“No. Duh.”
“Well, then, you can’t say they are not there,” she says definitively. “I should think there are probably whole bands of them somewhere out there, but I can’t say for sure, because I am not an expert on the matter.”
“You’ve been watching the animal channel again, haven’t you?”
“Three hours every day,” she agrees. “Next week, they are doing shows on giraffes, and I am quite certain there are some living with the gorillas.
But again, they all might just be Bigfoot, so I guess we’ll never know for sure.”
I want to continue listening to them go on and on (and on and on) because I am pretty sure Mrs. Paquinn thinks that Oregon is in Africa, but I’m distracted when Jerry and Alice walk over to me and Otter, who, for some reason, has positioned himself slightly in front of me, as if he’s trying to block me. Or protect me. Most might not see in him what I do, but I can see his shoulders are slightly tensed, the way his arms are stiff at his sides. I don’t know what the big guy thinks his parents are going to do to me, but I can’t help being touched by his misguided attempt at guarding me from the Big Bad J
erry and Alice. Jesus, I am getting soft.
His mother reaches him first and reaches up, wrapping her arms around his neck. He bends stiffly down, his arms staying at his sides. What the hell is he doing? God, can he make it any more obvious? Alice notices something is off and glances at me over his shoulder, her eyes missing the gold but still familiar. She looks puzzled and asks me a question without speaking, but I school my face and don’t say anything.
“When did you get home?” she asks as she lets him go. His father reaches out to shake his hand. I think for a moment Otter will make it more awkward, but he reaches up and grabs his father’s hand, shaking it twice before dropping it back to his side. “Are you back in Seafare for good?”
“Creed didn’t say anything to you?” he asks her warily. Where the fuck did confident Otter go? I think back over the past couple of days, wanting to see if I’d missed something, maybe something he’d said, something he’d done to show me that he was as worried about tonight as I am. I realize a little too late how selfish I’d been, yet again. He hadn’t said a damn thing.
He didn’t want to put any more stress on me. I don’t know how I know this, I just do. I really need to start working better at this whole relationship-with-a-guy thing.
His dad shakes his head. “He said we’d need to wait and hear things from you.” Jerry turns to me and grins. “And how are you, Bear?” he asks, reaching out his hand. I shake it, like Otter had done.
“I’m fine,” I say, making my voice sound stronger than I feel. Otter needs to know I’m okay so I can make him okay. “It’s good to see you both.” I laugh quietly when Alice wraps her arms around me, like I knew she’d do. “How was… wherever you guys were?”
Alice pulls away from me, eyes shining. “Oh, Bear, it was absolutely magnificent! We have so many pictures to show you later. But that’s not important right now. Jerry and I simply need to hear about you and the Kid.
What’s going on with the custody hearings? Is there anything we can do to help?”
I blush slightly at this, feeling that old rush of pride that does me no good. After the mess I’d made in August, I decided I needed to work out something to make sure nothing like my mother coming back and threatening to take Tyson could ever happen again. Mrs. Paquinn had offered to get us in touch with a lawyer who practiced family law, but it was Creed who’d e-mailed his parents to front the money. I’d written them an e-mail to let them know how much it meant to me (probably sounding like a blubbering moron and only realizing later that I’d typed everything in all caps, like I was shrieking my gratitude), but I hadn’t actually gotten to thank them personally.
“You both know what you did for me and Ty,” I tell them quietly. “I don’t think anyone could have done more. Because of you guys, chances are good that Ty will belong to me.”
Alice hugs me again, tears in her eyes. Ah, dammit. This had so better not be one of those nights when everyone starts crying around me and we all have to talk about our feelings. I totally put an embargo on all of that for the rest of the year. I hope they got the memo.
“Anything you need,” she whispers fiercely. “We’ll do anything you need us to. I’m just surprised that this came up all of a sudden. What made you decide to get custody of Ty?”
God, she doesn’t know anything. I look over her shoulder at Otter helplessly, and he reaches up to gently extract his mother’s arms from around my neck. “That’s a long story,” he tells her. “One that I don’t think we need to rehash right this second.” He gives a pointed glance at Ty, who’s still chattering away with Mrs. Paquinn, and his mother’s eyes widen for a moment, and she nods.
“Well, we’ll have plenty of time to catch up,” she tells us. The timer goes off on the oven, and she turns back into the kitchen. “Kid,” she says as she reaches for an oven mitt, “you’re going to just love what I’ve made for you.” Ah, crap. I should have realized before coming here that Alice Thompson is a firm believer that one should have to eat whatever everyone else is eating, and if the Kid’s along, that means it’s going to be something vegetarian. And probably gross. None of us have the heart to tell her that her cooking is not one of her best skills.
“I’ve got pizza on speed dial,” Jerry mumbles to me and Otter.
“What is it?” the Kid asks, running over to stand beside her as she pulls something large and brown and evil out of the oven.
“Well, you know how I made tofurky that one year?” Ugh, don’t remind me. I had the shits for a week. And don’t look at me like that. You would have too. “Well,” she says, flourishing her hands over the pan of lumpy weirdness. “I found a recipe for tofu meatloaf. I call it tofeatloaf.”
Shoot me now, please.
The Kid does his best to look suitably impressed, but I can tell he’s mulling the name of the new confection over in his mind, just like I am. I love Alice Thompson to death, don’t get me wrong. I’ve told you that she was a mother to me when my own didn’t know how to be. But there is no way on God’s green earth that I am going to eat something that has the word
“feat” in the middle (work with me here: “feat” turns into “feet,” and now all I can picture is cutting down into the middle of the brown blob and seeing toes sticking out. Don’t tell me you didn’t think the same thing.). The Kid tells Alice that it looks amazing, but he also sounds amazingly facetious (ha!). Alice, of course, notices none of this and smiles down at the Kid like he’d just told her that Martha Stewart committed suicide because there was no way she could compete with toe-loaf.
“You have to take the first bite,” Otter whispers to me, his breath ghosting over my ear. I try not to shiver at it. I almost succeed.
“Not hardly,” I whisper back. “It’s your mom. If you don’t, I’ll tell her that we moved into a house together and that we have sex even though we’re not even married.” Those words come out before I can stop them, and I try to ignore the startled look on Otter’s face that suddenly morphs into the biggest shit-eating grin I’ve ever seen on him. I’ve got to stop speaking before I think.
“Promise?” he growls, dropping his voice an octave or two, knowing exactly what kind of effect it has on me.