Suzie’s House 338 : How to Define Yourself

“I can’t seem to get my feet under me.” Drew sat at the battered kitchen table and turned his cup of tea around and around. The delicate handle rubbed his thumb raw every time it came around. “I think I’ve got a hold of the hallucinations, but it seems like I just never feel like ME anymore.”

“It takes more than a cup of tea and a straight head to define us.” Trent eased into a chair across the table, moving at the jittery speed of old bones.

“Yeah? So you think I need to define myself?”

“I think maybe it’s about time you went home.”

Drew leaned into his palm and groaned. On a gorgeous summer day, he sat drinking tea. Tea! Out of some exquisite little antique no less. Yes, it was some outrageous medicine concocted by Sonoma, but he seemed to have developed a taste for it. He should be out working a case somewhere. Except he’d probably never have his head together enough to do it again. And then Trent handed him this again.

“You keep saying that,” Drew said. “You and Sonoma both. And then you say I’m welcome to stay here as long as I want. I don’t know if you’re fed up with me or not.”

“We aren’t saying it for our own sake. We’re saying it because we think it’s what will be best for you.”

“Yeah. Right.”

“Seriously. It’s not enough to be alive. People need a purpose, too. When you walked away from everything you’d ever done in your life to that point, you also lost your purpose.”

“So you think I should go back to the FBI?”

“Heaven forbid!” Trent waved his wrinkled, old hands around to ward off the suggestion like a sissy. The man really couldn’t care less what he looked like. As far as Drew knew, he never had.

“So… back to Suzie.” Drew sighed. He should have known. Both Trent and Sonoma were always on Suzie’s side.

“She can define you.”

“Yeah. As a worthless bum.” There was no way Drew could take that. It was bad enough that he saw himself that way. If Suzie did too…

“Is that really how she would see you?” Trent raised one, shaggy, grey eyebrow.

Drew spread his hands.

“Then maybe you need to make her see you as something else. The only one in this house who sees you as a worthless bum is yourself. Everyone else here sees you as a hard working geek.”

“What?”

“Well, you do computer repair for a living now, right? Plus that little web developer operation you’ve got going on the side seems to take a lot of your time. Mind you, I’m not the one to call you that.”

“Let me guess. Squirrel Girl?”

“Hey. You named her. It’s only fair she name you back.”

“Wait. She has a name for me?”

“Yep. You’re Geek Freak. Kind of has a nice ring to it.”

“Maybe it really is time I got out of here,” Drew muttered.

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