Page 77 of Have a Bear-y Little Christmas
“Yeah, yeah, I’m sure you are.”
I sensed that she was getting perhaps a touch too flustered, so I decided to pull back for the moment. It wasn’t like I reallyknew where I was going anyways. I wasn’t even entirely sure I was going to allow myself to move on from my wife. Sure, when I looked at Jeannie, I certainly wanted to. And if it would be with anyone in the world, it would be with her, but so much of my mind was still uncertain. And worried that it was far too soon and we would be disrespecting Zara, who didn’t deserve that at all.
“You want some more mash?” I asked instead.
“Hell yeah.”
Maybe it was a bear thing, but I loved that Jeannie was so comfortable eating in front of me. I wasn’t a woman, so I would never fully understand the societal pressures on them to look and act a certain way, but I also wasn’t ahuman, so I found their desire to be as skinny as possible reallyweird.Yes, Zara had been slim, but that had been right for her. Ana was muscular, because that was what right for her. It was clear to me that Jeannie was meant to be a deliciously thick woman.
“I gotta say, Tupperware technology has come a long way from when I was a kid,” Jeannie mused after a bit. “When I was young, all of this would have been half frozen by the time we made our way here.”
“You think so?”
“Definitely. Ana must have hauled all this here after she and I talked but before three, so it’s been sitting here for literal hours.”
I stifled my chuckle. Jeannie and I were officially adults since we were genuinely jazzed about the heat-retaining properties of Tupperware. But then my brain caught onto another part of that statement.
“What were y’all talking about?” I was aiming for nonchalance, but hey, I was curious. I’d beencurious since I saw them strolling off together, arm-in-arm, Jeannie’s hair neatly done in some custom French braids that enhanced her appealing features.
I wasn’t really sure what she would say, but I didn’t expect her to level me with a matter-of-fact gaze. “You.”
“Me? What did I do?”
Those cherry lips of hers curled into a smile. I wasn’t going to lie, it made me want to swallow hard and lean even closer toward her.
“We weren’t bitching about you behind your back. It was just, ya know, talk. Girl talk.”
“As you might have noticed, I’m not a girl, but I’ll take your word for it.” I was playing it cool, but my mind was taking off in a bunch of different ways. My sister-in-law and the woman I was drawn to had talked about me right before our children and that same sister-in-law set up a semi-elaborate plot to get Jeannie and me alone together.
Jeannie, however, appeared to be completely oblivious. She tilted her head to the side and looked up at me through her lashes. “You’re not? I hadn’t noticed.”
“Oh, you hadn’t?” I asked, crossing my arms over my chest.
Jeannie’s eyes went straight to my pecs. She was a lovely, intelligent woman, but she was terrible at hiding her appreciation of my physical form. Being admired was quite the ego boost, especially since lately my body was mostly just a vessel for me to get from A to B. It was almost like I’d desexualized myself in a way. I hadn’t meant to, but with Zara’s illness, and then learning how to live without her, taking care of my body had fallen to the wayside. I didn’t think that was unusual, given everything that had happened.
“That’s not fair,” Jeannie said, turning a brilliant pink before putting a hand over her eyes. But that only lasted a second or two before she spread two of her fingers apart and peeked through.
“I don’t know where fairness really comes into this.” Teasing her was fun, and I really like making Jeannie blush.
“Because everyone likes tiddies!”
“Tiddies?” I countered, more than a bit incredulous. “Did you just call my pecstiddies?” I didn’t like to think of myself as a particularly vain person, but I was proud of my barrel chest and the broad expanse of it. Being a bear, I tended to put muscle on quite easily, but landscaping definitely enhanced that particular feature.
“That’s what they are! Big ol’ man tiddies!”
I stared at her, then the absurdity of it all had me bursting into laughter. Yeah, the sexual tension was kind of gone, but it was replaced with so much dopamine that I didn’t mind. No one had ever used that word to refer to my physique, but coming out of Jeannie’s mouth, it seemed like a compliment.
“I really am no better than man, aren’t I?” Jeannie continued as I tried to recover from the entire situation. Maybe next time, I should try flexing my biceps at her instead. “But hey, at least I didn’t call them mommy milkers.”
I nearly choked on my wine. “Mommy milkers!”
She shot me a somewhat innocent expression. I’d thought we spoke quite frankly with each other even when our kids were around, but now I realized we’d both been editing ourselves. Like any good parent should, of course! Strange, to not notice such a thing until directly confronted with it. “What? You’ve never heard of that?”
“Can’t say that I have.”
“I guess you’re not as chronically online as I am. Editing requires me to be pretty well-versed in pop culture. But it’s basically a term for, ya know…” She gestured to her own chest like I needed any encouragement to take in the wonderful fullness of her figure. Like I didn’t have to pointedly ignore that sometimes.
“Tiddies?” I offered, waggling my eyebrows at her.
