Bruce and Danny Chapter 11: A Busy Summer

By: Ash Cinder

            Summer had begun, and I was spending
it with all my friends in my neighborhood. Angie, Tyson, Owen, Josh and I hung
out almost every day of our vacation. Playing video games, seeing movies, we
were doing everything we could together.

            It made me happy to see that Josh
was getting along so well with my other three friends. He’d made a lot of
progress from where he was a few months ago, where he was too nervous about
Anthros to even come over to my house. Now we were having sleepovers at each
other’s houses and riding bikes in the park.

            But on days when I couldn’t play
with my friends I always turned to my dad hoping he’d have time for me like he
usually did. It was hard not to want to horse around with your dad a lot when
he was a big Kodiak bear. But ever since summer started, he just seemed to be busier.
He always seemed to want to play with
me, and even would take a few minutes some days to do it, but for the most part
whatever he was working on was really important and was what he was focusing
all his energy into.

            I looked in his office and saw him
working on his computer as usual. I walked in, hoping that he might have time
to play with me this time.

            “Hey dad.” I greeted, walking up to
him holding onto his arm gently.

            “Heya buddy.” Dad looked down at me,
ruffling my hair gently with his large paw.

            “Do you think you could play with me
for a little bit?” I asked, petting the soft fur on his arm.

            He looked down at me with a warm
smile, but sad eyes and I already knew how he was going to answer.

            “Uh, I’m sorry son, but I’m still
really busy. But, I was talking with Owen’s dad earlier and I can take you to
play with him later if you want.” He patted my head.

            “Okay.” I said, trying not to sound
too disappointed. “I guess that’s okay.”

            “Alright, give me a few minutes and
I’ll take you over there.” He said, turning back to his computer.

            I walked out and back to my room,
hoping dad was actually going to do his little trick of sneaking up behind me
and lifting me up, ready to play with me for a little bit, but to my
disappointment nobody came up behind me. I sighed and went in my room, putting
on my shoes and waiting for him to take me to Owen’s.

I kind of missed dad and how he used to play with me all the
time. I loved hanging out with the four main friends I had, but I loved how me
and dad used to wrestle together and stuff like that. Heh, that was always fun
when your dad was a big old bear. At the time, I wondered what he was so busy
with, I couldn’t imagine it had to do with keeping our family together.

            I hated seeing Danny look so
disappointed when I told him I couldn’t play with him. It broke my heart that
I’d barely gotten to even hug him since I’d started helping the group, which
was going by the name of Interspecies Families of Texas.

            Even though I’d wanted to play with
Danny as much as I had before all of this, I couldn’t stop focusing on the
group. I felt like if I didn’t give it my all in helping them, this bill had a
chance of passing and I was going to lose him. I just couldn’t risk that,
working for this group and planning on the trip to Austin somehow put my mind
at ease.

            I seemed to join at just the right
time because they really stepped up their campaign around the time I joined. I
think this was probably due to me being a columnist and using my position to
draw more attention to them, and the issue they were combating.

            They were planning on heading to
Austin in a few weeks to try and testify before the Texas government there and
make their case against this bill and I was looking forward to joining them.
Emma was being very encouraging. She tried not to show her worry about the bill
passing, maintaining her optimistic nature, but I knew she was just as unsure
of the future as I was. But we weren’t going to tell Danny about any of this,
he didn’t need to be worrying about the possibility of being taken from us.

            After a few more minutes of working
on my next editorial, I got an email from Roger messaging me with more
information about the trip to Austin. He told me about the hotel they’d be staying
at, what their talking points would be, and how much each person going would
need to shell out.

            I’d been talking with Matteo and
Troy, the two I’d met at the first meeting, and we were talking about rooming
together for this trip. They both really wanted to go too. Grady agreed to have
Danny over for a couple of hours and play with Owen while I got meet up with
them today. I shut off my laptop and went to Danny’s room to get him.

            “Alright buddy, ready to go to
Owen’s?”

            “Yeah.”

            We walked downstairs to the front
door.

            “I’ll be back, hun,” I called to
Emma, “I’m taking Danny over to play with Owen.”

            “Okay, be careful.”

            As we drove over to Owen’s house, I
looked in my rear view mirror at Danny, it still bothered me that my activism
was keeping me from playing with him like I used to be able to.

            “Hey Danny,” I said, “I’m sorry I
haven’t been able to play with you as much as you or I would like to, I know
I’ve been really busy. But I promise it won’t be forever.” I gave him a wink in
the rear view mirror.

            “Okay.” He said, giving me a little
smile.

