Page 7 of Resilience

Dad was a gadget geek, and Athena was pretty sure that was his main reason for wanting her to get the implants: he thought all tech was good tech. Mom was militantly in the ‘let Athena decide’ camp, or she might have ended up with implants when she was little.

Athena had decided, and she’d decided no. She didn’t need to be turned into a cyborg for the convenience of the hearing world. She wasn’t defective. She wasn’t abnormal. She was simply deaf, and people were going to have to take her as she came or get out of her way.

She preferred to stay within her little bubble of family and fellow Deaf people, the people who could communicate with her in the way that was normal and comfortable for her: ASL. The rest of the world could suck a turd.

Athena waited near the door, ready to help carry the food. They were only three for dinner, but Sam could seriously eat, and Dad would want leftovers when he got back, so Mom usually ordered like she was laying out a meal at the clubhouse.

Yep, the delivery guy handed over three big paper sacks. Athena stepped up and took one from Sam as he was trying to juggle all three. He smiled and nodded his thanks, and he followed her back to the kitchen.

The kitchen of this stupidly big house was stupidly big. It was one of those “open concept” deals, part kitchen, part eating area, part ‘hearth room,’ and Mom loved it. Athena had liked it when she was thirteen and they were about to move into it, because then it had been empty, about the size of a middle-school gym, and the laminate floor was awesome for sock-skating. Now, full of furniture, it basically looked like an Ethan Allen showroom or something. Or like the “community room” of Hunter’s apartment complex. And wasn’t nearly as much fun.

Mom was setting out plates and glasses on the ‘breakfast table,’ where they ate all of their meals except for parties and holidays. “Get your drinks,” she signed. “There’s fresh sun tea, and the usual Pellegrino and Diet Coke. Or do you want wine, honey?” she asked Athena. “I’m going to open a bottle of Sauv Blanc.”

Athena wasn’t in the mood for wine. She didn’t like alcohol all that much, and she hated the disorientation of drunkenness, but sometimes, when she wanted to feel grown up, she had wine with her mom. “I’ll have Coke.”

“I’ll get it,” Sam signed and went to the fridge. “Can I have one of Uncle Apollo’s beers, Aunt Jace?”

“Sure, honey,” Mom signed. They weren’t speaking, just signing. That was the usual case here at home; though both her parents were hearing, they rarely spoke when she was present, unless there was someone also present who wasn’t fluent in ASL. Her whole close family stopped using their mouths to communicate when she was around, even when they were talking to each other and not to her. Sam had told her that her parents tended to sign even when she wasn’t around and they were speaking.

Athena loved it; she wasn’t missing a single thing, and the only other time in her life that was true was at school, surrounded by other Deaf people. Which was why when she’d graduated, she’d turned right around and gotten a job as a tutor at the school. She never wanted to leave. Now she was working on getting her degree online so she could be a real teacher there.

“Okay!” Mom said as everybody sat down with their drinks. The family-size containers from Thai Blossom were arrayed in the center of the table, their lids still on. “I got the usual. There’s spring rolls, spicy fried Brussels sprouts, drunken noodles, gai tod, and chicken satay. Help yourself, but remember Dad will be happy to find leftovers in the fridge when he gets home.”

For a while, conversation halted as they filled their plates. Once everyone started to dig in, Mom asked, “Do you have everything set for this weekend?”

With a glance at Athena, Sam answered first. “I think so. We don’t really plan that much. Just get everybody there with the food and booze.” He grinned at Athena, and she grinned back. Yep, that was about right.

With their birthdays just weeks apart—Sam’s in August and Athena’s in September—they’d shared a birthday party for as long as they could remember, scheduled on a weekend between their actual respective days. However, starting with their eighteenth, they’d been throwing the party themselves, as a weekend at the club’s cabin. Last year, the club had cleared the way for them to have the cabin on Labor Day weekend, and they were getting that same weekend again this year.

“I’d think after last year, you’d plan a little more from now on,” Mom said.

Things had gotten pretty wild last year—like ‘Visit from the Osage County Sheriff and Two Deputies’ and ‘Two Partiers at the ER for Stomach-Pumping’ wild. But that was due to it being their twenty-first birthday more than anything else. The whole theme of the weekend had essentially been ‘drink until you can’t.’

Ironically, neither Sam nor Athena, the two having the legal-drinking birthday, had ended up getting a charcoal smoothie. Athena had barely been tipsy. Sam had been drunk, but not sloppy. He was too upstanding a guy to get sloppy drunk, even on his twenty-first birthday.

“This year will be different,” Athena told her mother. “We’re not inviting as many people, and both Lark and Hunter will be there.” Last year, Sam hadn’t met Lark yet, and Hunter had broken up with Athena a couple weeks before. This year, she figured the party would be more ‘couple-y’ and therefore a little bit mellower. Less ‘Round 20 of the Flip Cup Tournament,’ more ‘Hooking Up in the Boathouse.’

Sam made a subtle face at Hunter’s name. Since that three-week breakup—and the two-week one that had followed in February—Sam had decided that Hunter needed to go. He tried to be okay when Hunter was around, and he did a fair job of it, but if Athena gave him an opening he’d leap through it with an impassioned speech about how she deserved better.

Athena and Hunter had been together for more than two years, not counting those two ‘breaks.’ Maybe she loved him; she told him she did, and she used to be sure of it, but those breakups had introduced some doubt—or maybe caution was a better word. They had a lot in common, something she couldn’t say about almost anybody else in the world. He didn’t speak or have (or want) hearing aids or implants, because he had the same feelings about that stuff she did. He was the lower-school gym teacher at their school and had also been a student there. He was great with the little kids, which seemed like a big green checkmark in the ‘pro’ column.

Not to mention that he was hot and fit. And great in bed—as far as she knew; she’d never slept with anybody else. He gave her orgasms, so that seemed pretty great to her.

He could be snotty, but so could she. Yes, he’d really hurt her, breaking up with her twice because things were getting ‘too intense’ between them, but he’d come back both times groveling, explaining how his feelings for her were so deep and true it freaked him out sometimes.

It was kind of romantic, right? That he cared so much for her he sometimes felt like he had to run from it? He was practically a hero straight out of a romance novel. She could forgive the ensuing heartbreak once or twice.

Besides, how many hot, straight, unmarried, adequately employed, age-appropriate men who were fluent in ASL was she going to find in Tulsa, Oklahoma? She probably knew every single one of them by name.

She got why Sam didn’t like him. The tension between those guys wasn’t like the tension between her and any girl Sam had ever dated. Hunter wasn’t really threatened by Sam. But Sam thought Hunter didn’t treat her right, and from his perspective, she understood. She’d kick the ass of any girl who’d hurt Sam. She got why he didn’t like her boyfriend, got his frustration with her for sticking with him, and loved him for trying to keep his feelings to himself around Hunter so he wasn’t in the way of the relationship she wanted.

No question, Sam was a better human, all around, than Hunter or like ninety-five percent of the human race. If she’d met Sam randomly somewhere, no question she’d be into him, as any breathing person who was into men should be. But she hadn’t met him randomly somewhere, she’d been raised with him essentially in the same crib, so ... ewww.

“I hope it will be different,” Mom signed. “You both know Eight will lose his shit if he gets a call from the sheriff again.” She looked at Sam. “And that could really fuck you up.”

“I know,” Sam answered. “We’ll be careful.”

Neither of them were looking her way, so Athena clapped once to draw their attention. “It’s so messed up the deputies ratted us out.”

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