“Yeah, but why are you nervous with me?”
“Ugh. Would you just shut up for a minute and let me talk? And wow, I didn’t mean that to sound so rude. What the hell.”
He set his beer down too before giving me his full attention. I was distracted, if for just a moment, by the familiar gold and green in his eyes. This was Otter, I told myself. Just Otter. I’d known him practically my whole life and had probably loved him for just as long, in one way or another. And I could give this to him, because he’d given everything to me.
Or it could already be too late, it whispered. Because he’s asked time and time again, and there’s always been a reason, hasn’t there, Bear? A reason to say no, a reason to deflect, a reason to push it away and think about it later, later, later. And besides, are you really sure you can do this? There’s no going back, after all. He’ll never forgive you if you offer this and then try and take it away again.
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly, not wanting to speak with a mouthful of crazy.
Too bad things don’t work out that way.
“I want to get you so pregnant,” I blurted out.
His eyes bulged. “You want to what?”
And of course, I panicked. “Oh my Christ, that is not what I meant to say. Holy shit! I mean, aside from the obvious fact that I can’t get you pregnant, because of all your man parts, that’s not what I was going for. And that’s not to say that if we could that you wouldn’t be the one getting pregnant, because fuck gender roles, right? I mean, yeah, I’m smaller than you and tend to flail more, and you’re all big and grr and look at me, I just did six thousand squats for no reason whatsoever. And I know I told you to get me pregnant when we saw that stupid little kid in those stupid checkered Vans doing that stupid fucking dance, but why would it have to be me getting pregnant? I mean, fuck what society says about our roles, right? Fuck that. But then I got weird again, and I think I won’t ever stop being weird about it, and I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry that it’s taken me this long to get to this point. Because here you are, you’re forty, you are forty years old, and by the time we get this done, what happens when they graduate high school? You could be sixty years old, and we’ll be there, all proud and happy, with signs made of glitter that say things like I MADE YOU AND I AM PROUD OF YOU and YOU ARE SO COOL, and everyone will be happy and merry, and then some stupid little shit will look at you and say oh, that’s so nice that your grandpa was able to come to your graduation. And then I’ll get arrested for the murder of a recent high school graduate, because no one calls you a grandpa, even though you’d totally be the hottest grandpa ever. And then I’d have to go to jail for murder, and you’d be a single dad, even though they’d already be a high school graduate, and I don’t even know how conjugal visits work! Like, are those even a thing? You just get to come into the prison with a bottle of lube and bone me in some weird little room that stinks of semen from everyone else that used it? I don’t want to have sex in a room that smells like other people’s spunk, because there is no way in hell that could possibly be hygienic. I mean, what if someone shoots on the floor and I accidentally put my hand in it when I have to bend over, because you’ll be old and we’ll have to do it standing up because your hip could break? I don’t want to touch a semen-soaked floor in a jail where I’m at for murder because of your bad hip, Otter.”
I gulped down air.
Otter looked like he was going to pass out.
He said, “I’m… just… what.”
I groaned. “That was not how this was supposed to happen.”
“I’m…. Before I make assumptions, maybe you could explain exactly what this is supposed to be.”
“Shit,” I muttered, scrubbing a hand over my face. “Just… stay there. Don’t move.”
“I don’t know that I have enough synapses left to even think of moving,” he said faintly.
“Good,” I said as I pushed myself up and ran to the hallway, where I’d put the box I needed earlier in the day. I’d placed it under a couple of other boxes to make sure he didn’t accidentally find it and ruin the surprise.
“No,” I mumbled to myself. “Because you can just do that all on your own, can’t you, Bear? Fucking idiot.”
I found what I was looking for and clutched it close to my chest. I took another deep breath and went back into the room. Impossibly, Otter’s eyes widened further when he saw what I carried. His chest hitched a little, and I told myself that I absolutely could not cry, because that would be fucking lame.
“Look,” I said, then cleared my throat. “Just… sit there. And let me talk. I had this whole thing planned out in my head, and everything I said before isn’t what I was trying to say.”
“You told me that you wanted me to fuck you in jail with my bad hip,” Otter said.
“Yes, yes, and I’m sure you’ll never let me forget that. It’s probably going to be one of those stories we tell our kid down the road and it’ll—”
“Our what?” he asked, and I almost died right there, because never in my life had I ever heard Oliver Thompson sound so hopeful.
I was going to cry.
I had no chance.
“You asshole,” I hissed at him, trying to blink away the burn. “Would you just listen?”
He nodded dumbly.
“Okay. So. Look. Just. You are—fuck, I totally forgot what I was going to—wait. I remember. Most of it. Okay. So. You are super cool.”
He coughed roughly.
I pretended that wasn’t a critique at my delivery. “No, you are. In fact, you might be the coolest person I’ve ever known in my life. And I know now, and I’ve known for a long time, that I will never love anyone as much as I love you. You have put up with so much shit from me. From the Kid. This life… we’re—we can be a mess, Otter. The two of us. We got fucked over and dealt the worst hand, and the hits kept on coming. It didn’t matter how much happiness we tried to hold on to, we were battered again and again and again. She didn’t give a damn about us. She left me. She left the Kid. She fucked off and ran because she couldn’t deal with the reality she’d made for herself. And that wasn’t fair. It wasn’t. And I did my best. I really did. And I made mistakes. Jesus, I made so many fucking mistakes. And sometimes I didn’t even learn from them. I did what I thought was right, even when it was wrong. And then you came back and—”