            “Summer’s still going to last a few
more months so we’ll have plenty of time to do something cool once I’m finished
with what I’m working on.”

            “Cool!” He smiled more.

            “I promise I’ll be done before the
summer’s over.”

            We pulled up to Grady’s house and
got out of the car, walking up to the front door and ringing the doorbell.
Grady greeted us at the door.

            “Hey there, Bruce. Hi, Danny.” He
said, looking down at my boy.

            Danny smiled and waved up at him.

            “Come on in, Owen’s waiting for you
in his room.”

            “Be a good boy, Danny.” I said,
rubbing the top of his head.

            “I will dad.” He said, walking
inside.

            “Hey, thanks for looking after Danny
for today, while I take care of some stuff.” I said to Grady.

            “No problem,” The husky said, “Owen
always loves having Danny over to play. You doing okay though?”

            “Yeah, I’m just working on kind of a
big project and have been kind of busy. I don’t really want to talk about it
yet, but that’s why I needed you to have him over today.”

            “Yeah? Well, no problem, man. Go do
whatever you need to do.”

            “Thanks Grady, I’ll probably be back
around six.”

            “I’ll see you then.” He waved
goodbye as I headed back to my car.

            I always liked going over to Owen’s
to hang out, going into his backyard and spending the day on his swing set,
just swinging back and forth and chatting with each other or playing hide and
seek in his big backyard.

            Today I told him how my dad had
gotten busier the past few days and didn’t really get the chance to play with
me as much as he used to.

            “That’s too bad.” Owen said,
swinging next to me.

            “Yeah, I know my dad’s probably
doing something important, I just hope he finishes it soon, so he can wrestle
with me or something.” I said. “Does your dad ever get like that?”

            “Sometimes, but not a lot. It’s
never like it’s forever, he always plays with me eventually.” He said.

            “Okay, and he did say on the way
here that he’d be done before summer’s over, then we could do something cool.”

            “See, and while he’s working we can
still play together, right?” He asked.

            “Yeah!” I agreed, high-fiving him.

            We kept swinging in a bit of an
awkward silence before I asked Owen,

            “Hey, Owen… do you or the others
ever get teased cause you hang out with me and Josh?”

            “Uh… sometimes, but not a lot.” Owen
said. “Why, do you?”

            “I get teased a lot, for having
parents that don’t look like me, and for hanging out with Anthros after
school.”

            “That’s dumb.” He said.

            “I know, it shouldn’t matter what my
parents or friends look like… I get called a ‘pet’ sometimes at school.”

            “Pet?”

            “Yeah, like they see me as a pet
feral dog or something. Because my parents aren’t human like I am.”

            “Sorry that happens to you at
school.” Owen said. “I get teased sometimes, but it doesn’t sound like it
happens as much as it happens to you.”

            “It stinks.” I said.

            “At least it’s summer, and that
means you won’t have to see all the people that pick on you for a while.”

            “Yeah.”

            “And if I ever see anyone messing
with you, I’ll bite ‘em!”

He snapped his teeth together in an attempt to be
threatening, making me laugh.

“I think you’d get in trouble for doing that.”

“They’re the one’s who’ll be in trouble, I’ll tell Angie to
scratch them with her claws while I’m at it.”

I giggled and gave him a playful push, accidentally knocking
him off the swing.

“Oops!” I said.

“Ow!”

“You okay?”

“Yeah.” He laughed, letting me help him up.

            When I got back home, I decided to
see if Emma wanted to meet Matteo and Troy at the restaurant I was meeting them
at. Even though it was kind of short notice, she said yes and we both drove
over to a little Mexican place called ChaCha’s
and met up with the Rhino and buck.

            The two were already at a table when
we arrived and waved us over.

            “Hey!” Troy said.

            “Hey guys, this is my wife, Emma, I
decided to bring her along to meet you.” I said.

            “Hey there, nice to meet you two.”
She reached out and shook both their paws and stat down across from them.

            “Damn, if we’d have known you were
going to bring your spouse, we would have brought ours.” Matteo said.

            “Sorry, it was kind of last minute.”
I said.

            “Nah, it’s cool though, glad to meet
you.”

            “You too, glad I could meet some of
the people with this group that my husband’s been telling me all about.” She
said.

            “You should come to one of the
meetings sometime, we do good work.” Troy said.

            “It sounds like it, it’s good to see
that people are standing up to this thing that could affect families like ours.
It’s just awful to think that people are willing to draft something like this.”
She said.

            “It’s disgusting.” Troy said.

            “Have they said anything on why
exactly they’re doing this?”

