His brow furrows and his jaw twitches. “And I distinctly remember a promise you made to us that you wouldn’t let things get this far. That you’d talk to us before you could start to panic.”
“I’m not panicking,” I mutter, even as my heart thuds in my chest. “I just thought….”
“You thought what?”
I look down at our hands. I touch his thumb, the knuckle between my fingers. “I just thought I could handle this.”
“That’s not part of the deal we made,” he reminds me. He sounds a bit pissed off but like he’s trying to hold it in. That makes me feel worse, but I don’t know how to tell him that.
“Bear,” Otter says quietly, knocking his leg gently against my shin. “Let’s let him finish. Okay? We’ll figure it out, but he needs to get it all out.”
Papa Bear looks like he wants to argue and sputters a bit, but then he deflates and nods. I don’t want him to pull his hand away. I don’t think he will, but I latch on to it just in case.
“I want to go,” I tell them. It’s a truth, though I don’t know how complete it is. “I need to go.” That’s more of a truth. I don’t know if that makes it better or worse. “I know it’s a lot to ask, uprooting all our lives here. If I thought I could accomplish the same things in Seafare, I would stay. I don’t want to live anywhere else. But I have to. If I’m going to make anything of myself, I have to go. I have to see what I’m capable of. I have to see what I can do, because, Bear? Otter? I think… I think I can do a lot. I think I can make changes to the world. I think I can make it better. And I have to find out.”
“Ty, we know you can do it,” Otter says. “You know that. We’ve always believed in you. Your brother and I know that you’re going to do great things, no matter what you decide to do.”
Bear’s voice is harder. “Did Dominic say something to you? Is that what brought this on?”
I roll my eyes. “Really? What about him suggests to you he’d be petty like that? He’s all rah-rah Team Tyson like everyone else. He wouldn’t say a damn thing.” And he wouldn’t. As a matter of fact, Dom’s been pushing me more than anyone else about my future, telling me that I need to make something of myself, that I need to become someone like he didn’t. I try to tell him that of course he’s someone, because he’s someone to me, but he keeps pressing the issue. It almost hurts to hear, even if he means well.
“Why is that such a bad thing?” Otter asks, reading between my words.
I’m struggling to find the right words again. “Because… he’s…. Look, Bear, you’ve been here with me my whole life. Otter almost as long. And Creed and Anna and… Mrs. Paquinn.” Oh, how I wish you were here right now. “It’s all the same. But… Dom… he hasn’t been here the whole time. I… just don’t know that I’m done with him. There’s got to be more to say. He’s got to show me that….” Tears start to burn my eyes, and I can’t finish.
“You want him to tell you to stay,” Bear says, having one of those flashes of insight that only he can do with me. Dom may be my best friend and the one I want to tell my secrets to. Otter may be the father I never had. But it’s my brother who knows me better than anyone else in the world. Maybe that’s why I’m so desperate to have him near right now. I need him to listen and say the things I won’t, even if I can’t quite face them.
“No,” I say, though it’s a lie. “I don’t know. I’m all he has. What’s he going to do without me? Who’s going to remind him to eat? Who’s going to tell him that his clothes don’t match when he tries to wear plaid and stripes at the same time? Who’s going to remind him that his phone bill is due?”
Bear and Otter exchange one of those maddening looks, and I don’t know what it means. “Kid—Ty—you can’t make a decision on your future based upon your friend,” Bear says, and for a split second, the smallest moment in time, I hate him for his words. “You’ll never get anywhere in life like that.”
My eyes snap to his. “You make decisions based upon Otter all the time.”
He shakes his head. “That’s different and you know it.”
“How? How is that any different?”
“Otter’s my husband, Kid. He’s more than just my friend.”
“That’s not fair! Maybe Dom is—” more to me too, I almost say, but I stop myself, horrified at the words even as they try to spill from my mouth. I can’t look at that now. I can’t. Not with everything else going on. “Maybe Dom is very important to me,” I finish lamely, not looking at either of them, fearing what they’ll see in my eyes.
“We know he is,” Otter says. “He’s important to us too. He’s a part of this family as much as the others. You know that. But Bear is right. You can’t decide your whole future based upon the actions of one other person, especially if that person wants the same thing for you that everyone else wants, including you. And Bear, Ty’s right as well. We weren’t always like this. We weren’t always a couple, but we still made decisions with each other in mind, no matter how subconscious they were.”
“That’s different,” Bear insists. “You and I… we… that’s not going to happen with Dom and Ty. They’re not going to end up like us.”
That stings and I don’t know why.
He sighs. “Look. Maybe we are coming into this too fast. Maybe Ty’s not ready yet to go to college. We can always request a deferment and stay here another year and he can go to community college or to the U of O. Hell, he can do some kind of work-study or get a job flipping burgers.” He looks up at me. “Kid, we can do what you want to do, okay? I’m not very good at this whole parenting
thing, and it seems like all I’ve thought about is what I want for you. Not what you want. Not completely.”
“You’ve done just fine,” I tell him roughly. “Better than anyone ever.”
He smiles, though it has a melancholic curve that I want to wipe away. “And you’re growing up. You’re just… one day you’re just going to be this… man… this great man, and I know I won’t understand where the time has gone.” He squeezes my hand. “I just want to do right by you, okay? I want you to be able to do what you need to, to be okay.”
And can’t you see I need you to make the decision? You can’t leave me with a choice, Bear. You can’t. You just can’t, because I don’t know what I’ll choose. I’m scared of what I’ll choose. I need you to decide, and I might resent you for it, and I might even hate you for a time, but you’re my big brother and I need you to choose for me.
“Okay” is all I say.