Who We Are (The Seafare Chronicles 2)

God, I’m such a prude. “What does this have to do with Tyson?” I ask, mortified.

He throws his hands in the air. Testify! I think wildly. “How can you know what’s best for Tyson if you don’t know what’s best for yourself?”

“I do know what’s best for Tyson because I do know that Otter is what’s best for me,” I snap at him.

“So you let… Otter control you, then.”

“That’s not what I said!”

“You know,” Eddie says, leafing through his copious notes, “in the animal world, a bear is much more ferocious than an otter.”

This can’t be happening. This guy has to be in on a joke that people are playing on me. Nobody in the real world is like this guy. I almost want to look around to see if I can spot a camera crew who’ll jump out and scream

“You’ve just been Rehabilitated! Sundays, on Fox!” They’ve got good hiding places, it would seem. “Is that so?” I say in response to his astute observation about the natural order of the animal kingdom.

“Oh, very much so. I’m sure you’ve never heard of a bear and otter fighting with the otter emerging victorious.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a bear and otter fighting at all,” I mutter.

“So you and Otter don’t fight, then?”

What? “What?”

“You just said you’ve never fought with Otter.”

“That’s not what I said!”

“It’s what you didn’t say that I’m more interested in.” He flips the page and begins writing even more. “So no disagreements? No petty squabbles?

Nothing he does makes you want to rip his face off with your paw and digest his innards? We’re all animals, Derrick. Some of us are better at showing it than others.”

I think this guy might be my new favorite person, it says in awe. Like, in the history of all time.

You stay out of this.

“I don’t want to rip his face off. Of course we fight. Everybody fights.”

“Do they?” he says, arching an eyebrow. “And what do you fight about?”

“Just stupid things.” I feel sweat drip down my spine and land in my ass crack. I’m not amused.

“Like what? Money? Laundry? Who’s going to top?”

“Otter likes to top more than I do,” I say before I can stop myself. I cringe slightly. Why do I feel the need to share that information with everyone?

“Ah! So do you consider yourself a submissive, then?”

I snort nervously. “Not hardly.”

He flips open his laptop and types something in. “You’ll have to forgive me,” he says. “I’m what you’d call asexual, so I’m not really up on the lingo of the gay culture.” He types in a few more things, and then I can hear the sounds of rough gay sex coming from his computer. His eyes widen, and he cocks his head to the left. Some guy on the screen growls about how his boy is going to take that baseball bat all the way to the handle, and Eddie leans forward on his hands, and I can hear the other guy wailing in what sounds like writhing ecstasy as I’m sure the bat is going just where the guy said it would. “Do you like baseball?” Eddie asks me, averting his eyes momentarily from the screen.

“Not particularly,” I grind out.

He squints at the screen. “So, would you call yourself a… hmmm, that doesn’t sound appropriate… a ‘nasty come hungry bottom dumpster bitch’?”

I wish life was more like cartoons and a piano would fall on him and his teeth would become the piano keys as stars circled his head. “I wouldn’t refer to myself as that, no.”

“Good… to… know,” he says, as he closes the laptop.