Page 6 of Resilience

“Lark was doing the hair and beard when Eight called my burner and I had to go in right away. So we fought about me leaving, as usual. I left things pretty bad. I probably should have gone back to hers instead of coming here.”

Getting his attention so he’d look at her while she signed, she asked, “Why didn’t you?”

He settled back as he answered, “Eight called me and Monty to clean out a tow job we got. Abandoned car. Two dogs left to die in there in the heat. Weeks ago.”

Athena’s hands went still in his hair. Oh god. Pretty much everyone in the Bulls family loved dogs, there were more dogs than children among them, but Sam was a practically fanatical animal lover. He’d grown up and still lived on a farm, with chickens and goats and horses and cows. They ate some of their livestock, but he loved every single animal on that property like they were family. He actually did a lot of the slaughtering, though it broke his heart every time, because he wanted to make sure they were comfortable and content all the way to the end.

Deep in the heart of his devotion to animals, Sam loved dogs above all. He even had a tattoo on his back, one of only two pieces he had so far, with three named paw prints, the print of each of the three dogs he’d personally owned: Bruiser, Kali, and Tank. Two of those paw prints had born and died dates. Only the third, for Tank, was without a date.

The thought of Sam having to clean out the rotting bodies of dogs who’d died suffering made Athena’s eyes itch and go blurry. She bent over and hugged his head. His arm came up and across her back to hold her close.

“Thanks,” he signed when they unclenched. “That’s why I didn’t go to Lark’s. I needed to feel good after that, and there’s a big fight waiting for me there.”

“The usual?”

His chest swelled as he sighed. “What else? I don’t know why I keep trying. I’m never gonna find a girl who’s okay with who I am.”

He’d been with Lark almost a year. They fought a lot, but they always got through it, and Sam had never tried so hard with anybody else.

While Athena could happily never see the twat again, Sam liked her enough to stick with her this long. Athena had seen him happy with Lark, really enjoying her company. Maybe, if Lark could pull her head out of her ass and realize how fucking awesome Sam was, she could be the One. Maybe, if Lark could see Athena as his sister and not the competition, she could be the One. Maybe, if Lark could understand what it meant to be a prospect for the Brazen Bulls, not to mention a part of this bizarre family, she could be the One.

And maybe if hell froze over, Santa would deliver presents there.

“Who you are is wonderful, Samwise,” she told him. “Somebody is going to see that and know they hit the jackpot. Maybe Lark will. If not, somebody else will.”

He looked up at her, hazel eyes intense and still. He didn’t respond for a long time. Finally, he signed, “You’re a good hobbit, Mr. Frodo.”

With a sigh of her own, Athena changed the subject and signed, “You want to stay for dinner? We’re ordering from Thai Blossom tonight.”

He grinned up at her. “I already placed my order with your mom.”

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~oOo~

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About an hour later, Athena and Sam were stretched out on her bedroom floor together, sharing the LoveSac as a pillow, reading—Athena was re-reading Vengeful, by V.E. Schwab, while Sam read the first book of the series, Vicious. She’d been trying to get him to start the series forever, but he’d kept saying he was too busy.

He’d never been too busy to read a good book until he’d started prospecting. But she got it; the Bulls were her family, too, after all. She understood what a reaming the prospect period was. Today, though, while he was avoiding most of his life, he’d finally picked it up—and was instantly engrossed, as Athena had known he would be. Their reading tastes didn’t make a perfect circle—he liked spy novels, ugh, and teased her about her love of romance novels—but the overlap was wide and included fantasy, horror, science fiction, and mystery.

Her phone strobed, and Blanche’s head popped up. She set her paw on Athena’s thigh and indicated the phone. The dog had been dozing, but Athena’s phone vibrated, too, and Blanche must have heard whatever that sounded like.

Athena was severely but not completely deaf. She could sometimes pick up a kind of sound, enough to be able to note a difference, especially during a hearing test, but she had no idea what the sound was. Sometimes, when she tried to explain the difference between “severely” and “profoundly” deaf, someone would ask what sounds she was able to hear, but how could she explain a sound when she had no idea what it was or any basis of comparison?

So she didn’t know what a vibrating phone sounded like, only what it felt like.

She picked her phone up and read the new text, then set the phone on her lap and told Sam, “Mom says the delivery guy is almost here.”

“Excellent. I’m starving,” he signed.

They made their way to their feet and headed out of her room and downstairs, Blanche trailing closely.

Just as they reached the foot of the stairs, the doorbell light strobed, and Sam veered off in that direction to answer. He called out, too, probably to tell Mom he had the door. His mouth was at an oblique angle, and Athena couldn’t read his lips to know for sure. Besides, yelling was harder to read than regular speech. People’s mouths got all, like, warped when they yelled.

Reading lips was the worst. She hated it. Hearing people thought she was getting every syllable they said, as long as they were facing her, but really it was like trying to make sense of a TV show that kept cutting out every few seconds. Outside her family, very few people really enunciated their words well enough for the shape of each one to make sense. She was mainly getting the gist.

After a few weeks of instruction when she was in grade school, Athena had decided not to learn to speak. She’d refused then because she’d found it impossibly difficult and frustrating even to understand what she was supposed to be doing to make words come out of her mouth. As she got older and learned more about things like the Deaf rights movement, she’d decided that she didn’t have to shape herself to a hearing world for their convenience. She’d continued to refuse to learn to speak, and, to her father’s disappointment, she’d refused cochlear implants, too.

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