Page 16 of Befriending the Bear
“No pressure. The offer stands whenever. Or never. Whatever works.”
He nodded, some of the tension easing from his shoulders. We sat in comfortable silence for a moment, watching the tourist chaos around us. A family with three young kids had taken over the center of the café, the parents looking harried while the children debated the merits of various pastries at top volume.
“You should write d-down those stories,” Calloway then said. “The f-funny ones and the n-n-not-so-funny ones.”
“I’m a reader, not a writer.”
“Doesn’t mean you can’t b-become one. You’re a g-great storyteller.”
He liked my stories? Somehow, that made me go all warm and soft inside, eager to please him with another one. “You really think so?”
“I know so.” He looked down at his coffee, then back up at me with an expression I couldn’t quite read. “You have a way of m-making people feel like they’re right there w-with you. That’s a g-gift.”
Before I could respond, his phone buzzed on the table. He glanced at it, and his face went pale. “I—I have to go,” he said abruptly, already gathering his things. “S-s-sorry, I?—”
“Is everything okay?” I half-rose from my chair, concern overriding social niceties.
“F-fine. I f-f-forgot about something.” He wouldn’t meet my eyes, clutching his phone like a lifeline. “Thank you for the c-coffee.”
And then he was gone, moving through the crowded café with the kind of desperate purpose that suggested he was fleeing rather than simply leaving. I sank back into my chair, bewildered by the sudden shift. We’d been having such a good conversation, and then…
What had been on that phone screen?
I finished my coffee slowly, trying not to read too much into Calloway’s abrupt departure. Maybe it really was an appointment he’d forgotten. Maybe I was overthinking everything because I wanted this, this friendship—a thin disguise for so much more—to work so badly it scared me.
The walk home was harder without the cane, my leg protesting every step. But I’d made it through the afternoon without grimacing, without letting Calloway see how much constant pain had become my new normal. Small victories.
Back at my house, I found myself restless. The conversation kept replaying in my head. The way he’d laughed at my story, how his face had softened talking about Marcus, that sudden panic at the end. I thought about texting him, making sure he was okay, but that felt like pushing.
You have a way of making people feel like they’re right there with you.
Maybe I did have stories worth telling. God knew I had enough of them after thirty years of fires and near-misses and the special brotherhood that formed when you regularly faced death together. But writing them down, making them real outside my own memory… That was different. That was admitting this was all I had left of who I used to be.
My phone stayed silent the rest of the day. No explanation, no apology, no casual text to smooth over the awkwardness of his departure. By evening, I was starting to think I’d misread everything. Maybe I’d pushed too hard, asked for too much. Maybe coffee twice was his limit, and I’d blown past it without noticing.
But then I remembered the way he’d said maybe about the hiking trail. How he’d laughed, surprised and genuine. The careful manner in which he’d shared pieces of Marcus, like he was testing whether I could be trusted with something precious.
Whatever had spooked him, I didn’t think it was me. Not entirely, anyway. Something else was going on, something that had turned him from engaged and present to desperate to escape in the space of a heartbeat.
All I could do was wait and hope he’d trust me enough to explain. In the meantime, I had PT exercises to do and a leg that was making its displeasure known. But as I stretched out on my living room floor, working through the routine that might someday get me back to something approaching normal, I found myself thinking about stories. About the way Calloway’s face lit up when I told them. About the possibility that my words might matter to someone again.
It wasn’t much. But it was more than I’d had in a long time.
7
CALLOWAY
Two days later, the battle inside me still had no victor. Guilt fought with shame, fear with hope, sadness with pain, to the point where I wasn’t even sure anymore what I felt. All I knew was that I’d walked out on Fraser without an explanation…and had not responded to his texts, asking me if I was okay.
Of course I wasn’t okay. I hadn’t been okay in a long time. I hadn’t been okay for seven years, three months, and twenty-seven days.
The text from Rick, Marcus’s college roommate, had arrived like a sucker punch, complete with a photo from eight years ago of Marcus and me at the dinner party we’d thrown for my fortieth birthday. We were laughing at something off-camera, his arm around my shoulders, my face turned toward his with an expression of such uncomplicated joy it made my chest ache.
Rick
Found this in my Facebook memories! Miss you guys. Hope you’re well.
Hope you’re well.As if I could be well when half of me was buried in a Queens cemetery.
