by G. S. Wiley
“What?” Kim glanced over. “Oh. Yes. Of course we did. Everyone does.”
“Everyone?”
Kim nodded. “There was a feature in the Lookout Online a few months ago. Really went into John’s past, poor man.”
Paul frowned. “I didn’t… I mean, I never….”
“You never come home,” Kim said. It wasn’t a judgment, just a fact, and Paul couldn’t argue with it.
“And now,” Nana announced, when the candles had finally been extinguished, “I have a surprise for everyone.” She let go of her children’s hands, although they stayed beside her. “Natalia, John, and I are creating a scholarship to help Aboriginal children in Saskatchewan attend art school.”
“Art school?” Paul asked, as applause rippled through the crowd.
“John’s an artist,” Kim explained. “You really don’t get home much.”
Clearly not. Plastering on a smile, he clapped along with everyone else as another precut birthday cake appeared from the kitchen and a slice was thrust into his hands.
By five o’clock, the party was winding down. Paul spoke to Minnie for a while, about her father’s art among other things, but his subtle, casual questioning revealed John had no interest in working with a gallery in Toronto. They left soon after that, and Nana’s friends began to slowly trickle away.
“I’m tired,” Nana announced abruptly, as always, grabbing Paul by the arm as he stood in conversation with his mother. “Take me back to the van.”
She held on to his arm as they walked, although she clearly didn’t need the support. As they emerged from the Legion into the afternoon sun, Nana said, “I mean what I say. Your generation is lucky. If I’d been allowed to marry John’s father—”
“We never would have been born,” Paul broke in, annoyance threatening to overtake him. She’s a hundred years old, he reminded himself. If they had an argument in a parking lot, he was going to come out looking like the villain.
“I suppose. But I would have been happy. That’s what’s important in life, Paul. We didn’t used to believe that, but it’s the truth.” The van was across the dusty dirt parking lot, St. Thomas Retirement Home written on its side. “Just be happy. People your age don’t have any excuse not to be.”
Paul restrained himself from rolling his eyes. “All right. Thanks, Nana.” A woman stepped out of the driver’s seat as he and Nana approached.
“Hi, Mrs. Kostyshyn. How was the party? Did John make it?” She held out her hand. As Nana transferred herself over, the driver looked at Paul. “Paul Thompson?”
Paul turned to her. She was middle-aged, with short hair and glasses and a St. Thomas sweatshirt.
“I can’t believe it.” The woman smiled. Paul racked his brains. “Daisy McLaughlin. Well, Daisy Vincenzio-Santorini now.”
“Daisy.” Paul wouldn’t have recognized her with a gun to his head.
“Didn’t expect to see you here.”
“This is my grandmother,” Paul explained. Daisy helped Nana up into the van. There was a wedding ring on her finger, he noticed, and a necklace with three charms—two boys and a girl—around her neck.
“Oh, I know that,” Daisy said airily. “I just didn’t think you’d ever come back.”
“Happiness,” Nana repeated, staring at Paul like she was imparting the secrets of the universe. “There’s no excuse, Pavel.” She turned to Daisy. “Don’t make that seat belt too tight. You just about cracked my ribs on the way down here.”
“Sorry, Mrs. Kostyshyn.” Daisy raised her eyebrows at Paul, like they were compatriots. She fastened Nana’s seat belt and slammed the van door shut behind her, like a zookeeper locking an animal into a cage.
Back inside the Legion, Dylan was off to one side, a glass of punch in his hand. He smiled when he saw Paul. “Hey, that’s amazing news about your grandmother’s scholarship. I know a couple of kids who’d really be able to use the money.”
“Great.” It was. It was, in fact, very likely the most selfless thing his grandmother had done in a century.
“I’m just waiting for my parents.” They were talking to another couple a short distance away. “I’m taking them back to the farm, and then I’ll probably head home.”
“Okay.” Paul hesitated. He remembered, suddenly, doing the same the night of their high school grad, unsure whether he wanted to go to the after-party until everyone else bundled him along. Now there were plenty of reasons not to go. He could go to his hotel, look at the Polish artist’s work and try to love it, at least a little. He could catch up on his emails. He could spend time with his mother and sister. “Maybe…,” he began.
