Bear, Otter, & the Kid 03 - The Art of Breathing (35 page)

“You got a dog?” Corey asks. “I thought you hated dogs.”

“I do,” he says, and I wonder just what kind of diabolical person could hate dogs. “But I’m doing Paul a favor. He and Vince are on vacation right now and won’t be back until next week. They’ve already been gone two weeks, and this little asshole is pooping on my nice duvets.”

“It’s revenge because you hate dogs,” I say.

“I didn’t say I hate
him
,” Sandy says. “Just dogs in general. Wheels is… not quite a dog. More machine than mutt, I think. You’ll see when you get here. I love the little bastard, even if he makes my life a living hell.”

“Vince is Paul’s boyfriend,” Corey tells me. “And Paul is that Bear clone I was telling you about and Sandy’s best friend.”

“Is Bear your older brother?” Sandy asks me. “Corey’s told me about him. Bear and Paul can never meet. I shudder to think what would happen if they do. Our world as we know it could cease to exist. Either that, or there’d just be one long high-pitched conversation that would make no sense whatsoever.”

“We’ll keep them far apart,” I tell Sandy.

“Where are Paul and Vince?” Corey asks.

“Asia,” Sandy says. “They were supposed to go in the spring, but Paul’s nana got sick and they postponed the trip. She’s doing much better now and threatened Paul with a swift ass-kicking if he didn’t stop hovering over her, so they decided to go while they could.”

Sounds like something Mrs. Paquinn would say.

“Why Asia?” Corey asks.

Sandy rolls his eyes. “Long story, baby doll. Let’s just say Vince wanted to see fortune-cookie factories.”

Uh, okay? Because that totally makes sense.

“They’ll be back by the time you get here,” Sandy says. “We’ll have ourselves a blast before we send sweet innocent Tyson back to the coast.” She smiles, and it’s a wicked thing filled with all sorts of promises that I don’t know quite how to take. “Of course,” she says, her voice a growl, “he won’t be quite so innocent then, now, will he? Tyson, tell me, dear. You ever shot your load onto a drag queen’s feathers?”

“I honestly can’t say that I have,” I admit.

He winks. “First time for everything. They’re just going to eat you
up
. I, for one, can’t wait to witness the carnage.”

“Super,” I say. “Fun. Neat.”

“Corey, you going to see the fosters while you’re here?”

Corey shakes his head slowly, his mouth going into a thin line, his eyes narrowing slightly. “Don’t know if I’ll have the time.” The voice he speaks in is softer, almost fluttery, and it’s Kori through and through. He told me once that sometimes that Kori made him feel safer when he was upset. I didn’t understand it then because I’d had no experience with the bigendered before. Now, I wonder about it.

Sandy turns to look behind the couch. “
Wheels! You better not be shitting on my imported area rug!
” He looks back at us. “Have to go, baby dolls. I need to see how fast a two-legged dog can run.” He winks and the screen goes blank.

“Two-legged dog?” I ask.

“I have no idea,” Corey says. He sounds more or less like himself again.

“Your friends are weirdly fascinating.”

“They think the same about you, so it’s all good.”

That’s comforting. I think. “And why the hell did you bring up Dominic? I told you that was over and done!” I punch him in the shoulder.

“It needs to be said,” he retorts, slapping my hand away, “that just because
you
want to act stupid doesn’t mean the rest of us do.”

I knock him over, and we roll off the couch and onto the floor. He tries to tickle my sides (which honestly I hate because I tend to bray like a hyena in heat), so I retaliate by grabbing both of his hands and squeezing my knees against his hips. As he looms above me, it dawns on me how very sexual this position is, me on my back with my legs wrapped around his waist. He smiles down at me, and I think to myself that he just might be the only person in the world who has ever looked at me this way, filled with love and adoration and maybe something a little bit more. He says he broke up with me because we were never meant to be, but I don’t know if that’s exactly true. I see the way he looks at me sometimes. We’re best friends, sure. But I didn’t want it to end. It never burned with the adolescent fire I had for Dominic, but it was sweet. It was kind. And above all, it felt safe.

