“Okay, maybe a lot. But… Bear. I think this could be good for me. To be home. Maybe I’ll even be able to put myself back into someone I recognize.”
And how could I say no to that?
IT WAS surprisingly easy, that decision. I thought there’d be more drama behind it, more angst. But the moment we agreed, we all felt… lighter somehow, even if none of us actually said that aloud. But I could see it in the way the Kid carried himself a little taller, the way Otter jumped into planning the move. It was significant, the transplanting of a life, but unlike how I felt when we’d packed up the Green Monstrosity the first time to head east (tense and nervous and excited and second-guessing everything), this felt like the right thing to do.
We’d made friends, sure, and they were sorry to see us go. They threw Otter and me a party in early May, and we drank and told stories and laughed in all the right places. But it hit me as we stood together, a toast being made to us by everyone else in the room, that these people, while good and kind, had always felt temporary somehow. Like they were placeholders for the real thing waiting for us back in Seafare.
“That’s because you’re kind of an asshole,” Anna Thompson told me over the phone the next day while I was still nursing a hangover and groaning angrily over the stupid fucking packing tape that refused to cooperate.
“Thanks.”
“Well, it’s true. We all are. I mean, I have friends, people at both in and outside the firm, but it’s…. I don’t know how else to explain it. They are people I like, but not people I depend on.”
I blinked. “Wow. We are assholes. That’s… okay. I think I already knew that. But saying
it out loud? That’s slightly mind-blowing. Have we always been that way?”
She snorted in my ear. “Probably. I know I’d probably not like us if I wasn’t me.”
“Deep.”
“Jerk.”
I pressed my fingers against my forehead. “It’s a weird thought, right?”
“What is?”
“That we’re still us. Even after all this time. I mean, no one keeps their high school friends. Not really.”
“No one probably went through everything we did. And by that, I mean when you cheated on me with my husband’s older brother who is now your husband when you and I were dating.”
“Holy fucking shit,” I wheezed, dropping the tape on the floor.
“Awesome, right?”
“I didn’t cheat on you!”
She snorted elegantly. “You kissed Otter when you and I were still together.”
“That—that’s not what happened. Otter kissed me. I wasn’t even gay then.”
“Because that’s how sexuality works. Which, sidebar.”
“Yes, counselor.”
“And really,” she said, “it’s none of my business.”
I rolled my eyes. “Because that’s ever stopped any of us.”
“Right. What are you?”
“What?”
“Gay? Bi? Otter-sexual?”
“Oh. Um. Pan, I think. Pansexual. Probably.”
“Ah. That… makes an unbelievable amount of sense.”