            “So far, they’ve mainly focused on
it just making interspecies adoption illegal and acting like it wouldn’t null
our parental rights. When asked about the vague wording that implies this they
either dodge the question or assure people that that’s not their intentions.”

            “Even if that’s not their
intentions,” I said, “It’s implied, and could theoretically legally happen
because they don’t specifically state it in the draft that they’ve shown the
press.”

            “Exactly.” Matteo said.

            “Most news outlets say that the main
guy who drafted this piece of shit is Sam Levine.” Troy added.

            “Ugh, I know that guy. He doesn’t
have the best track record in terms of human and Anthro relations.” I said.

            “He’s the guy who said that Anthros
and humans should stay in separate neighborhoods and has continued to argue for
separate schools for them too.”

            “Does he really have that much
contempt for us that he’d be willing to rip children away from their parents?”
Emma asked.

            “Wouldn’t surprise me.” Matteo said.
“Probably thinks, in his twisted mind that it would be for the greater good to
give them to parents that look like them, instead of the ones that raised
them.”

            “Terrible man.” Emma said.

            “Yeah, but it looks like our waiter
is coming over now.”

            We all ordered our food and some
chips and salsa and told each other more about our kids.

            “We already know so much about
Danny, from your columns, but I don’t think we’ve spoken about our kids much.”
Troy said.

            “Well, my daughter Marlene is human,
like yours.” Matteo said. “She’s the sweetest little thing, just turned nine
two months ago.”

            “Mine’s a sweet little fox.” Troy
said. “She’s starting high school this August.”

            “So, you both have daughters.” Emma
said, taking a sip of her water.

            “Yeah.” Matteo said.

            “Maybe we could introduce our kids
to each other sometime?” Troy suggested.

            “Maybe, but I’d kind of like to keep
Danny out of all this, I don’t want him to worry that he might get separated
from us.” I said.

            “Yeah, I understand that.” Troy
said. “So, you gonna take Emma along to Austin with you in a few weeks?”

            “Oh, I probably won’t go.” She
answered. “Someone has to stay with Danny, after all.”

            “Yeah, I’ll probably go alone.” I
said.

            “Well, you’re welcome to room with
us.” Matteo said.

            “It’s not even time to go yet and
I’m already nervous about testifying before the senate.” I said.

            “It definitely won’t be easy,
they’ll work to discredit us as people who are worried over nothing, probably
even attack our character.”

            “Yeah, it’s going to be tough going
up there, but I still want to go.” I said.

            “But at least we won’t be facing
them alone.” Troy added.

            “I just hope it makes a difference.”

            “I think it will.” Emma said.
“You’ll give a face to the issue.”

            “That’s part of the idea.” Matteo
said.

            Once our food was brought out we
continued to chat a bit, I let Emma get to know them both, and they took to her
well. But soon it started inching more towards six and it was time to pick up Danny. We said by to Matteo and Troy, paid our bills and headed back over to Grady's.

            Once six o’clock was starting to
roll around me and Owen just sat around his room watching some cartoons and
playing with some of his superhero figures.

            “I’m glad that Josh has been hanging
out with us more and more, I like him.” Owen said.

            “Really? I’m glad, I hoped you guys
would.” I said. “He was so scared of coming over every time I asked him.” I
pointed out.

            “He was?” Owen asked, confused.
“Why?”

            “He said that he just hasn’t been
around very many Anthros. He told me his neighborhood doesn’t really have any.”
I explained. “I don’t really think any of the kids at school do either.”

            “Well, I think you’re the only human
in our neighborhood too. I see some humans at the park sometimes, but not a
lot.”

            “Yeah, you’re right.” I said. “Plus,
I guess Anthros could be a little scary to kids like me if we haven’t been
around them a lot. You guys are a lot bigger than we are.”

            “So you’d better watch out then.” He
said with a grin, holding up his paws.

            We were interrupted by Owen’s
bedroom door opening and his dad poked his head in.

            “Hey, Danny, your folks are back,
time to go home.” He said.

            “Okay.” I said, standing up. “Bye,
Owen.”

            “Bye, Danny.”

            We picked Danny up from Owen’s house
and took him home. He ended up falling asleep in the car on the way home, and I
had to carry him back inside. I managed to wake him up long enough to get
dressed in his pajamas, brush his teeth and put him to bed.

            I tucked him into bed, gave him a
kiss goodnight and turned off the light. As I stepped out I looked back at my
son asleep in bed and the fearful thought crossed my mind of losing him, of
coming home to an empty room in a few months. I couldn’t let that happen to
Danny or any other kid, I needed to fight when we went to Austin.

            I slowly closed Danny’s bedroom
door, determined to fight for my son when the time came.

My Patreon Editors

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