I rolled out of bed and held out my hand for him. “Come on, let’s get you cleaned up and then sleep.”
“Okay!” Bear bounced off the bed.
We went into the bathroom and I helped to clean him, and then once I deemed him ready, he dashed out, ran into his room and got Tonya after all.
Curling up in bed with him after so many nights without him felt like a miracle.
I woke up in the morning before Bear. He had pushed Tonya against the headboard between our pillows at some point. He’d smacked me in the face with her around four in the morning without ever waking up. I’d checked the time and gone back to sleep again.
I couldn’t help but to smile. He looked so peaceful.
Feeling invigorated, I wanted to get up and go make breakfast, but I wanted to be in bed when he’d wake up more. I was smiling at the memories from the night before when Bear opened his eyes and stretched, then immediately sought me out with his sleepy gaze.
“G’morning,” he murmured.
“Morning.” I tugged at a strand of his hair. “How are you feeling?”
He closed his eyes and stretched again, then groaned. “Pretty good. Not hungover. More like… dehydrated?”
“We can easily fix that. I think a greasy breakfast would also be nice.”
Bear hummed thoughtfully. “Should we have juice and coffee here and go wander around maybe? Find a random place to have breakfast at?” He smiled a bit shyly. “I mean, I haven’t had time to explore the neighborhood, and I think it could be nice.”
I glanced out of the window. The sky was blue and there were few clouds I could see. “Yeah, let’s do that. I’ll go start coffee and pour us juice.”
“Awesome. I’ll meet you in the kitchen!”
We ended up meandering around Capitol Hill for about an hour before we couldn’t stand the hunger anymore. We picked a random diner type place where neither of us had been before, and settled down to people watch at a table by the windows.
“I really like it here,” Bear mused, looking across the street at the rainbow flags that were prominently displayed on so many buildings in my neighborhood.
I sipped at my latte. “Different from back home?”
Chuckling, he nodded. “You could say that.” He sighed and glanced around to see that we were sitting far enough from other patrons, then turned to me. “Last night, I told you not to use a word.”
“Right.” I tilted my head. “And I told you it was good and fine, and we’d use whichever words you wanted.”
“Yes. Which is great. But I feel like I want to explain that a little.”
His blueberry milkshake arrived, and he took a long pull from the thick straw, then winced and shivered.
“Brain freeze?” I made a very educated guess.
“Uh-huh….” He whimpered. After a moment, he shook his head, then very carefully sipped some more. “Okay, better.” He grinned. “Yeah, so that word… it’s like… I don’t mind it right now, when I’m adult me. It’s just that little me seems to feel it’s weird because that’s the kind of language my parents used to teach us about our bodies when we were kids.”
My surprise must’ve shown on my face, because he chuckled.
“Yeah, they were strict and religious and all that shit. Including against anything LGBTQ and so on, but they insisted on speaking about things with their real names. No euphemisms or sugarcoating.”
“It makes sense that your little side would latch onto that, then. Noted.” I winked at him. “I like ‘thing’ anyway.”
He rolled his eyes and smiled.
Our meals arrived, and we ate while observing the city outside the windows. I loved it here, even though I wanted to retire somewhere more remote eventually.
“I loved mealtimes,” Bear said suddenly after a long silence. “At home I mean. It was the only time of the day when everyone would gather around and we’d talk about our days. Sure it could be a lot of ‘did you do this’ or ‘did you finish with that chore’ but you know, it was still family time.”
I nodded. “It was pretty much the same when I was a kid too. Then Dad’s job got too demanding for him to be there every night, but we still did Saturday dinners every week.”