He’s watching me now, a curious smile on his face, and I wonder what he thinks when he looks at me like this. Does he think of the past as much as I do? Not everyone is mired in the way things used to be like I am, but I think he and I are almost the same.

There’s a knock at the door.

“I need to get that,” I say.

“Just a minute,” he says, staring at me hard.

The knock comes again.

“Corey, come on.”

“Hold on.” He wriggles above me, and it goes straight to my dick. So unfair.

The door opens and Corey says, “You’ll thank me for this later,” before he bends his head down and kisses me deeply. There’s a brief flash in my head, and I think to myself that this could work. This could work if I really wanted it to. I only needed to push everything else from my head, and we could be
happy
together. We could have a
life
together. I don’t care if he’s bigender, transgender, gay, or any other type of person as long as he’s
my
person and I don’t need Dominic, I never needed Dominic, and I don’t need him that way, not Dominic. Dominic.
Dominic
.

“Oh,” Dominic says, his voice strangely flat. “I didn’t mean to interrupt. I can come back.”

Corey pulls away slowly, flitting his tongue out against my lips as our connection breaks. The smile on his face is filled with nothing but mischief, and I almost reach up and slap him for being so goddamn fucking stupid. I know what he’s trying to do, but it doesn’t matter. I am going to
murder
him later when there aren’t any witnesses.

“Don’t mind us,” he says, sitting up and straddling my waist. “We were just having a frank exchange of ideas.”

“Is that what you call it?” Dom asks, his expression giving away nothing. And for the life of me, I can’t quell the overwhelming feeling of guilt that rushes over me, though I have no idea what the hell I should be feeling guilty about. Well, aside from the fact that I’m pinned under my ex-boyfriend who just used my mouth for exploratory research while my first love (I swear I’m not a teenage girl) stares down at me like he doesn’t even know who I am. I don’t know how I find myself in these situations. They just seem to happen to me.

“Yes,” Corey says to Dom, rubbing his hands over my chest. “And trust me when I say that the ideas I’m having are certainly meant to be exchanged.” He gyrates his hips slowly, and I can’t even begin to express my horror at this blatant slut sitting atop me.
That fucking skank!

“Good for you,” Dom says, sounding bored. “Tyson, you ready to go? Or should I come back later after you two finish?”

I buck my hips up (thinking how egregiously pornographic that probably looks to anyone who might be watching), and Corey falls off to the side, cursing as his elbow strikes the floor. I jump up to my feet and brush myself off, as if there might be errant hairs or semen on my front.

“I’m ready,” I mutter.

Dominic nods, whirls his keys on his finger, then turns and walks out the door.

I spin on Corey. “Your death,” I hiss at him, “is not going to be quick and easy. You will feel pain as I slowly squeeze the life from you.”

He clucks his tongue. “Not a very good vegetarian,” he says.

“I’m not going to eat you!”

“You won’t?” he says with an exaggerated pout. “That’s no fun.”

“Corey!”

“What?”

“What the fuck is wrong with you!”

He grins up at me from the floor. “Absolutely nothing, dear heart. I’m just going to make sure this is a summer you never forget. Trust me, by the time I’m done with you, you won’t know what hit you. And neither will he.”

Rather than murdering him, I leave him there on the floor. It seems easier.

Where Tyson Gets Screwed

at His Own Birthday Party

(And Not in a Good Way)

I
T
MIGHT
have seemed easier earlier, but by the time the party starts, I’m pretty sure I’m starting to understand why murder seems ridiculously easy. I just need to find a way not to get caught. I have the brain power so I should be able to figure it out. A vat of acid should do the job nicely.

To say that lunch with Dominic was awkward is an understatement.

The car ride over to the restaurant was done in a heavy silence punctuated by half-hysterical attempts at conversation, with such gems coming from me such as “So, what did you think of the sports game on TV last night? I sure enjoyed when the half forward made a basket!” And “Oh, look! That bus bench has a sign for a personal injury attorney that says he only takes 23 percent! How positively fortuitous!”

Dominic, ever the conversationalist, remained as stoic as ever, grunting his responses as opposed to using his mouth for what it was made for (this, of course, led to a line of thinking that I had no right or reason to think about involving his mouth, my mouth, and a whole lot of suction. These thoughts were immediately erased when I found myself with a burgeoning erection. Have you ever gotten half a hard-on when you can’t seem to stop talking about sports and lawyers? I have. It’s awkward).

