If he let it. If he wanted it.
Or you could just drink wine, have some small talk, and move on. Pete nodded to himself, thinking this last option was the best—and the safest—one there was.
Once they had ordered their entrées, and Jason had nearly eaten half the appetizers in two bites, the tenor changed. Jason ran a hand through his hair and settled his elbows on the table. That was bad etiquette, right? Pete mirrored Jason’s position and it was as if they were both leaning over the table to whisper secrets to one another.
“Okay, now that there’s some food and alcohol in me,” Jason began, “I feel better. And I have to tell you some things.”
“I think I already know them. You’re an exec at an oil company. I work at the museum, but I’m also an activist. Not as hardcore as I used to be, but… I don’t know if I can reconcile these two things when I’m dating you. Even right now it’s a bit of a struggle.”
“But you’re here now,” Jason said. “That’s gotta mean something, right?”
Pete shrugged.
“Also, I’m not an exec. I’m a lowly accountant,” Jason said. When Pete didn’t say anything else, Jason added, “You let people eat meat around you.”
“Well, yeah, I do. I don’t eat meat, though. And I wouldn’t eat meat for someone else.”
“I know. That makes sense. But I wouldn’t make you work in the oil company.”
Pete sighed. “Those aren’t fair comparisons. Meat is meat. Oil… destroys everything. Fracking tears the land apart.”
“Who said there would be fracking? Nothing’s been released on that yet.”
“Come on,” Pete said, narrowing his eyes. “There will be fracking. There’s always fracking now. It’s the one-stop cure to the economy.”
Jason’s face remained calm and stoic before he finally cracked. “Fine. I can’t say anything officially, but that’s a fair assumption you’ve gleaned. But that’s not what I was going to tell you.”
“No?” Pete steadied himself. Was he a seal clubber too? Did he drown kittens? God. Why did the cute ones have this negative shadow looming all around them?
“No. I usually wait longer than a week and a half to tell people these things, but I wanted to get it all out on the table right now since you’ve forced my hand a bit. So.” Jason took a breath and a swallow of wine to motivate himself. “Micah’s not my kid. Not biologically, anyway.”
“Oh. Whose is he, then?”
“He’s my sister’s kid. She’s not blood related to me either, though. Like I said, it’s a long story, but if you’re willing to listen with some wine, I’ll talk. It’s what I’m good at.”
Pete considered the table for a moment, blinking back to those days in front of the TV set. This date was just for a night. Pete was good at listening; his mother and Adam, his first love, had always told him so.
“Sure. Always up for a story.”
The relief that flooded Jason’s face was palpable. He wanted to make things right. Even if this was going to be some half-baked story about being a selfless individual who adopted lonely children from a failing orphanage, Pete was in for it all now.
“Okay, so,” Jason began, his voice rocky. “I grew up in foster care in Ontario. My parents were arrested on credit card fraud when I was about eight or nine. I was shuffled away and after a dozen placements or so, I landed in one home with a girl named Alison. She was the light of my fucking life. She was a year older than me but we were inseparable from about thirteen until she aged out of the system. After that, she waited for me so we could both apply for university at the same time. Get grants, share rooms, and basically, live the good life. She was gay too, and I think that helped us a lot. We were able to be one another’s beards but could still fall in love with whoever we wanted. Even if we made so many bad choices.” Jason laughed, as if remembering some of those flings.
“You two were never split up by foster care?”
“Oh, they tried. She was placed in a house when I was fifteen once, but she eventually came back to us. No one wants older kids. When we met, we were both teenagers and pretty much done for. The house where we met and stayed for our last few years was good. Very strict, but good. They never let us share rooms, obviously, but we were content being together whenever, always dreaming to get out.”
“I can relate,” Pete added, but didn’t dwell on his own memories of escaping. “So what happened? In university?”
“That’s the thing: I got into school. She didn’t. What made things worse was that she wrote my entry essay. She wrote both of ours since she always did the English homework when we got it, while I always did the math homework. We were a perfect pairing until it suddenly didn’t work. And I always felt so, so bad. Because while I got to go and get a degree in economics on a scholarship, she was stuck in dead-end jobs.”
“She couldn’t go to university on loans?” Pete suggested. “I know it’s hard, but there are other ways to get around it.”
“There are. But she didn’t want to go into debt and she thought the school didn’t want her. She felt stuck because she’d always been stuck. We still lived together when I started school, but she’d stay out all night. Be frustrated about everything. And I understood it. I really did. But before I finished, she was gone.”
“That’s a shame.” Pete wanted to be more surprised about Alison’s reaction in the story, but he wasn’t. Pete had gone to school for a couple years to get a degree in computer sciences and only because everyone else on the reserve wanted him to; whenever they had tried, they’d not been able to complete anything. Only Pete and a woman named Maisy had, and though it should have felt like an accomplishment to finish, it never did for Pete. He was pretty sure the envelope with his diploma was still on his desk in his apartment, unopened. Sometimes, he’d do IT work for the museum newsletter and the layouts for The Environmental Crew’s zines, but that was it.
When Pete realized he’d been too quiet, he asked, “And Micah? How does he fit into this?”
