Bear
Family.
That one word can mean so many things.
It can mean a house on a hill with two parents who adore you, and an older sibling who cares for you, and grandparents and aunts and uncles who gather near for holidays. It can mean someone to lean on — always — no matter what you’re going through. It can mean safety, and comfort, and support.
Family can also mean a mother addicted to drugs and gambling, and an older brother who follows in her footsteps. It can mean the parents of your best friend taking you in as their own, like my little brother and Mac. Like me and Skyler.
It can mean never really feeling like you had a family at all, and so you build one at the college you go to, surrounding yourself with fraternity brothers and sorority girls and making your own dysfunctional unit.
Or it can mean a baby, one of your own.
One never born.
One you never knew existed — not before it was too late to have a say in whether it stayed that way or not.
It’s the Saturday before fall semester, and I should be happy.
It’s my senior year, my fraternity is finally off suspension, I’m in the best shape I’ve ever been in, and I’ve got the hottest, smartest, kindest girl I’ve ever known wrapped around me in my bed.
Skyler is here, too, sitting in the bean bag on my floor with her feet propped up on my desk as she relays her summer to us.
She and Becca have become friends — my two favorite girls — and yet, still, there’s a hollowness inside me.
Because down Greek Row, there’s a girl who carried my child inside her.
A girl who never let that child be born.
“I will say this,” Skyler says, letting her legs drop to the floor as she sinks even lower into the bean bag. “I am so glad rush is over. I usually love Bid Day, but I was exhausted today.”
“Maybe you’re getting old,” Becca offers
“I am. I most certainly am.”
“And you’re still considering running for president?” Becca asks
Skyler frowns, a strand of her long, brown hair falling into her face.
“As crazy as it sounds, I am. I know Erin and I went through a lot of shit last year, and I wasn’t sure if I’d ever want to have anything to do with the presidency after that.
But… I love KKB. That’s my family. And to lead them for a year? That would be an honor.”
I listen to them talk in a sort of numb daze, broken up time to time only by them saying Erin’s name. Every time I hear the two syllables, a zing of something hot and uncomfortable assaults my chest.
“You okay, babe?” Becca asks me quietly when Skyler pulls out her phone. I bet money she’s texting Kip. With him being at school in California, they’re committed to the long-distance relationship thing — and I am not envious of the work that goes with that.
“I’m good,” I assure her, rubbing her back before I press a kiss to the sunshine yellow bandana tied around her hair and covering her forehead. “Just going to run to the bathroom real quick.”
“Okay,” she says, smiling at me, but I see the worry etched in her eyes.
When I slip out from under the covers, Skyler whistles.
“Hot damn, Bear,” she says, eyeing me from head to toe. “I didn’t think it was possible for you to get more beastly than you already were. What the hell have you been eating?”
“He eats like The Rock now,” Becca answers for me. “I swear, I counted one morning, and the man had eight whole wheat pancakes. And a half a pound of turkey bacon.”
Skyler whines. “Not fair. If I ate like that, I’d have an ass the size of Texas.”
“Ain’t nothing wrong with that,” Becca says, smacking her own ass.
When I don’t so much as chuckle, Skyler eyes me warily, but I avoid her eyes.
“He’s also been working out like a mad man,” Becca continues, but I snuff out her next sentence with the gentle snick of the bathroom door closing, reveling in the time alone.
After I piss, I wash my hands and dry them before splaying them on the bathroom counter. My eyes find those of my reflection, and I hold my own gaze, searching for the man I used to be in the mirror. But he’s not there, he’s not anywhere — not anymore.
They say there are moments in your life that change everything.
I could look back and name a few in mine — when Mom first asked me for money, and when she and my older brother bailed on life, leaving behind my nephews and my little brother, Clayton.
I could even peg my breakup with Shawna as one that changed me, and the night I saw Erin raped definitely fell into that category, too.
