Page 111 of Have a Bear-y Little Christmas
Was it kitschy? Possibly. But that was fine. We’d had so much going on, running around like chickens with their heads cut off, that it was nice to slow down and have some private time. No kids. No cancer scares. No work.
Just us.
Ana and probably others were chomping at the bit for us to get more serious. For us to put a title on it—perhaps for me toeven put a ring on it—but they didn’t understand what it was like to blend a family and tend to all of Max’s medical needs. The kid was awesome, but he still had a whole lot on his plate. There were appointments to monitor his weight and toreallymake sure his cancer wasn’t back. Physical therapy to help him regain the skills and muscle he’d lost. I thought he got around fine compared to when I first met him, but the muscles in his calves and hip flexors were shortened, which was the cause of his mobility issues and the pain that wiped him out sometimes. He'd lost the lordosis in his neck, which made his head too heavy for him. From the way the little guy carried himself, I never would have guessed he was struggling so much.
“Doesn’t mean it’s not true,” I said in a singsong voice as we settled on the soft blanket. It had a bit more substance to it than what would probably normally be used for such an occasion, but honestly, lately I was all about the little creature comforts in life.
“Fair enough,” Jeannie said, leaning against my side. Her plush body lent a grounding sort of pressure to mine, banishing all thoughts of landscaping gigs, scheduling, and even the upcoming school year. Sometimes, it felt like summer had just started, and sometimes it felt like September was a blink away. “It really is the perfect weather today, isn’t it?”
“Absolutely.” Although it was heating up, there was still the last bits of a gentle spring breeze before they tapered into the hot gusts of summer. And while we weren’t as far north as we would be if we went to my family’s lands, we were about half an hour outside of the city limits at a somewhat popular but not crowded nature park. I appreciated the extra elevation, and it was nice to be surrounded by thick trees and wildlife after two very grueling landscaping projects back-to-back on top of all of my other duties. “I’m really glad we could take this time together.”
“Yeah, me too. This is our first date since our six-month anniversary, right?”
I paused as I reached into the picnic basket. “Uh, I mean, yeah, it’s been a while, but was that technically an anniversary?”
We’d had a night on the town—that time thanks to my in-laws—complete with an hour at a smash house, a massage, a luxurious dinner, a movie, then spent the rest of the night in a swanky hotel, where we’d gotten to be a lot louder than the times we were able to sneak off at either of our places. Could that be called ananniversaryconsidering we weren’t an official couple yet?
“Why wouldn’t it be?” Jeannie asked innocently, tilting her head to the side in that way she did whenever she was trying to puzzle something out. Her reaction told me that she was being completely genuine, not teasing me, and I was thrown for a loop.
“Don’t you have to actually be a couple for it to be an anniversary?”
Perhaps if it were any other situation, any other conversation, I would have found it funny when her eyes widened. Instead, my stomach dipped. Had I messed up without meaning to?
“Are... are we not a couple?”
Now it was my turn to mirror her shocked expression right back at her “Arewe a couple?”
“How can you ask me that? We’ve been dating for more than six months!”
“Yes, we have been going on dates for that long, but you’ve never called me your boyfriend, you’ve never referred to us as a couple, and we’ve never even said I love you to each other.
“Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to pressure you to do any of those things. I understand that with Jacob and the leader, you like to take things slow. Besides, with Max being sick and us being so busy, I thought you were waiting until he hit his year mark of remission or things calmed down a little.”
“Oh.”
“Oh?”
Had the two of us just been on different pages?
“I… This is probably going to sound crazy, but I just never thought about all that stuff. It makes sense that there’s a difference between dating, boyfriend and girlfriend, and all that, but I... wow, I guess I’ve never really actually dated. That’s weird coming from someone with a child, right?”
I rested my hand over hers. “No, Jeannie, I don’t think that’s weird at all. I should have communicated my own expectations and desires for what our relationship is or isn’t. So, I apologize.”
I found my chest constricting a little as I thought back to the wonderful months we shared together, and reimagined them as us being an official couple, rather than me waiting for her to confirm that she was ready for something more serious.
Recontextualizing it through that lens, I could completely see how that had happened, and God, did I feel silly. It wasn’t the world’s worst miscommunication, but definitely a little bit of the “assuming makes an ass out of you and me” idiom my mother had taught me when I was young.
“Would you like to be boyfriend and girlfriend?” The question sounded juvenile, and it wasn’t something I imagined asking in my thirties, but I had to remind myself that Jeannie essentially had her childhood and teenage years stolen from her. She never got to do the awkward asking out for a dance or waiting to be asked to prom. She never got to go on a date in a restaurant while her parents waited in the car outside. And while it was true that I didn’t experience much of that either since I’d only ever been with one other person, I’d gotten a taste of what it was like.
She blushed in that bright way of hers that I adored. I loved how her cheeks turned the color of rose petals. Even the tip of her nose took on a pinkish hue. “I think...” She trailed off, and I watched with rapt attention as she licked her lips. “I would liketo, but there is one thing I would like to ask of you before I say yes.”
That intrigued me. Even though Jeannie had gotten much, much better in not isolating when she got stressed and allowed others to help her, she still so rarely asked for anything. If there was something I could give her, something that would ease her mind, I wanted to do it.
“What is it?”
“I’d like to see you shift.” For the second time, the conversation came to a screeching halt as my brain tried to adjust to the complete subversion of my expectations.
“You mean turn into the bear me?” I didn’t know why I needed her to clarify—there was no other definition that would have made sense given the context.
