Who We Are (The Seafare Chronicles 2)

Or would we find some woman to pump full of our little swimmers with a turkey baster (ugh, I can’t get that image out of my head)? Where do you find women to do that? Like on Craigslist, or something? I can see it already:

I need a woman to carry our juices!!!!

Hi! My name is Bear. I am a reluctant homosexual (or, at least, I resemble one). My boyfr—er, life partner (gag!), is apparently like a forty-year-old woman, and his biological clock is exploding all over the place, and we don’t know how to turn off the alarm. We need a woman (ha!) to allow us to put our sperm into her so that we can create the miracle that is life! You, as the surrogate, must not be crazy !!!!! Seriously, there is already enough of that with the donors, so to compound that would just make things worse, and the child will already have enough shit they’ll have to deal with by having two dads, so we’re asking for a complete mental health history to make sure you are not bat-shit insane. Also, dark hair would be nice.

No way in fucking hell. Otter can give me those sweet, innocent eyes until they fall out of his head. There’s no fucking way that’s going to happen. I’ve got enough to deal with, what with the smartest vegetarian ecoterrorist-in-training (although, he might well be heading to full-blown ecoterorrism by now) on the planet, and the fact that I seem to be thinking about where I’d like to go on a honeymoon (Stonehenge!) after a wedding to a man I’ve known all of my life, but have only been with for four months (Jesus Christ, what am I, a lesbian penguin?). I don’t care if the Kid wants a little brother. I’ll get him a goddamn goldfish instead, and he’ll be happy he’s getting anything.

“Clock,” I mutter at the both of them. “You’ll be happy with a fish, and I am not a penguin who goes to Stonehenge. Craigslist isn’t getting my juices, that’s for damn sure.”

Otter and the Kid glance at each other before the Kid says, “I don’t think even I could figure that one out.”

“Maybe you can buy penguins on Craigslist?” Otter suggests.

“I don’t think they have a penguin section,” the Kid says wisely.

“Ah,” Otter says.

“What were we even talking about?” the Kid asks.

“I never know,” Otter assures him.

“You were asking me something,” I say, taking a sip of my coffee before remembering that it had come out of my nose and back into the cup.

Dammit.

He flushes. “Oh, right.” The Kid takes a deep breath. “So I know you’re worried, and that makes me worried, and you want to be there for me, but Dominic asked me if I wanted to ride the bus to school with him today, and since the high school is right next to the elementary school, it’s all the same bus! And I’ve never really ridden the bus before, and I thought, what if the very first day of fifth grade is how the rest of my fifth grade will be defined, and shouldn’t I try to act like I fit in even though I really don’t? Most kids take the bus, and I think that if I don’t and you drop me off every day, people are going to think I’m too good to ride the bus, and then they’ll tell everyone I’m stuck up, and I’ll be a social pariah whose only redeeming quality is that I’ll do your homework for you if you let me eat lunch at the same table as you.”

“Thought that one out, did you?” I ask, amused and sad all at the same time.

“For days,” he laments. “Please, Papa Bear? Pleeeeeeeease?” Ah, Christ, he’s trying to give me Bambi eyes while sticking out his bottom lip.

It’s an expression I’ve seen a billion times before, and I reprimand myself each time, telling myself that it’ll be the last time I fall for it.

Okay, so next time will be the last time I fall for i

t.

“Compromise,” I say. “Otter and me will drive both of you to school today. It’s your first day and all, and we want to be there, okay? Any day past today is open for discussion.”

“Okay,” he says slowly. “I see your offer, and I’ll counter with allowing you to take us today if you’ll allow me at least two days a week to ride the bus.”

“We’ll agree,” Otter says, “if you don’t complain at all when we have to go to your first therapy appointment tomorrow. You have to give it a chance before you decide you hate it.”

He scowls at the both of us. “You two drive a hard bargain. I’ll say yes if you also give me five dollars.”

“For what?”

“None of your business.”

I pretend to think on it a moment. “Deal.”

The three of us shake on it and adjourn our breakfast meeting for the day.

DOMINIC looks wary but gets in Otter’s Jeep at the Kid’s insistence (as he also proudly proclaims he talked me out of five whole bucks, wasn’t that soooo awesome?), glancing over his shoulder at his front door a few houses down the road before climbing in. Otter reaches back and shakes his hand, and I smile at him. He mumbles hello, looking uncomfortable as he buckles the seat belt over his chest.

Otter and I had decided shortly after the social worker’s first visit that we’d see how it went with Dominic. I still found it slightly odd that he hung around Ty like he did (even though I’d done the same with Otter, as Georgia had so conveniently pointed out), and I was even more worried about how he would act now. While Georgia’s words had been encouraging, that he seemed to be opening up around Tyson more than anyone else, that still didn’t mean that he was in his right mind. Not that I’d blame him. I study him discreetly as he watches Ty (who’s babbling to him about how he hopes that the fifth grade will at least give him some kind of challenge) but I don’t know what I’m looking for. If you saw your mother murdered by your father in front of you, would you show it on your face years later? Would it be embedded in your skin like a memory that wouldn’t go away? How would it shape you as a person?

These are questions that Otter and I asked ourselves but had no answers to. We agreed to allow the Kid to see Dominic, as long as there was one of us around to keep an eye on things and to make sure Dominic didn’t see a pair of scissors he felt he needed to pick up. We’d snickered quietly at this, unable to stop ourselves, both of us blushing at the horror of it all. I wondered if I could do something like that, if the situation called for it. I’d only had to think for a moment about someone going after the Kid or Otter before some baser, more primal thing in me made me understand you’d bet your sweet fucking ass I would do the same. I assume most people would. If need be.