“That’s jumping ahead a little too much,” Jason said. “When I got my degree, I moved out of our place, effectively making Alison move out too. She hadn’t been there in three months, though, so I figured she’d found a place to live. As it turned out, she had—but it was with a woman who she’d been in an on-again and off-again relationship with because she was abusive. Fast-forward a couple years and the two are married, but Alison realizes she needs to get out. Because her wife controlled the finances, the only way to afford leaving and then afford a divorce lawyer was to do some pretty unfortunate jobs. By the time the ordeal was over, Alison was pregnant. She didn’t know who Micah’s biological father was.”
“Oh,” Pete said, understanding instantly. “So why you, then?”
“Because as soon as she realized she was pregnant, she said her world changed. She reconciled with her mother—who had been a drug addict and in and out of the prison system so much that Alison was left to foster care but was now clean—and settled down with her. She reconnected with me when she was about six months pregnant with Micah. At first it was just to say hi again and we could get the baggage out of the way, but we ended up talking like we always did.” Jason paused for a moment, his voice dropping an octave as he became emotional. “I loved her. I always loved her. Never like a husband, but we were perfect partners, if that makes sense.”
“It does. Community and family are both important, even if they’re not formed by blood relations. We’re not built to survive without them.”
“Yes, exactly,” Jason said, eyes alight. “That’s what Alison’s mom always said to us. She understood our relationship right away and never tried to make it into something it wasn’t.
“Anyway, Micah was born and Alison was in love with him. We all decided to get a house together a few months after his birth, so Alison, her mom Adelaide, Micah, and me could be a big family. I was dating a guy casually at the time, but he hated kids, so that never worked out. When Alison had to put a name on the birth
certificate, she put my name instead of leaving it blank. We’d always acted as one another’s beards for years now, and if Micah was sick or needed to be picked up, she didn’t want me to be stopped by some bureaucratic tape—especially if we were all going to play house together.”
“That makes a lot of sense, actually,” Pete said. “I know a lot of the red tape is for protection, but sometimes I wonder who is really being served.”
“I know, right? So Alison’s decision made sense to me. I loved it. Micah made me clean up my act when he was born, too. I was working at a bank and not really doing anything with my life. So I got a better job, better hours, made proper investments, and things were going well. Then… she died. She just died. It was in a random car wreck, and six months later, Adelaide had a stroke. It was one thing after another until I was the only family Micah had. We had gone from this strange house full of misfits raising this boy, to just me being overwhelmed day and night by a two-, almost three-, year-old’s incessant cries.”
“I’m sorry.” When Pete’s words came out flat, he slid his hand across the table. Jason took it and squeezed. He visibly tamped down whatever emotion he was feeling and steadied himself.
“It’s fine. I’m fine. I knew even then, during the darkest times, that there was no way I was giving up. I couldn’t give Micah the life that Alison and I had in foster care. That cycle was going to end with us.”
Jason’s words were cut short by their waiter bringing their entrées. Pete shot the waiter a stern look, thinking that this was an awful moment to break up. But the few seconds seemed to do Jason well, and by the time they were set up with cutlery and napkins, he was ready to talk again with a steadier voice.
“Anyway, I didn’t want to give you my entire history, but I do want you to know that’s why I’m here in Whitehorse and working for Eakon Oil. I started out as a random guy in payroll for them when Micah was born. The job was easy and the money helped with the house since I was the main breadwinner until Alison found a better job. Then when I found out it was just me and Micah, I had built up enough credibility to be promoted, and when they suggested the Yukon, I had to take it.”
“Because it pays better? Even if it ruins the environment at the same time?”
Jason’s face reacted to the sting of Pete’s words. “Yes, it pays better and that money is for Micah’s future. I owe him. I owe Alison because I would’ve never been here without her. It’s the least I can do. I know it ruins the environment. I’m not dumb. But I’m also not to blame. I’m a cog in a machine, and yeah, I know I could leave the machine. But I won’t for Micah.”
“I know you think you’re giving him a future. But what if what your company does makes it so he has no future? What if all the environmental damage that Eakon does is irreversible, and the world that Micah grows up into isn’t the same world you thought you were giving him? I don’t know how you reconcile something like that. It seems impossible.”
“It can be. I’ve thought of all this before, you know.”
“You have?”
“Oh, yeah. I had to. Having a kid changes the way you look at time, or something like that. Again, I’m not the one who was good with words, that was Alison, but she thought about these things all the time. She was always so much better at expressing it than me.”
“And what did she say?” Pete asked, feeling himself drawn to Alison though he never had—and never would—meet her. “What was her way of dealing with the future?”
“You ever hear of cognitive dissonance?” When Pete shook his head, Jason went on. “It’s holding two separate viewpoints at the same time, though they often counter each other. I revel in it. I can be two things at once and that’s fine. I’m aware I’m destroying things, but I’m also building them. I know I am. I have Micah and that’s all that matters.”
“But cognitive dissonance can’t be a solution. What kind of message does that send to Micah about the world? That it’s okay to destroy something if you think you’re building something? That two wrongs can somehow make a right?”