But finding out I had fathered a child with her, one that she never told me about, one that she aborted — it didn’t just change me.
It fucked me all the way up.
I search my dead eyes for a sign of humanity, of someone still capable of feeling, but come up short. Becca is the only person I’ve been able to be even close to myself with over the summer, but even she can’t break through entirely.
I can’t discern what I feel. It’s like a never-ending tornado, one that has lifted everything in my life up into the air — me included — and is just tossing me around, dropping me and picking me back up again, not sure where it wants to leave everything when it finally dissipates.
In the past few months, I’ve cycled through everything from anger and guilt, to crushing depression and horrifically sad understanding.
I want to hate Erin, but I also want to run to her.
I want to shake her and demand answers, but I also want to hug her and tell her there’s no need, that I already understand.
And in the process of these cycles, of this tornado, I’ve lost myself completely.
I sigh, scrubbing my hands over my face before I shove through the door and back into my bedroom. Skyler is gone, and Becca sits on my bed in one of my t-shirts, her legs tucked under her.
For a long while, she just stares at me, her eyes speaking to mine without a single word being said.
Then, she leans back, pulls her knees up to her chest, and slowly, seductively, she lets them fall open, revealing that she doesn’t have a pair of panties on under that shirt.
“I know we’ve been taking it slow,” she whispers, and I see her throat constrict as she swallows. “But I feel how lost you are right now, Clinton. And I want you to find yourself in me.”
My eyes trail her slight curves visible even in the loose fabric of my t-shirt, and when my gaze settles on the wet heat between her legs, I will myself to feel something — anything.
Because that’s my M.O. If I have something to run from, I find solace in fucking, and working out, and drinking myself into oblivion.
But the desire I yearn to feel for Becca is subdued, suffocated by the vision of another girl I’d been inside of — one I’d “lost myself” in when I was running from something.
Erin Xander.
Still, I can’t walk out on Becca — not with her vulnerability on full display like this. So, I shove my own fears and anxieties out, ignoring the anger and the desire for answers I’ll never get to questions I should never, ever ask.
In the end, it was Erin’s body, and it was her choice.
I find as much resolve from that fact as I can, and in two strides, I’m standing over Becca, sliding my hands up her shins, over her knees, along the warm, smooth skin of her inner thighs.
And for the first time since we started dating, I slide my palm over her clit, my fingers dipping between her wet lips.
She shivers, hands fisting in my shirt and holding onto me for dear life as her eyes flutter shut.
She lets her head fall back when I press my fingers inside her, slowly, tentatively, and I will myself to be present.
I will my dick to stand at attention, will my brain to focus on the beautiful woman giving herself to me.
But everything feels dead.
Lifeless.
Empty.
“I want tonight to be about you,” I say with a groan, escaping her hands just before they dip below the band of my sweatpants. She pouts for only a moment before I’m on my knees, tugging her ass to the edge of the bed. “Let me discover you.”
At that, her eyes heat with desire again, and she smirks, letting me have my way with her.
And I do.
I take my time, testing out what makes her writhe.
Is it when I flick my tongue over her clit, or when I roll it hot and flat along her seam?
Is it when my fingers just barely enter her, or when they curl deep inside?
Does she like it when I bite her and grip her hard and give her bruises, or does she want me slow and soft and romantic, does she want care and concern?
I find the answers to every single one of my questions, but I do so with a sort of distant, numb version of myself — as if I have a clone, and I’m in a room miles away controlling him.
I asked Becca to take it slow because I’d been hurt before. Because I felt so much for her. Because I knew she was special, and I didn’t want to fuck it all up by moving fast.
I’d waited so long to touch her this way.
And yet, I feel nothing.
Becca’s nails dig into my flesh. Her body writhes in my sheets. Her cries are heard through the entire Omega Chi house before she grabs one of my pillows and bites down hard to subdue them.
She comes with her hands in my hair and my name on her lips.
And still, I am numb.