paquinn says cheerfully. “I was beginning to wonder if maybe you guys had been kidnapped by Bigfoot.
Apparently, he’s been sighted twenty miles north of here.”
Oh, Mrs. Paquinn.
Tyson runs over to her and wraps his arms around her waist, and she smiles down at him as she strokes his hair with a slightly gnarled hand.
“There’s no such thing as Bigfoot,” he says to her. “Right?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t speculate one way or another,” she says amicably. “I would tell you that my Joseph, God love him, saw him at least six or seven times out there in the woods when he was logging, but it may have just been a forest gorilla. It’s very easy to get the two confused, I would think, especially if the boys had had their afternoon beer as they were prone to do.”
“There’s no gorillas in the forest, Mrs. Paquinn,” he says, rolling his eyes.
“Have you ever seen one?”