Page 87 of The Best Trick

“Fuck off,” Thor said, fighting back.

Then Zeus was bearhugging Thor. Was he trying to suffocate poor Thor like a python? Then he growled, “We will never fuck off.”

Right then the energy changed.

Thor stopped struggling. His face seemed to soften, and it was like the whole universe shifted.

“I'm sorry, I'm so sorry,” Thor said, half sobbing.

“No, I'm sorry,” Zeus said. “You were carrying this all alone, all this time? I didn't realize you were carrying this, man.”

“I put you into this, I just wanted to get you out.”

“What you were carrying, it is ours to carry together,” Zeus said. “You understand?”

He pulled back and looked Thor in the eye. There was something about his tone right then, noble and resolute, that got me in the gut, that made me feel so much love for Zeus.

For Thor.

“I wouldn't be half the man I am if you hadn't happened along,” Zeus said.

“You’d have your little house. Your peaceful life…”

“You really think that's what I want my life to be about? Peace and creature comforts and all of that shit? You think that's what life is for?” Zeus demanded.

“It helps,” Thor said.

“Fuck that,” Zeus said. “Life is not about comfort; it’s a journey of discovery, of finding out who you are inside, of knowing your own heart and fighting for what matters. If that means walking through fire in excruciating pain, I’d choose that every time over comforts and ease and sleepwalking through this life. Wherever you all are, that’s my heart. There is no more perfect life than what we have now, and wherever you all are, that is my home.”

“Hell yes,” I said, a little to my guys and a little to myself.

“I would rather have my face clawed off by hyenas a thousand times a day than to live as a bitch to comfort and ease,” Odin said.

“That, too,” I said.

Zeus stood. He stretched out his hand. Thor slapped his palm into Zeus’s palm and was hauled up to his feet.

“You make us know our own heart,” Odin said. “You gave us that, Thor.”

“A hundred percent,” I said.

SEVENTEEN

Back at the Airbnb, I sat sideways on the couch, my legs in Odin’s lap. I was sipping yet another drink, and the sun was setting in its usual fiery show. We watched Zeus and Thor reassemble the parts of the grill after having cleaned them.

“They are being very thorough,” I observed after a bit. “I'm going to go out on a limb here and predict that there won't be the tiniest speck of soot on the tiniest screw. Not to mention fire extinguisher foam. There definitely won't be any of that.”

“Good,” Odin said. “We still have to cook the salmon cakes that I made, and they have a delicatefucking-gtouch of saffron that I don't want ruined by the taste of foam or soot.” He said this all growly, of course, but I think he was as touched by the scene happening in front of us as I was.

Not just because it was so massively satisfying to watch these two men toil in a manly man way, skin glistening with sweat and all that.

No, there was something about Zeus and Thor carefully breaking down that hot grill, cooling it down and shining it back up and putting it back together that was like they were repairing something about us.

Like the grill was a metaphor for the four of us. It had caught fire for a bit, but we put it back together, better than ever. We would go forward.

It was important. Especially to Thor.

Thor needed to heal us, to help us—not just other people, butus. I saw that now.

---