“It’s who I am,” I say, as if that should be enough.

He nods as he sets me down. “I know. And you won’t hear me say otherwise. You’ve…. Bear’s just going to be Bear. You know that as well as I do.”

Speaking of. “Where is he?” I ask, looking around. My brother isn’t with the rest of them.

Otter shakes his head. “He’s waiting on the sidelines, over by the bleachers. Said he wanted to talk to you alone when we were done here.”

Oh, fuck.

Dom comes to stand beside me. “I’m going with him,” he says, looking defiantly at Otter. He sounds a bit angry “He’s not going by himself.”

“I think this is between Bear and him,” Otter says kindly. “Dom, Bear’s not going to do anything stupid. You know him. He just needs to talk this out with the Kid before he can make it click in his head. That’s just who Bear is.”

Dom snarls in frustration, but Otter’s right and we all know it. I’m the one who made the choice to come out like I did, and therefore I’m the one who has to deal with the consequences, whatever they may be.

Besides. It’s Bear. I’m not scared of Bear.

Well. Maybe a little. It is Bear, after all.

“Fuck,” I mutter. “This seemed like such a good idea when I had it.”

Otter laughs ruefully. “Given yours and your brother’s histories of ‘good ideas,’ you would think one of you would realize you shouldn’t always do the first thing that pops into your head.”

I scowl at Otter. “I’m not anything like Bear! And besides, if we didn’t do the first thing that comes into our head, then we’d sit there thinking about it, and you know what happens when Bear allows himself to think too much.”

“Which he’s probably doing now.”

“Fuck,” I say again.

“Fuck, indeed,” Otter agrees. “Probably should get this over with, Kid. We’ve got dinner reservations in an hour. If I know your brother at all, you’re going to need at least that long.”

“Gays take forever,” Creed complains. “Jesus, now there are three of them. It’s going to take hours for anything to happen, and when it does, it’s going to be done in song with a choreographed dance number that’ll end with glitter cannons fired into the air.”

“I like glitter,” JJ says quite loudly. “I used to eat it. That and glue.”

“He did,” Creed says. “By the time we would catch him, it looked like a drag queen exploded on his face. And our walls.”

“And why don’t we eat glitter and glue anymore?” Anna asks her son.

“Because you said it makes my poop look like abstract art,” JJ says. Quite loudly. “And Dad said that no one would pay to see my glitter bombs in a museum.” He is his father’s son, make no mistake about that.

People we don’t know turn and stare at us. We stare back. Eventually, they turn away. People are so weird sometimes.