She doesn’t look like she believes me. “Who are you?” she asks Isaiah, her bitch voice out in full. I’ve been on the receiving end of that tone quite a few times, and I know exactly what it means. She’s pissed. I don’t know why.
“Isaiah Serna,” he says, not offering his hand. “And you are?”
“Anna, and I don’t like it when I come around a corner to see someone crowding my friend. There’s a thing called personal space. Learn it. Use it.”
Isaiah’s eyes narrow. “What are you, his mother?”
“No,” she snaps at him. “I stuck around.” This confuses him, but it causes me to feel like a tear or two might just leak out if I let it. I don’t, so none do.
“Long story,” I say to his confusion.
“Seems like everything is with you,” he says, finding his grin again, putting a little leer behind it. “She your girlfriend?”
Before I can speak, Anna interrupts. “Used to be,” she says coldly, moving in front of me almost imperceptibly. She’s subtle, but I notice it.
“Now I’m dating Bear’s boyfriend’s brother. Who happens to also be Bear’s best friend. And both are hell of a lot bigger than you. So I suggest you back off, Isaiah.”
“Anna,” I sigh, feeling like my penis has grown into a great gaping vagina. “Maybe you could rein it in. Just a bit? I can speak for myself, you know.”
Yeah, ’cause you were so quick to speak up earlier? it mocks. What’s that one guy’s name again? The one who is your heart and soul? Octavius?
Othello? Bah. I can’t be bothered to remember, either. How interesting, your hypocrisy.
Don’t I know it.
“Boyfriend?” Isaiah asks, a look of surprise disappearing from his face before I can even be sure it was there.
“Boyfriend,” Anna confirms. “Partner. Love of his life.”
“He’s really pretty neat,” I agree. “Kind of my first… everything.”
“And your last,” Anna says sharply.
So true. I hope.
“So you were just window-shopping, then?” Isaiah asks, a smirk on his face.
And of course, I sputter. “What… you… I would never….”
Anna frowns. “Really?” she asks. “That’s… peculiar.”
“Hey, I’m standing right here,” Isaiah says, insulted.
“It’s not you,” Anna reassures him, even though I know that tone of voice of hers, the one that says she doesn’t give a crap. Isaiah doesn’t know it, but Anna’s just humoring him. “Bear has only had eyes for Otter for as long as I’ve known him.”
“What?”
She flips her hair in that way she does so well. “Oh, please, Papa Bear.
Don’t even try and spin that one out. You know that as well as I do.”
“Well, yeah, I guess. You and I just haven’t said it out loud. You know.
To each other.”
Her eyes widen. “Holy shit, did you just admit to that?”
I shrug. Only because I don’t know what else to say. It’s something I’ve thought on long and hard over the past few months, and regardless of my actions, regardless of what I might have said in the past, I’ve come to that same conclusion, that some part of me, whether I knew it or not, always wanted Otter. Intellectually. Mentally. Physically. Growing up, he was t