Patchwork Paradise

by Indra Vaughn

  Something sharp and unwelcome pierced my gut. I pressed my hand to my mouth and stepped back so I could lean against the wall out of sight. Why were my eyes stinging? Because they were so beautiful together? Because I’d never feel that way again? I inhaled a shuddery gasp and waited, but they hadn’t heard me. Heartsore and shaken, I sneaked into my room again. I didn’t sleep until dawn.

  Marjory stuck around for the entirety of the next day. She was lovely and fun and had an accent to die for. I must’ve given her the impression I didn’t like her, because every time I looked at her, all I saw was her naked body perched on top of Thomas. I could barely talk to her without turning scarlet.

  “What’s the matter with you?” Cleo snapped under her breath when we stood by the kayak-rental hut. The others were distracted with packing away their phones and wallets, and I’d been fiddling with a life vest that was too big.

  “What? What do you mean?”

  “If I didn’t know any better, I’d think grief has turned you straight and you’re crushing on Thomas’s date.”

  “I— He— No!” I grabbed her arm and dragged her to the side of the hut. The guy renting out the kayaks gave us an odd look, but he’d proven solidly he didn’t speak a lick of Flemish, so I didn’t care about him overhearing us. “I caught them, okay? Last night. On the couch. Doing it.”

  Cleo’s mouth turned into a perfect O as her eyes widened. “No way! Oh my God, what did he say?”

  “Huh? What did who say?”

  “Thomas! When you saw him!” she said, as if I were slow.

  “They didn’t see me. I turned and ran back to my room as soon as I realized what was going on.” Not entirely true. “But now all I can see when I look at her are . . .” I made an awkward cupping motion with my hands in front of my own chest. “And . . .” I repeated the move, but lower.

  Cleo started to laugh. And she couldn’t stop. And then she was clutching her knees, bent over, wheezing for breath.

  “It’s not funny,” I hissed.

  “What’s not funny?”

  I spun around and stood nose to chest with Thomas in his life vest. He was trying to look past me at Cleo. “I’m afraid of drowning,” I blurted out, and his sincere, dark gaze landed on my face. Oh God, why had I said that?

  “That’s nothing to laugh about, Cleo,” Thomas said gravely. He put his hand on my shoulder. “You and I can get a canoe and we’ll go in together. I used to be a lifeguard in high school. I promise you’ll be fine.”

  Behind me Cleo made a distressed noise, a sound I imagined might come from a dying seagull.

  “You really shouldn’t laugh at something like that, Cleo. I’m frankly surprised.” He spun on his heel and was gone.

  “Thanks a lot,” Cleo said, still wiping tears from her eyes. “Now he thinks I’m a total asshole.”

  “Well, you deserve it.”

  “And you get to sit in a canoe with him for the next three hours while Marjory hates you a little bit.”

  “Oh my God,” I groaned and followed her when she walked away from me, laughing again.

  I stopped fighting Thomas when he squeezed me into the fifth life vest, determined to find one that fit me like a glove. Marjory kept looking at us speculatively, while Cleo was on the verge of another burst of laughter. Imran stood by and watched like we were all crazy.

  Though I silently devised plans to tip Cleo’s kayak when she least expected it, I remembered she was my oldest friend. I gave her a sideways hug. “Love you, Cleo,” I whispered.

  “Aw, Ollie.” She hugged me back. “You’re gonna make me cry.”

  The sun beat hotly on our backs when we finally took to the water. I’d kept my T-shirt on underneath my life jacket, but Thomas had slipped his off. His tan skin glimmered with pearls of sweat as he pushed our canoe into the Semois and jumped into the back.

  “I take it you’ve done this before,” I said, looking over my shoulder.

  He gave me a toothy grin. “Yes, haven’t you?”

  “Well . . . not since I was eleven?”

  He laughed and pushed his oar in the water. “Like riding a bike,” he said in a way I didn’t believe at all.

  We did well for the most part, but when we hit a rapid, I panicked enough that if he hadn’t bought my fear of drowning before, he would now.

  “I swear, I’m fine!” I yelled over the rush of the water when he asked me for the tenth time if we needed to pull over to the shallower side. “I thought we were going to end up going backward. I’m good.” My oar got stuck behind a rock, and I winced as it yanked my shoulder back.

  “If you’re sure.”

  We were due to meet Marjory, Imran, and Cleo a little farther down the river, on a secluded beach I remembered from the school trip, but they’d struggled setting off, so they were pretty far behind us.

  “You think our picnic will still be dry?” I glanced over my shoulder, and Thomas nudged the waterproof container at his feet.

  “It’ll be dry and taste of plastic, no doubt.”

  “Yum. Fromage au plastique. My favorite.”

  Thomas laughed, then splashed me gently with his oar. I made an outraged noise and flicked my oar back, sending a huge wave of water over the edge of our little canoe. I stared at him, stunned as he sat there, dripping wet, eyes wide with disbelief.

  “I’m sorry! Oh shit, I didn’t mean to—”

  “Oh, you’re gonna pay, buddy.” Thomas dipped his oar in the water, and I could see his chest muscles flex beneath the life jacket, his biceps bulging and veiny as he fought the water, getting ready to splash me in retaliation. As I braced myself to get soaked to the bone, our boat slipped into a rapid, a narrow stream of fast-running water tucked out of sight under tree branches and bushes. I wasn’t fast enough to correct our course, and we bumped into a large rock, spinning sideways. Thomas’s oar got caught in a bunch of weeds, and our canoe tilted. The plastic drum with our lunch, phones, and wallets bumped the side of the boat, and over we went.

