The Lion’s Mail Order Menage

Chapter 8

“Tyler, stop!  You can’t just decide you’re going to do a thing and then do it no matter what the people around you think, OK?  That’s not how life works!”

“Isn’t it?  Well then,  why don’t you tell me how life works?  I would love to hear it from your perspective.”

“Well, for starters, don’t say a thing like that and then run off leaving two people to trail after you.  That sounds like a good place to start.”

“Too bad, brother, keep up because I don’t plan on slowing down.  This thing needs to happen, whether you like it or not.  You’ll be glad of it, eventually.  Trust me.”

“You know, you always say things like that and somehow I never wind up glad.  Now why do you think that is?”

“Because, brother man, you just don’t have the vision that I’ve got.  You lack that insight, you know?  That’s why I’ve gotta take the reins on things.  Gotta take control, man.”

“What is he talking about?” Meena called out from behind the two men, out of breath and struggling to keep up from the sound of it. “What kind of vision?  Where are we going?”

Caleb would have loved to say he didn’t know, but it would have been a lie.  They had lived here for all of their lives, him and Tyler, and over the years they had developed an entire network of places that they believed were just their own, or at least more their own than any of the other people walking around the city. 

They had their own little places stashed all across the city and the surrounding boroughs and each of them served their purpose, but the one that was by far their favorite was the one deep in the heart of Central Park.  It had always felt like magic to them, their little alcove deep in the middle of the park, a piece of magic in a place that already felt special.  It was special because it was a place where they felt that they could be themselves. 

For the most part, they lived in a concrete jungle full of putrid smells and angry people.  There was very little nature, very little of the habitat their lions would have roamed in, and it was something that could sometimes start to get them a little bit down, or at the very least, restless.

But everything had changed on one of those hot, muggy summer days when the two boys had taken it upon themselves to go exploring.  They had pushed deeper and deeper into the park until there wasn’t anyone else around them anymore.  They felt like they had left the city entirely in favor of a trek into some unknown place and that was how they found the little clearing they claimed for themselves.

It was something little boys often did, only to give their secret places up as they grew to adulthood.  But Tyler and Caleb hadn’t done that.  Although they had visited their secret alcove less often, they never gave it up.  It was still a place for them to escape the mundane parts of being human and stretch their lion limbs.  It was a place that Caleb was usually elated to visit, which made it all the more frustrating that it was the place Tyler was currently running to. 

His friend.  His brother, rushing forward without giving any thought to how his actions might affect another.  He was going to make this place something other than what it had once been and there would be no way to get its lingering innocence back, once it was gone.  It felt like desecration and there was nothing Caleb could do to stop it. 

He stopped running, slowing so that Meena could catch up to him and maybe also catch her breath.  She looked both grateful and confused at the same time and took his hand into her own as if it was something she had done a thousand times.

“I don’t understand.  Why did we stop running?”

“Because we don’t need to anymore.”

“But why?  Won’t we lose him?”

“No, we can’t lose him.  I know where he’s going.”

“Do you?  Thank god.  I thought I was in decent shape but apparently I was mistaken.  I’ve got the worst kind of stitch in my side!  You two are almost impossible to keep up with.”

“Believe me, you did better than most people could.  We’re sort of born athletes, Tyler and me.  It’s always come pretty naturally to us.”

“I would say so.  But are you really brothers?  Like, are you blood related?”

“No, not blood related, but if you ask me if we’re brothers, I’ll say yes one hundred percent of the time.  We’ve been together since birth.  Since before birth, actually.  We’ve had the same kind of shared experiences that siblings have.  I guess that makes us as good as brothers, right?”

“Sounds like it to me.  I’ve never believed that blood made you family, not really, not in the ways that count.  I’ve counted very few people as family in my life and I can say that only one of those I did count were related to me by blood.”

Caleb squeezed her hand again, momentarily struggling to find his words.  It was difficult for him to believe that Meena was only there with him because Tyler got drunk and lonely and decided he was going to fix it no matter what that entailed.  She seemed to fit him so perfectly, right down to his sometimes melancholy disposition.

And the things she said!  She was a quiet sort of a girl, but when she spoke it was painfully insightful or something that was almost word for word something he had thought to himself a thousand times over.  He honestly hadn’t ever expected to meet a woman like this, or any woman at all, for that matter. 

He had been fully prepared to spend his life alone.  But it was more than that, it was more complicated than just being prepared.  He had wanted to spend his life alone.  If the way a man was raised was a predictor of the kind of life he would want as an adult, then Caleb had been born with no other choice than to want the life of a bachelor. 

He had zero good memories involving his parents.  Really, not one.  He had racked his brain on more than one occasion to come up with something even vaguely pleasant but you couldn’t recall a memory that simply wasn’t there and in his household, it hadn’t been there.