Who We Are (The Seafare Chronicles 2)

— he thinks it’s his job, his misguided duty. I can’t let him do this alone.

I just can’t, but it’s so fucking hard to move from my place against him, because it’s familiar, the feel of him under my hands, the smell that I’ve always associated with him (sandalwood on a quiet beach in the fall with a light drizzle coming down—yes, I’ve overthought that by a mile), and the room is taking on such a bright and spinning hue, and my mouth is just itching to open and spill out more drunken idiocy. It’s because as much as he thinks he needs to protect me, I know I have to do the same for him. If his parents are going to start shit, I need to make sure he knows I’ve got his back and will lash out against any person who attempts to say anything against him. Nobody fucks with Otter, not on my watch.

“So,” the Kid says. “This is way awkward.” He makes an airplane noise as he flies his hand to the table where he mimics an explosion.

“I told you I should have recorded this,” Creed says to Anna.

“GayTube’s totally going to be lacking now.”

“Isn’t that a gay-porn site?” Mrs. Paquinn asks. “I should think they wouldn’t take familial coming-out dramas on the site unless it was done in the nude followed by coitus, but I haven’t seen pornography in weeks, so I don’t know what all the rage is these days.”

I almost want to ask how she knows about GayTube, but I can’t seem to bring myself to open my mouth for fear of what kind of answer I’d get.

Knowing Mrs. Paquinn, she’d tell us she was studying gay sex so she could provide tips to Otter and me to “bring out the fullness” of our “passion.”

Blech.

“Well, the night is still young,” Anna muses. “Who’s to say there won’t be coitus later on?” I almost want to point out that she’s talking about Otter boning me while sitting next to her mom, but I don’t think that would be in good taste.

“I’m not filming that,” Creed says quickly. “There are things in this world not meant for my eyes. Like ever. Ah, sick, I can’t stop thinking about it!” He rubs his hands over his eyes like he’s trying to scratch his brain.

“What’s coitus?” the Kid demands. “You can’t use words that I don’t know and then not explain them to me. I explain all of the big words I use.”

“What’s the point of using big words if you have to explain them all the time?” Creed asks him. “You would think you would just get tired of having to re-explain everything.”

The Kid rolls his eyes. “It’s not my fault you can’t understand the words I use. Pick up a book every once and while, huh?”

“Like what, the dictionary? A thesaurus?”

“It couldn’t hurt, Creed,” the Kid says. “You would think that after dating Bear, Anna would want someone a little more… verbose. You gotta step up your game.”

“Oooooh,” Mrs. Paquinn and Anna say.

“Oh, snap,” Creed says, sulking. “That burned, Kid.”

“I’m verbose,” I say, scowling at the Kid. Wait. “Verbosal?” I look up at Otter. “Is verbosal even a word?”

Otter shrugs and pats me on the head. “I don’t love you just for your verbosity,” he tells me. Show-off.

“Creed and I are… dating,” Anna tells her parents almost apologetically, who stare at her like she’s grown a second head and it’s singing show tunes.

“It just kinda… happened,” Creed tells his parents, who are looking at him like he’s just told them he’s pregnant with a litter of otter-bears.

“The summer of amore,” Mrs. Paquinn sighs. “Now only if that male nurse will fall in love with me and I can get some coitus of my own. What a dry spell it’s been! But I love my Joseph, God love him. No one could take care of a lady like that man. My goodness! It felt like it could go on for days.”

“What’s coitus!” the Kid snaps.

“It means sex,” Anna says patiently.

The Kid looks dumbfounded. “There’s another word for sex? How many are there? That’s ridiculous!”

“Well, there’s coitus,” Anna says, starting to count off on her fingers.

“And boning,” Creed says. “That’s two.”

“I think verbosal should be a word, if it’s no

t,” I tell Otter as he kisses my hair. “Doesn’t it sound like it’s a real word? Oh, man, I shouldn’t have drunken all that wine so fast because I can’t stop thinking about it.