Dylan looked at him.
No excuse, Paul thought. “Do you still want to stop by your uncle’s place?”
Dylan grinned. “Sure. You won’t believe what he’s done with it.”
That wasn’t an overstatement. What had once been a health hazard was now the end product on a home renovation show, the kind of thing Paul only watched while sitting in a dentist’s waiting room. The porch had been transformed into an enclosed sunroom with wicker furniture and cushions, a water cooler sat in the kitchen, and little shell-shaped soaps rested in a row on the edge of the sunken tub in the bathroom.
“He rents it out on Airbnb,” Dylan said, as they walked in, the hardwood floor of the entryway dyed a spectrum of colors from the small stained-glass window above the door. Where the sagging sofa had once been was a perfectly matched suite of brown suede furniture, protected from fading by white drop cloths. Dylan removed the cloths, folding them neatly as he sat on the end of the sofa.
“Does he get a lot of business?” There was a time when Paul would have doubted anyone had the slightest desire to come to Saskatchewan, but that was before he’d had passable sushi and more than passable locally made wine.
“It’s booked solid all summer,” Dylan said.
“All summer?” The province had changed, clearly, but Paul couldn’t quite believe that.
“Check out the back,” Dylan suggested. Paul did, quashing an uprising of envy as he passed through a kitchen that was not only newer and more spacious than the one in his apartment, but much more fashionably decorated.
As he stepped out the back door, Paul saw at once what Dylan meant. Paul knew better now than to expect a scrubby little yard with a few beer cans scattered here and there. Still, he blinked as he stood on a deck so new he could still smell the cedar. A hot tub with a cover occupied one corner of the garden. Beyond that was a large expanse of well-kept green grass rolling down a gentle slope to the shimmering lake.
He’d forgotten Saskatchewan could be like this—more than the wide prairie of flat roads and cornfields and big skies. This was something else entirely. This was a vista to rival Algonquin Park, or the Great Lakes, or anywhere else in the country.
“Isn’t it great?” Dylan came up beside him. A green canoe bobbed on the lake, tied up to a dock at the bottom of the sloping hill. Paul, who had never canoed in his life, felt a sudden incomprehensible and completely ridiculous urge to get in it.
“That night, after grad….” Obviously, this, at least, had been there then. A lake didn’t spring up overnight, or even over twenty years. But Paul couldn’t remember it at all.
“Yeah. I guess we’re lucky nobody drowned. We were all totally shitfaced. You want a beer?”
“Okay.” Paul felt too stunned to say anything else. He sat on a weathered Muskoka chair and looked at the view. This is art, he thought, then felt stupid for such a pretentious thought. That didn’t make it any less true, though.
As he held up his phone, snapping a couple of pictures to take back to Cleo, Dylan reemerged with two brown bottles in his hand. “My uncle and I make it ourselves,” he said. He looked a little embarrassed once he’d said it, like he hadn’t really meant to admit it. “It’s just a hobby, nothing special. Let me know what you think, anyway.”
Paul took a drink. “It’s great.” It wasn’t a complete lie. He’d had better craft bee
rs, usually at hopelessly hipsterish events in Cabbagetown or Queen Street West, but he’d had a lot worse there too.
“Yeah?”
Paul nodded.
Dylan let out a breath, like he’d been really concerned about Paul’s opinion. “Listen,” he said, “I’ve got to make a confession.”
Paul stiffened, his hand gripping the bottle, but he said nothing.
“That night we came here? That was the first time I ever kissed anyone.”
“What?” Paul couldn’t believe that. “Didn’t you date… someone?” His mind was blank as to who, but he was certain there had been a dramatic breakup just days before graduation. It had been the talk of the school.
“Mary Elizabeth Jones,” Dylan confirmed, in the same tone of voice, Paul thought, as one might use to recall a bad case of shingles. “She wouldn’t let me kiss her. She was saving it for marriage.”
“Kissing?”
Dylan shrugged. “Don’t ask me. I think it was a cover story, anyway. Last I heard, she was living with a woman in Moose Jaw.” His smile turned dry. “So I guess maybe we were perfect for each other after all.”
Paul took another drink of beer. It kept him from having to reply, to that or to Dylan’s first statement.
