Page 5 of Resilience

Whatever. She’d decide when it was time to decide.

Blanche’s pale Goldendoodle head came up and turned to look at the door. She rose and set her paw on Athena’s leg, alerting her that someone was at the door. Then, Athena could tell by the change in the light, the door swung open. Nobody in this family respected her privacy. Obviously she didn’t expect them to knock, but her dad had installed a “doorbell” light outside her door. Too bad neither he nor her mom bothered to use the thing.

Ignoring the door and the mother who had, no doubt, just barged in, Athena set her knitting in her lap and signed, “Door?”

Blanche alerted again, then stood fully up and turned her body toward the door. She looked back at Athena.

“Good girl!” Athena signed. Just as she shifted to look back at the door, Sam dropped his big, dopey body onto the floor beside her. He had two apples in his hands and held one out to her.

Jesus. He smelled like he’d just dug himself out of his own grave. She took the apple and set it in her lap. “You stink,” she signed. “Gross.”

“Thanks a heap,” he signed back, biting into the apple to free up his hands. “I just had to do seriously gross prospect shit, so fuck off. I’m gonna take a shower. I just need clothes to change into.”

“Dresser. Bottom right drawer. Don’t leave your dirties behind—they’re disgusting. Put them in a trash bag or something. Or just put them in the trash.” She set the apple aside and picked her knitting back up.

He rolled his eyes at her. “You’re a real support,” he deadpanned with his hands. “Glad I can count on you.” With that and a scritch of Blanche’s chin, he rolled to his big feet and went to her dresser.

He had a drawer of clothes in her dresser because he basically always had, from the time they were little. They’d been best friends almost literally from the womb; Sam was just a skosh more than a month older than her. He should have been about three and a half months older, but for her whole “born very premature” deal. Both their fathers were Brazen Bulls; ergo, they were family, and born that close to each other, best-friendship hadn’t even been a choice. They were basically siblings, practically twins.

She had a drawer at his house, too. Their parents had sort of shared them, one set foisting their kid off on the other whenever they wanted couple time or whatever. Even after Sam and Athena no longer needed a minder, even now that they were grown, it wasn’t unusual for one to sleep over at the other’s house—usually Sam sleeping here, since his folks lived out in the boonies.

Once he gathered up basketball shorts, underwear, and a t-shirt, he sauntered out of the room. Athena continued on with her knitting.

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~oOo~

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Sam was back from the bathroom in like fifteen minutes, and he smelled much better. He dropped his boots on the floor beside the door, then came over and plopped next to her on the floor again. Minnie, Athena’s long-haired calico cat, who’d been sleeping on the bed, jumped down and into Sam’s lap. He picked her up and snuggled her close. Blanche watched the cat with avid curiosity but left her alone.

Athena looked up—and noticed his head. “What happened to your hair? And your beard?”

Sam had always been on the shaggy side, and he’d started growing a beard while he was still in high school. He usually had a mountain-man vibe, like most of the men in their family. Now he was all slick and stubbly. He looked good, but not like himself.

“Lark wanted to practice for her class,” Sam explained after he set the cat in his lap.

Athena rolled her eyes. But before she could form a response, Sam’s hand shot up.

“Don’t start. Not today. It’s been a shitty one.”

Athena nodded her acquiescence. She did not like Sam’s girlfriend, and the feeling was decidedly mutual. Actually, none of Sam’s girlfriends had ever liked her, and she hadn’t liked any of them. Even Cherie, whom Athena had known first, from her school, had stopped being her friend after she’d started seeing Sam.

Athena wasn’t sure whether she didn’t like them because of who they were, or simply because they never liked her and always treated her like she was Dolly Parton’s Jolene made flesh. The distinction was academic, really. The practical result was Sam’s best friend and his girlfriend, whoever that girlfriend happened to be, hated each other.

Athena really tried. She wanted Sam to be happy, so she wanted to get along with his girlfriends. She’d love to be able to be friends with one someday. She just didn’t know how to be Sam’s best friend and not be threatening to girls he liked. The simple facts that she was also a girl and she and Sam’s lives were knotted together about a hundred different ways made her a threat, period. And it completely sucked. It made her feel like the enemy.

Maybe she was the enemy, because those bitches were always trying to get him to choose between them, to choose them over her, and Athena would fucking gut a bitch before she’d give him up. Best friends from birth, practically siblings. That meant she had every right of a sister to be in his life, and fuck anybody who’d demand otherwise.

It could also be that Sam had shitty taste in women. He always went for cute, seemingly uncomplicated girls and always discovered that they were really a bramble of complications, just too fucking passive (and passive-aggressive) to put their thorns up front.

Then again, by the measure of best-friend compatibility, Athena’s taste in guys wasn’t much better. Hunter, her boyfriend, was no fan of Sam and ran hot and cold about whether he believed they were just friends. They fought about Sam more than anything else—not to say they didn’t fight about a whole bunch of shit; Sam was just the top of a tall pile. And Sam didn’t like Hunter because he thought Hunter didn’t treat her right.

Neither Hunter nor Lark was here now, however. Now, it was just her and Sam. So Athena set her knitting aside and patted her thighs. “Want to talk about it?”

Lifting his giant, hairy legs and spinning on his ass, Sam shifted positions and dropped his head onto her lap. Tired of his squirming, Minnie abandoned him and returned to her perch on the bed.

As Athena began to stroke his too-short hair—Sam was like a puppy and had loved to have his head stroked since he was a little kid—he put his hands up and began to tell her about his day.

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