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Contents ( 42)
  1. The Art of Breathing
  2. Part One: How We Became Who We Are
  3. Prologue: Or, Where the Kid Hears the Word of the Day
  4. 1. Where Tyson Learns to Breathe
  5. 2. Where Tyson Makes a Phone Call
  6. 3. Where Tyson Graduates and Bear Freaks Out
  7. 4. Where Tyson Says Good-Bye
  8. 5. Where Tyson Gets the Mail
  9. Part Two: Coming Home
  10. 6. Where Tyson Comes Home
  11. 7. Where Tyson Gives a History Lesson
  12. 8. Where Tyson Attends the Most Awkward Party Ever
  13. 9. Where Tyson Plans Attends a Protest
  14. 10. Where Tyson Gets Arrested
  15. 11. Where Tyson Gets His Ass Handed to Him
  16. 12. Where Tyson Writes Bad Poetry and Gawks at Frat Boys
  17. 13. Where Tyson Decides to Man the Fuck Up
  18. 14. Where Tyson Asks Some Questions
  19. 15. Where Tyson Remembers Theresa Jean Paquinn
  20. 16. Where Tyson Learns the Benefit of Therapy
  21. 17. Where Tyson Meets the Man Who Becomes Helena Handbasket
  22. 18. Where Tyson Gets Screwed at His Own Birthday Party (And Not in a Good Way)
  23. Part Three: Just Breathe
  24. 19. Where Tyson Goes to Helena Handbasket’s Sex Dungeon
  25. 20. Where Tyson Beholds the Awesome Wonder That Is Paul Auster
  26. 21. Where Tyson Receives Advice from the Six Sages
  27. 22. Where Tyson Makes a Phone Call
  28. 23. Where Tyson Hears the Inevitable
  29. 24. Where Tyson Meets His Match
  30. 25. Where Tyson Says Hello, Where Tyson Says Good-bye
  31. 26. Where Tyson Touches upon the Inevitable
  32. 27. Where Tyson Faces the Music
  33. 28. Where Tyson Breathes
  34. 29. Tyson And Dominic
  35. 30. The Art Of Breathing
  36. Epilogue: Or, Bear’s Perspective, As It Were (Yeah, He’s Gonna Freak)
  37. Author’s Note
  38. Excerpt
  39. Prologue: Or, Where Bear Answers the Door
  40. More from TJ Klune
  41. Readers love the Bear, Otter, and the Kid Chronicles by TJ Klune
  42. By TJ Klune

Ben will miss you.

I wince. This is the hardest part. He and I have grown close. His routine….

Dom shakes his head. It’ll take time. You’re part of him now. It’ll be okay.

I hope he’s right.

It’s getting late. I don’t have much time left to say what I want to say. It seems petty now. Trite, even. After all this man has done for me, and for all he’s letting me do to find myself without so much as a cross word, there should be more. I should be giving him everything.

But I can’t.

One day.

For now, though, I hope this is enough.

Dom? Oh God. How my voice breaks on his name. How my throat closes.

He stops walking. Turns to me. He’s big. He’s so very big.

Ty, he says, and this is Dom. Dominic. That lost and lonely boy who found a scared, precocious Kid and showed him how to breathe again. I owe him everything.

I… just….

Say it, it whispers. He deserves to hear it from you.

I—

He kisses me. The rest of my words are lost in him.

And then he clutches me tightly. As if I’m just a little guy. As if I need protecting from the world around us. As if our hearts are breaking with each passing second. And I hold him back as if all of this is true and it’s the only way things will be.

It’s inevitable, after all.

OREGON TO New Hampshire

Three thousand miles.

It’ll take me four or five days. Maybe six, if I take my time.

And I might.

I wipe my eyes. Grip the steering wheel.

Moments later, I pass a sign:

NOW LEAVING SEAFARE! COME BACK SOON!

I ONLY make it to the Oregon/Idaho border. The tremors in my hands have gotten worse, and I’m having trouble breathing. I’m gasping for air by the time I throw open the door to the hotel room. My legs crash into a chair. I tell myself to breathe and breathe and just fucking breathe! It’s funny, really. Panicking doesn’t help when in the grips of a panic attack, but that’s all you can do. Panic is all I know. I slide over the lip of the bathtub and knock my head on the faucet, and stars, stars, stars again, and they are bright and loud and how they scream.

I stay in the bathtub for the rest of the night.

Near dawn, I fall asleep and dream of Dominic.

He smiles at me and I can breathe.

I SIT in the parking lot of the hotel in this little Idaho town whose name I don’t know. West is home. East is uncertainty. There are texts on my phone, saying things like The key is under the mat, you crazy SOB (Corey) and Don’t buy drugs from truckers unless they’re good drugs (Creed) and Make sure you call us when you get there (Anna). There are others and I read them all.