“I know I apologized before, Paul, but I’ve always felt like such a dick for the way I treated you. That surprise kiss, and the queer thing, and writing on the bathroom wall….”
“You wrote that?” Paul had always suspected younger kids.
“I was a dick,” Dylan repeated. “I don’t have any excuse, other than that I was completely in love with you and I had no idea what to do about it.”
Paul glanced over. Dylan looked back, meeting Paul’s gaze despite the deep redness that had come across his cheeks.
Paul opened his mouth, realized he had nothing to say, and shut it again.
“Fuck,” Dylan said suddenly. It summed up Paul’s feeling quite nicely. “I don’t want to embarrass you or anything. It’s just, I guess, after all this time, I thought you should know.”
“It would…,” Paul began, then swallowed. “It would have been a useful thing to know back then, I think.” Or maybe it would have made things worse. It was impossible to say.
“I know.” Dylan shook his head. “I’m sorry. I was too afraid then, and for a long time afterward. I just….”
“Do you remember when we were in grade one?” Paul blurted out before he could think twice about it. Before he could really think it out at all.
“Grade one?”
“I was scared to go to the washroom on my own. You told me to imagine I was Batman, because he wouldn’t be scared.” Out loud, that sounded even stupider than it did in Paul’s head. He pushed on. There was no going back now. “That helped me. I….” Paul sighed. “I wish I could have helped you the same way. I would have tried, anyway. If I’d known.” And who knew? Maybe Dylan wouldn’t have needed to be threatened by Paul’s father to get his life on a meaningful track.
A breeze came up, blowing over the lake. It ruffled through Dylan’s hair at the same time it whispered cold over Paul’s skin, making him shiver.
“Paul.”
He looked at Dylan. He couldn’t, he found, look away.
“Can I ask you something I should have asked twenty years ago?”
Anticipation curled in Paul’s chest, a near-painful fluttering that was less like butterflies and more like an attack of swarming bees.
Dylan swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. “Can I kiss you?”
Paul nodded. He sat still in the Muskoka chair as Dylan leaned toward him.
It wasn’t quick and confusing, like last time. A heady element of confusion was still there; Paul couldn’t deny that. Dylan seemed hesitant, a little, keeping his lips shut and his touch light, until Paul pulled him forward and pressed their mouths together.
When they broke apart, Paul was out of breath, dizzy, and flushed-feeling. The blush across Dylan’s face had deepened further, but he smiled. “I have another question.”
“What’s that?”
“Want to try out the hot tub?”
AT EIGHTEEN years old, making out in a hot tub would have been a fantasy come to life for Paul. In honor of his younger self, and in appreciation of Dylan, Paul threw himself into it more fully than he usually would have with someone new. Normally he held back, hesitant to reveal too much too soon, but it felt like he’d known Dylan for years. He had. It was just that all those years were more than two decades earlier.
Dylan seemed more than happy to return the favor. He pulled Paul onto his lap, their cocks fitted snugly together. Paul ran his hands up Dylan’s arms, tracing over a Roughriders tattoo on his right bicep, then snaked around Dylan’s neck. Dylan leaned forward to kiss him again, his cock twitching eagerly. Paul pushed back, pressing their chests together as he let his fingers toy with the edge of Dylan’s hair.
“We can’t have sex in here,” Paul said, genuinely regretful. But he’d tried it once, years ago, and while it had seemed like a good idea at the time, it was far less comfortable and far more awkward than porn had led him to believe.
“I know.” Dylan kissed him again, nipping at his lips.
Despite the heat, Paul shuddered.
“My uncle will kill me if we screw up his filter.”
“We could go inside….”
Dylan was up before Paul finished the sentence, wrapping a towel around his waist and holding out a gallant hand to help Paul from the hot tub.
Paul hadn’t seen the bedroom the last time he was there, but he imagined, given the state of the rest of the cabin, that it had also been considerably improved since then. A large mass-produced print of some colorful Mondrian-style design hung over the large bed, which was made up in neutral white bedsheets with a Hudson’s Bay blanket folded at the foot. A pine chest of drawers and matching blanket box completed the bland, almost hotel-room-like look; perfect, Paul assumed, for a place rented out on Airbnb.
