Page 13 of Befriending the Bear
“Does it speak to you as well?” he asked.
We fell into discussing the poem, then moved on to more famous poems, and I relaxed incrementally. This I could do, talk about poetry, about books, about the way writers built meaning from words.
Fraser occasionally asked questions that showed he’d been thinking deeply about the text, and I leaned forward, my stutter lessening as we traded interpretations.
“How many books do you own?” Fraser asked when I mentioned my home library.
“T-three thousand.” I cringed a little. “Too many.”
“Too many? I don’t think there’s such a thing as too many books. If you can afford it and have space for it, then why stop?”
The space was becoming debatable, but money wasn’t the issue. Marcus had left me enough to not have to work for the rest of my life. “I t-try to be more s-selective. To only buy what f-feels necessary.”
“I know exactly what you mean.” He finished his coffee, which had to be cold by now. “Some books you read, and some books you need.”
The way he said it, like he understood the difference viscerally, made me brave enough to ask, “W-what do you need right now?”
Fraser considered this, his fingers drumming lightly on the table. “Honestly? I’ve been reading a lot of books abouttransformation, about change. Trying to figure out how to become someone new without losing who I was.”
“M-maybe that’s the wrong q-question,” I said before I could stop myself.
His eyebrows rose. “Oh?”
“What if you’re l-looking at this wrong? What if you don’t n-n-need to become someone new? Maybe you need to f-figure out who you were before the job t-took over.”
I was thinking of myself as much as him. Who had I been before grief froze me in place? And more importantly, could I ever be that person again, or someone resembling him? I had no answers.
Fraser was quiet for a long moment, and I worried I’d overstepped. Then he smiled, soft and a little wondering. “You might be onto something there.”
Jamie appeared at our table. “We’re closing in fifteen minutes, gentlemen. Can I get you anything else?”
I startled, glancing at the clock. It was nearly five. We’d been talking for two hours. How had that happened?
“Just the check,” Fraser said, already reaching for his wallet.
“N-no. I c-can?—”
“My invitation, my treat,” he said firmly. “You can get the next one.”
The next one. Like this was going to happen again. Like I hadn’t spent two hours talking with a near-stranger about poetry and transformation and who we really were. Like my stutter hadn’t mattered at all.
We gathered our things slowly, neither seeming eager to end the conversation. Outside, the evening was cool, the sun slanting low through the trees. Fraser adjusted his grip on his cane, and I noticed the way he favored his right leg more than he had earlier.
“You okay?” The question slipped out before I could catch it.
He glanced at me. “Nothing a hot bath won’t fix.”
I thought about offering to walk with him, but that felt too much like something people did when they were…more than whatever we were. Instead, I said, “Th-thank you. For the coffee. And the c-conversation.”
“Thank you for coming. See you at book club tomorrow?”
The automatic “no” rose in my throat, but what came out was, “I’ll t-t-try to be there.”
His smile could’ve powered the streetlights that were beginning to flicker on. “I really hope you’ll make it.”
We parted ways at the corner, him heading west toward the river, me turning east toward home. I walked slowly, trying to process what had happened. I’d spent two hours in public, talking with someone new, and the world hadn’t ended. My stutter hadn’t driven him away. He’d listened—really listened—to my thoughts about poetry and loss and becoming.
More than that, he’d shared his own struggles. The careful way he’d talked about transformation, about needing to find himself after losing his career… I recognized that particular grief. It was different from losing a person, but loss was loss. It carved you hollow and left you to figure out how to fill the space.
