Page 25 of Befriending the Bear
“Did I?” I laughed, but it came out cracked. “I’ve been t-treading water for seven years. That’s not the same as s-swimming.”
“Maybe not,” Fraser said quietly. “But you’re still here. Still fighting. That counts for something.”
I stood abruptly, needing movement, needing to not see the understanding in his eyes that threatened to undo me completely. “M-more soup?” I asked, even though his bowl was still half full.
“I’m good.” He watched me move around the kitchen, putting distance between us under the guise of cleaning up. “Calloway?”
I kept my back to him, gripping the edge of the counter. “Y-yes?”
“Thank you for telling me. I know that wasn’t easy.”
The simple acknowledgment, without platitudes or promises that everything would be fine, made my throat tight. I nodded, not trusting my voice.
“Tell me about your b-brothers,” I said, wanting to shift the focus off my own complicated history. “Are they f-firefighters too?”
“God, no.” Fraser laughed. “They think I’m crazy. Well, they did. Now they think I’m broken.” He said it matter-of-factly, but I heard the sting underneath. “They’re all in logging, like our dad. Good, honest work that doesn’t require jumping out of planes.”
“How m-many?”
“Three older brothers. Mac, Dougal, and Ewan. My mom’s Scottish, in case you couldn’t tell.” His smile was wry. “I was the baby, the one who was supposed to stay close to home. Instead, I ran off to fight fires and came out as gay. Family disappointment on multiple fronts.”
“They don’t accept you?”
“Oh, they accept me. In theory. In reality, I’ve never felt safe with my sexuality.” He shifted, adjusting his leg. “So I’ve kept my distance, set up boundaries for my own sake.”
I understood that too, the careful compartmentalization, the way you could love people who couldn’t love all of you. “Is that p-part of why you came here? Instead of g-going back to Montana?”
Fraser was quiet for a long moment. “Partly. But mostly… I couldn’t go backward. Couldn’t pretend to be who I was before. This—” He gestured at his leg, at himself, at the space between us. “This Fraser needs a different life than that Fraser had.”
“The person you are now seems pretty g-good to me,” I said, then immediately wanted to take it back. Too much. Too revealing.
But Fraser smiled, soft and surprised. “Yeah?”
I nodded, not trusting my voice with anything more.
We sat in comfortable silence as darkness settled fully outside.
“Your back must be killing you,” he said, changing the subject with his usual grace. “All that bending over boxes.”
“It’s f-fine,” I lied, then caught his look. “Okay, it’s s-sore. But manageable.”
“Pot and kettle again. We’re a pair, aren’t we?”
We.Such a small word to carry so much weight.
After dinner, I showed him my library, the converted bedroom lined floor to ceiling with books. His face lit up like a child’s on Christmas morning.
“This is incredible.” He moved slowly along the shelves, trailing his finger along the spines. “How do you have them organized?”
“By f-feeling. Books that make me h-happy here, melancholy there. The ones that m-make me think are on that wall.”
Fraser turned to look at me, and his expression was so soft it made my insides ache. “That’s perfect.”
He understood. Of course he did. Fraser had a way of seeing straight to the heart of things, finding beauty in what others might call quirky or strange.
“What about these?” He gestured to a section I usually avoided showing people, the shelf that held the books Marcus and I had shared.
“Those are…” I swallowed hard. “Ourbooks. The ones M-Marcus and I loved together. He l-loved science fiction. Classic stuff mostly. Asimov, H-Heinlein, Le Guin.”