He didn’t have much chance to admire the room. Dylan came up behind him, wrapping his arms around Paul’s waist. He mouthed at Paul’s neck, leaving a trail of kisses behind him. When he reached Paul’s shoulders, Paul turned and kissed him back, letting his towel fall onto the beige Berber carpet.
It seemed crass, at their age, to inquire about Dylan’s experience. He’d clearly had enough. He lifted Paul onto the bed with an ease that went straight to Paul’s groin, covering Paul with his body and holding Paul’s hands up on either side of his head. Paul wrapped his legs around Dylan’s waist and was rewarded by a groan into his mouth and a tightening of the grip on his wrists.
Paul couldn’t last. It had been too long. When Dylan slid down, his mouth barely brushing Paul’s cock, Paul grunted, too close to coming to do anything but squeeze his eyes shut and warn him. “Dylan….”
“It’s okay,” Dylan replied, circling his tongue around the head of Paul’s cock. He opened his mouth, sliding less than halfway down Paul’s shaft before Paul came with a speed that would have embarrassed an eighteen-year-old.
When Paul recovered, his face was hot, and he was sure he was blushing.
“Hey, it’s okay.” Dylan’s voice was soft. His cock was not, pressing into Paul’s thigh.
Reaching down, Paul rubbed him slowly, sliding his foreskin back and forth until Dylan gasped into his ear. I know him, Paul reminded himself. I’ve known him for a long time. Then he said, “Does your uncle supply condoms?”
He didn’t, which Paul supposed was a good thing. But Dylan had one in his wallet. “I don’t carry it around all the time,” he said, as he handed it over.
“Not that many opportunities in Regina?” Paul joked. He could feel his flush subsiding a little, now that he was taking control of the situation.
“Not really,” Dylan admitted. He smiled. He was really good-looking, Paul decided, but he’d always known that.
Paul slipped the condom onto Dylan’s cock. It had been a while, but before Paul c
ould mention that they wouldn’t be able to exactly rush into anything, Dylan flipped him over with gym teacher skill, until Paul was on his stomach with Dylan kneeling behind him.
He expected it, but it was still a shock when Dylan’s warm, wet mouth landed on Paul’s back. Clutching the sheets in his hand, Paul tried not to whimper as Dylan moved down, slowly, planting kisses lower and lower. He held it in until Dylan’s large hands parted his cheeks and gently, Dylan pressed his tongue against his hole. A groan slipped out, loud enough that Paul would have been even more embarrassed if he hadn’t been consumed by the pleasure unfurling within him.
Paul felt a huff of laughter against his backside, then Dylan’s tongue slipped in deeper. Paul’s cock twitched gamely, although he knew it would be a while before he could go for a second round. That didn’t matter. At that moment, Paul would have been utterly content to do nothing more, ever, than lie here with Dylan’s talented tongue in his ass. Dylan licked and sucked, over and over, until Paul was breathless. He shook his head, dislodging an irritating lock of hair that sweat had stuck to his skin.
Dylan said, “Okay?”
Paul nodded, and the tip of Dylan’s cock pressed inside him.
It was big. Bigger than he’d taken in a while, even if he didn’t count his recent dry spell, but Paul was too ready for that to bother him much. Dylan slipped in with relative ease, pausing every few moments until Paul nodded—or groaned, or yelled—for him to continue. When Dylan nudged his prostate, Paul saw stars, and as Dylan began to move in rhythm, the near-unthinkable happened: Paul grew hard again, his cock straining as Dylan fucked him. Dylan reached down and took him in hand, stroking in time with his thrusts. When Dylan came, his lips pressed to Paul’s neck and his hand around Paul’s cock, Paul shuddered and joined him. It wasn’t an impressive release. It was barely a release at all, but it was there. Paul, exhausted and panting, marveled at himself and at Dylan, as Dylan slid out and collapsed beside him.
Paul could count on one hand the number of times he’d wanted—actually really wanted—to stick around after sex. It had always been with people he’d been dating for several weeks, if not months. Still, when Dylan came back into the bedroom with a washcloth and two bottles of water, Paul pictured them spending the night there in the cabin, and maybe the entirety of the following day too.