Jason shrugged, glancing down at his smoked salmon entrée.
“I’m sorry,” Pete mumbled when the silence became unbearable. “I shouldn’t tell you how to parent.”
“You’re probably right about that because you probably don’t have kids. Unless you do and I’m missing something? You’re really great with Micah, so I wouldn’t be that surprised if you’re a dad,” Jason said, smiling slightly. Pete hated how much he loved that smile, especially after Jason’s story gave his genuine grin more emotional resonance. “You know, Micah was asking all sorts of questions about you when I told him who I was going out with.”
“You told him you were with me?”
“Oh yeah. He knows it’s a date too. I try to tell him as much as I can about as many things as I can. Not exactly treating him like an adult—because that’s too much pressure for a kid—but treating him with respect by not glossing over too many things. Even if he doesn’t understand what I mean when I explain stuff about the weather or how to cook the food I’m making, I’ll tell him because I figure he may actually want to know one day.”
“That’s a good idea, but no, I don’t have kids. I just turned thirty.”
“That’s my age. And Alison had him when she was twenty-seven, so, there’s no exact age for these events. So has your job given you more experience with kids? Is that why Micah likes you?”
Pete chuckled. “I have a few brothers and sisters with kids. I’m around them a lot with my family and with work. Which is fun too, since I was given a job offer for next season and given a raise.”
“That’s great. Hey. Cheers.” Jason held up his wine glass and they clinked. “That’s great about the museum, but it reminds me. I wanted to say earlier that I don’t have the right to tell you what to do with your activism.”
“What do you mean?”
“Your activism is cool. I don’t know a thing about it from your perspective, though, so I can’t give you advice on it the way you can’t really give me long-term parenting advice. We both have our own priorities and agendas with those topics. And that’s fine. I want to respect those boundaries with you, and I hope you can respect this decision with me, because I think you’re really sweet. And I’m enjoying this meal.”
The flashes of gold in Jason’s eyes made Pete swoon once again, along with his words. “What do you mean, though? I think you’re cute too, but how can we do anything but this dinner? We’re too different.”
“I don’t think we are, though. Or at least, I want to find out. Do you?”
Pete became absorbed by his fettuccini Alfredo. He wanted to say yes—of course he did. Now that he knew Jason’s story, he wanted to hear the smaller details about Alison, about Adelaide, and what their first house together looked like. He also wanted to share his stories, but Pete knew that couldn’t happen unless they were together. And how could an activist and someone who worked at an oil company be together? It all seemed so ridiculous until Pete thought of the small TV and the romantic comedies. Of his dreams as a kid, his dad’s art, and his mother’s words about community. Jason wasn’t a random oil man with no idea of loyalty or commitment. He was someone who had been torn from his home, like Pete, and made the best out of what he was given. So why couldn’t they do that together? Pete listed the pros and cons in his head in a haze; he nearly didn’t hear Jason when he spoke.
“What if we agreed to not talk about my job and your activism?”
“What?”
“What if we agreed that, whenever we were together, we didn’t mention the things that make our cognitive dissonance harder to bear?” Jason said. “I won’t mention my job and you won’t mention the Environmental Nation. Yeah?”
“The Environmental Crew,” Pete corrected. “What about your boss, though?”
“What about him? He doesn’t have to know who I’m dating.”
“But won’t it be a big deal?”
“Will it? I’m fine with not t
alking about it, because you know, I kind of agree with you. The world is changing. The environment is in trouble. But I just… can’t do anything about it. So let’s forget for a while.”
“Cognitive dissonance, huh?” Pete sipped his wine again, thinking the option over. He wanted to try, that was for sure. And it wasn’t like Jason was outright denying the effect his work had on the place where Pete lived and had lived all his life. He was a cog in a machine, and if Jason left, someone else would take his place. But then Jason would move and neither one of them would figure out if this relationship was worth anything. There hadn’t even been a good kiss yet. Just a peck on the cheek. Pete flushed thinking of the small contact because he wanted so, so much more.
“Maybe,” Pete said. “I’m still thinking.”
“Well, okay. I brought Plan B just in case.” Jason reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out an envelope. He slid it across the table. “It’s a lot number near the museum where they have open tree planting sessions. I found it in my Google searches this afternoon. I figured I better even out the scales on the harm I’m doing somehow, so why not plant trees?”
Pete laughed. He examined the envelope, still not believing the gesture to be real. “How do you plant trees in the fall, though? Shouldn’t you wait?”
“I know. This ticket is for Micah and me to go in the spring. It’s too soon to invite you, maybe, but I want to show you my dedication to his future—and ours too, I suppose. I’m thinking beyond this dinner. As good as it is, because my food is getting cold and I’m going to have to take it home anyway, but I don’t want the night to be over.”
Pete looked at the brochure. Jason had this in his pocket the whole time. Plan B? How many plans did Jason have up his sleeve for times like this? Pete heard the advice of his mother in his ears. Always be good to your word. Always, always. If he said yes to this now, he’d have to go—even if he and Jason ended up flopping like so many of his affairs in the past.
Chase This Light Page 6