“Who the hell are you talking to?” he barked.
“Anna!” I said, rather hysterically. “She wants me to get down and dirty with her and Creed, but Creed said it’d be strictly no homo, but that if our dicks touched on accident, that would be okay.”
“I am in my office,” Anna hissed at me.
“Put it on speaker,” Otter demanded.
I did, because he was using that tone of voice that made me want to climb him like a fucking tree.
“Anna?”
“Oliver. I am not—”
“There will be no threesome with Bear.”
“I didn’t—”
“Unless you pay me for it first.”
“What!” I squeaked. “Are you pimping me out?”
“Two hundred for the night.”
“Huh,” Anna said. “That’s… unsurprisingly affordable.”
“I hate you both so goddamn much.”
Otter kissed me deeply, then left the room, whistling as he carried another box toward the kitchen.
“This is why we can’t have other friends,” I said mournfully. “Because no one understands just how incestuous this family is.”
“You think Otter would be into it?” Anna asked.
“Shut. Up.”
“Moving on. Repayment.”
“Right.”
“So, I hear there’s going to be an opening at the middle school this fall….”
THE NIGHT before the movers came, Otter and I were in our bedroom, packing up the last of our possessions. Corey and Ty were at Corey’s apartment, doing the same. Most of Corey’s stuff would be sent on down to Arizona to his friend Sandy’s house, where he’d be living after he spent time with us in Seafare. This was the last night in the house. Tomorrow night we’d be in a hotel before we started the cross-country trip back to Oregon.
Music was playing low off Otter’s phone, and even though we had so much more to do, we were sitting side by side against the bed, legs spread out in front of us, his hand clasped over mine, his thumb rubbing mine. Each of us held a beer, the condensation dripping onto our laps. It was quiet, quieter than it’d been in a week.
It was good. Strange, but good.
And because he always seemed to know what I was thinking, he said, “It’s weird, right?”
“What’s that?” I asked, turning my head toward him. I kissed his bare shoulder once, liking the taste of clean sweat.
“Everything all packed up. Going back.”
“Good weird or bad weird?”
“Good weird, I think. It’s not bad. It’s just… all this stuff, you know? Our whole lives are in these boxes. Everything we own. And yet, even if it all disappeared, we’d still be okay.”
I laughed quietly. “No one believes me when I tell them you’re a softie.”