Besides, I scolded myself, I wasn’t supposed to be thinking of him in any way other than an off-limits friend I hadn’t seen in a very long time who I’d wronged and had just made things kind of right with again. That simple.

But for whatever reason, I couldn’t get over the guilt I felt at having him walk in and seeing Corey (that rat bastard!) kissing me. I told myself it was nothing. I told myself it didn’t matter. I told myself Dominic had plenty more to worry about than seeing his old friend kiss another boy. And I realized how ridiculous that thought was as soon as I had it.

So lunch occurred, and I barely remember what the food tasted like, much less what I ordered. Everything was too bright, too shiny, and I couldn’t focus on a damn thing. For what it’s worth, Dom seemed distracted, too, and though I wondered at it, I didn’t think it was my place to ask.

Conversation was stilted, the silences stretching too long, both of us starting to speak at the same time, then stopping, laughing nervously as we both motioned for each other to speak, only to have the silence return even longer than the time before.

And for the life of me, I couldn’t quite stop staring at his mouth.

Creepy, right? Seriously.

I watched as a noodle disappeared between his lips and thought,
I really need to look somewhere else.
But then he darted his tongue out to get a bit of butter sauce and apparently my body thought that was the most erotic thing to have ever have happened in human existence, and I spilled my water all over the table as my hand jerked into the glass, knocking it over. I’m pretty sure everyone in the restaurant turned and stared at me and wondered why the obviously mentally deficient child was babbling and trying to mop up the table with his shirt.

And then he asked it. The jerk.

“You and Corey, huh?” he said in an off-handed tone.

I gaped at him, suddenly and without warning unable to form any kind of coherent sentence. Instead, I said, “Gah?”

He nodded. “You guys look… nice… together.”

“Guh? Gah?”

“I’m happy for you, Tyson. I really am. I hope he treats you right.”

“We’re….” I stopped and cleared my throat. “He’s not… I don’t…. Guh?” I stopped before my eloquence could contribute any more to the human race than it already had.

“Not what?”

“He’s not my boyfriend,” I muttered.

“Oh,” Dominic said. “Fuck buddy, then?”

It’s probably good thing I wasn’t attempting to eat anymore, because I’m pretty sure I would have choked to death right at that moment. “You said ‘fuck’!”

He cocked an eyebrow at me. “I guess I did.”

“You
never
say ‘fuck’!”

“Could you not shout that, please? People are starting to stare. Again.”

“You can’t curse,” I hissed at him, barely lowering my voice.

“Why not? Last time I checked, I was of an age where I can say what I want.”

“You’re… you… you’re Dominic!”

“I suppose I should be relieved you can remember my name,” he said, eating more erotic butter noodles with that dirty, filthy mouth of his.

I couldn’t figure out the words to explain to him that in all the years I’d known him, I’d
never
heard him say the word “fuck,” and for some reason, it was making this whole situation that much worse because if he could eat erotic butter noodles
and
say the word “fuck,” what chance did I, a mere mortal, have of not thinking of him in any way other than wearing nothing but the pants of his police uniform and twirling a pair of handcuffs on his finger?

“We’re not fuck buddies,” I said weakly. You can’t be fuck buddies with someone whose death you’re plotting in your head. Well, not in good conscience, anyway.

“Could have fooled me,” he said, sitting back in his chair and crossing his arms over his chest. He watched me, and I knew he was turning on the whole “cop stare” again.

“That was….” What was that? What Corey did?

“That was?”

“Corey,” I finished lamely. “He’s… odd.”

“Seems like a nice guy.”

“Oh, he is.”

“Great.”

“Yeah, great.”

Excruciatingly long, evil silence. We just stared.

“So,” I said for lack of anything better to say.

“So,” he said.

“I guess I’m no longer a teenager, huh?”

“Guess not. Twenty years old.”

“Yeah.”

“Not quite legal, yet.”

“For all the things that count,” I said without thinking.

“Oh?” he asked maddeningly. “What things would those be?”

“War.”
FUCKING!
“Smoking.”
FUCKING!