Page 121 of Resilience

Athena didn’t respond quickly. She sat beside him, crisscrossed with branchy shadows, and sorted small rocks into constellations on the ground before her.

When she stayed quiet longer than he could stand, Sam tapped her knee to get her attention. “Does that make sense?” he asked.

“It does, yeah. I feel that, too. I’m always a little freaked out when I go to a normie friend’s house. It feels a little like a foreign country—or how I think that would feel, anyway. Something completely different from my version of life. I get it. And I’ve obviously been scared the same ways when Dad goes off, and now when you go off. I don’t want to lose you. I think dying in bed together when we’re ancient is perfect. But yeah, I get it. This is our life. It’s weird to everybody but us.”

“Exactly. My folks talk a lot about not putting shit off. Mom says it like, ‘Don’t throw away a day you have trying to make room for a day you can’t be sure is coming.” It’s her version of YOLO. But that feels like a good way to live. Even normies can’t know they have a tomorrow, but they live like they have all the tomorrows they want. We know how fast shit can go wrong, how bad it can get, how much we can lose, so we don’t take anything for granted while we have it, and we know we can survive the things we lose. We know we can get back up and find the good again, because we’ve done it already, and we’ve seen our family do it over and over again. We get back up. Even if there’s a hole in our family, we get back up. Even if it’s in a wheelchair, we get back up. I guess it’s weird, but that feels comfortable to me. It feels right.”

Athena laughed. “I love you. And I love that we’re weird in exactly the same way.”

He pulled her onto his lap. “That’s because we were made for each other.”

She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him.

EPILOGUE

Thanksgiving

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Athena slapped Sam’s hands away from the plastic container she was trying to close. “Oh my GOD, stop eating! Twenty minutes ago you were complaining that your stomach was going to explode in a gory plume.”

He grinned and snagged yet another piece of turkey before she finally got the lid sealed. “Twenty minutes is a long time.” He lifted the piece of turkey high and dropped it into his mouth.

Aunt Deb came over, laughing, and signed, “Honey, give it up. He and his brother can eat their weight hourly. You know this.”

Shaping her face into a theatrical glare, Athena signed at Sam, “If you think I’m cooking for you every day, think again, pal.”

He put his hands up in surrender before he replied, “Hey, I’ll make my own food and yours too, if you want.” Then he gave her a sly grin and leaned in. “I’m a better cook than you, anyway.”

Athena reached up and slapped him upside the head, even though he was probably right. Her interest in things like cooking and other ‘domestic goddess’ bullshit was not what one might call keen.

They’d decided it was time to move in together. That was as far as they’d gotten in the decision-making process, but that much was firm. Now they were playing out two options—an apartment or rented house in the city, with the plan of saving up to buy a house, or Uncle Gun’s suggestion of putting a house on the farm somewhere. Uncle Gun and Aunt Leah, and Uncle Simon and Aunt Deb had built houses within sight of each other on Gun and Deb’s family property, and Sam’s family—not to mention Sam himself—thought that was a great idea.

Athena liked it, too. The farm was awesome and she loved to visit. She loved all the animals, she’d be able to ride Rollo a lot more often, and the distance from the city meant the sky was glorious on any clear night. But she’d always lived in the city, and the thought of living out in the boonies made her a little nervous, too. It seemed isolating, even if they built a little cottage within sight of the other houses. On the other hand (and paradoxically), she also felt like everybody would be in their business if they joined the what Aunt Deb called the ‘family commune.’

Sam was okay with living in the city, too—they both worked there, after all—but she knew he was primarily okay with it for her sake. He loved the farm a lot. So they were working out the details. But the decision to become their own little family of two (plus two dogs) had been made, and really, that was the important part.

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