Page 78 of There's a Way

“Sit, eat, talk.”

I looked at the centrifuge and back to Nathan. “When it shuts off, I have about five minutes of work to do, but I can eat for a couple of minutes, and I can wrap things up once I finish this project.”

He nodded, and I used disinfectant to clean a tabletop, washed my hands, and then sat to eat. Technically, I can’t get sick, but old habits die hard and I just can’t eat without washing my hands after I’ve been handling stuff in the lab. Never mind the fact I wear gloves for most of it.

I took a bite and my inner bear grumbled at me. Not for eating the burger, but for eating shit all day and just now giving us real food.

“Thanks for this. The lab’s behind and that annoys me, but I know better. I have to take care of myself, or I won’t be able to take care of anything or anyone else.”

He chuckled. “You even have a little of Bran’s accent when you say that.”

I rolled my eyes. “Anything going on I need to know about?”

He shook his head. “All the priority stuff in here’s been handled, and keep moving those things to the front of the line as they come in, but don’t go without food to do it. Matty’s going to be inviting you and your men to an RTMC party this weekend. I hope they choose to go with you, but if they don’t, you should go with Matty and Razor.”

“Is something big going to happen?”

“Not that I’m aware of, but I’d like to see you spend more time with Horse. Take the opportunity to set a time to have lunch or dinner with him. Maybe ask him if you can come to the RTMC range and get some instruction on something? I know you can get that here, but your bear needs to spend time with his bear, in both human and bear forms, so try to figure something out.”

* * * *

Will

Micca had texted me to let me know she’d be working late, and I guess I should’ve expected that, since she’d been off work a while. Still, it messed up my dinner plans.

When she texted me to let me know she was on her way, I had Davy put the baked potatoes back into the oven to heat them up while I heated the cast iron pan so I could sear the steaks before they went into the oven.

Davy put a salad together while I worked on the steaks, and we had everything ready to eat when she walked in the door.

After we got through the basics of how her day had gone, and Davy had told her a little about his day, I told Micca, “Davy gave me a handwritten note asking for some time in the next couple of days for the three of us to have an out-of-power-exchangeconversation. If you’re up to it, I’d prefer we do that tonight after we eat, rather than waiting.”

She looked at Davy a few seconds, probably trying to figure out what might be wrong, and I told her, “He specified nothing is wrong, but he has something Dr. Woods felt he should discuss with us sooner rather than later.”

“Okay,” she said. “I’d say we could do it now, but I know you have the rule about doing it in the storage area, so we’ll go there after we eat.”

“Thank you,” Davy said. “Both of you. Nothing’s wrong. It can wait, but I get why ya’ll don’t want to.”

“So you had a productive session with Dr. Woods?” Micca asked.

“Yeah. I didn’t really want to go, but it wasn’t about my grandparents the whole time, and when it was, he helped me put things into…” he took a drink, probably giving himself a chance to figure out how to explain. “It’s like, okay for me to be pissed at God, even if I don’t believe in God. And we talked about how, he says, the pantheon gods supposedly believe in a bigger being than them. I mean, it’s clear the pantheon gods aren’t making sure children don’t get abused, right? They’re off on Olympus just living their own lives. But even if there’s a one true God out there somewhere, he or she or it orwhateverclearly isn’t doing it, either.”

Davy rolled his eyes. “Dr. Woods said that the pantheon gods feel this being who oversees everything is genderless and maybe bodyless, or maybe the universe itself is his or her or whatever’s body.”

It seemed odd their conversation had gone to the nature of life and reality rather than talking about his grandparents, and that brought me to why that might be. “You started out the session by telling him about something besides your grandparents, didn’t you?”

He nodded, and I said, “But he didn’t let you get away with avoiding the talk about your grandparents, right?”

“No, Master. He eventually brought the conversation to them, and it’s okay that he did. We came at it kind of sideways, and that made it easier to talk about.”

“Good. I see your session next week has been rescheduled?”

He nodded. “Yeah, when he had a two-hour block. I mean, I’m on the end of his day instead of the beginning, so I guess he’s just adding me onto his day, but I agreed we need a longer session. I had more to talk to him about when my time was up today. Not problems so much as just talking through shit.”

When we finished eating, I told him to clean the kitchen, remove his butt plug, and then come to the storage room. I went to his closet and chose jeans, a shirt, and underwear, put them all on the same hanger, and hung it from the top of the storage room door.

There are chairs stacked in the storage room, and I put three of them out in kind of a triangle.

He brought chips and beer for all of us, which meant he had to walk into the room to set it down before he went back outside to get dressed in the hall, but it all worked out. Especially since the chips and beer meant I needed to pull out a small table to put in the middle of the chairs.

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