  I had enough time to think, Holy fucking crap, this is cold, and a pair of strong arms wrapped around my waist. “I’ve got you!” Thomas yelled over the roar of the water. “I’ve got you. You’re fine.”

  “I know—” I managed. “I know I’m fine. Seriously, I can—” The words died in my mouth. Thomas spun me around and held me against him, and the noise that came out of my mouth wasn’t dignified. No one had held me this close since Sam died, and my body craved it like air. I gasped for it as if I hadn’t breathed in a long time. He misunderstood me and soothed me as he dragged me toward calmer water.

  “It’s okay. There’s a little beach right there. Can you swim toward it? You should be able to stand soon. I’m so sorry, Ollie.” He tightened his grip on me a little more.

  I nodded, trying not to feel bereft as he let go of me. I knew I should’ve helped him drag the boat back in, but I felt weirdly paralyzed. At least I managed to rescue our lunch. I flopped down beside it.

  “Are you all right?” Thomas asked me after he pulled the canoe onto our little refuge. “I’m so sorry. That was my fault.” He sat down, reached for my hand, and grabbed it tightly. Maybe because I couldn’t look at him. “I should never have played around like that knowing what you told me earlier. I feel terrible.”

  Ah fucking hell. I couldn’t stand it.

  “I lied.” I stared at his neat fingernails, feeling every infinitesimal movement of his hand. The pressure of his grip grew lighter and lighter as I talked until eventually he let go. “I don’t have a fear of drowning. Cleo was teasing me because I saw you and Marjory, um, on the couch. Last night. And you wanted to know what she was laughing at, and I saw your life vest and the first thing I thought of was drowning. I never meant to make you feel bad, and I’m really sorry.”

  We sat side by side, looking at our own hands like two bumpkins. “So,” he said after a long, uncomfortable silence. “You saw us having sex?”

  I ducked my head. “Yes.”

  “And you’r
e not afraid of drowning.”

  “Well, I’d rather not, obviously. But being in the water or falling out of the canoe doesn’t scare me, no.”

  “So I acted like a total idiot grabbing you like that. And telling you you were going to be fine. You were fine all along.”

  My heart ached. “Thomas, I really didn’t mean to embarrass you or anything. I—”

  “It’s fine.” He rose to his feet in short, jerky motions, dusting me lightly with sand as he walked to the water. “The others are coming down the river.”

  “Thomas . . .”

  He shook his head, and I didn’t press it, because there came Cleo, laughing as she saw us. “You guys tipped over? That’s priceless. Hey, Imran! They capsized! Man, I wish I’d seen it.”

  We ate an only mildly plastic-y lunch. I kept quiet when Thomas suggested he and Marjory share the canoe the rest of the way. Imran thought nothing of it, but Cleo gave me an inquiring look. I didn’t acknowledge her, I climbed into a kayak, heart heavy and a knot of feelings in the pit of my stomach I couldn’t even begin to decipher.

  The worst thing about holidays is returning to work afterward. I didn’t mind work. At all, actually, but I needed to be in the groove, in the habit of it, and I hadn’t been for over a month.

  I was wrecked on Tuesday morning. The small hours had plagued me with strange thoughts again. I wondered if I should worry about thinking the way I did sometimes, but the worst of the darkness always fled when dawn came.

  It felt weird to get ready to go in the morning all by myself. No one to squabble with over the shaving cream. Sam wasn’t there to pretend to be grossed out when I used his deodorant stick. I could shower twice as long as usual and I’d still get to work in time. I ate breakfast by myself at seven thirty, and it tasted like ashes in my mouth.

  Somewhat appropriately, it was raining when I stepped outside. The tram was dank with wet bodies. I had a car but mainly used it for driving to the hospitals I needed to visit. If I had to go into the office, it was easier to take a tram than wrestle through Antwerp traffic and search for parking.

  At least school hadn’t started yet, or I’d be squashed among a bunch of teenagers in badly put on uniforms. Instead I got to ride quietly, staring at my reflection as the tram entered the dark tunnels leading to the center of Antwerp. I had no idea what waited for me at work, but I doubted they’d send me out to a hospital on day one. I cringed when I thought of seeing my coworkers and their pity.

  I wasn’t wrong. Lesley, our receptionist, started crying when she saw me. Ben Dalemans, my boss, gave me an awkward pat on the back, and everyone else pretty much avoided eye contact. Most of them had been at the funeral, and they’d seen me at my worst. It was embarrassing. I was glad to grab my morning coffee and hide in my small office with its view of the central station beneath me. If I squashed my face to the window, I could see the Antwerp Zoo, but I’d stopped trying that when I realized the windows only got washed once a year.

  I answered emails all day long. Slowly my coworkers trickled in to offer me their condolences and to tell me I should let them know if they could do anything for me. An evil part of me wanted to take advantage and ask them to bring me coffee and lunch and more coffee. But I heard Sam’s voice admonish me, so instead I smiled and thanked them and said that no, I was okay. Even the token homophobe came in to mumble sorry before he hurried away. He never set more than one foot into my office. Maybe he was afraid to get gay cooties.

  Don’t worry, I thought meanly. The gays don’t want your fat ass.

  And then it was evening, and I got to do the same bedraggled trek home again, only now the bodies were noticeably less well washed than they’d been that morning.

  The next day I did it all over again, and so I went on week after week. I pushed through life as if it were a slightly monotonous and far too long novel, a page-by-page review of dreary, everyday details no one wanted to read about.

  Simon called me once, asking if I had taken some time to think things through. I told him my answer was no. The house was mine by Sam’s will, and if they wanted to fight me on it, they could. When he told me I was being ungrateful, that they’d treated me like a son while all I had ever done was take advantage, his words cut deep. Simon had been like a father to me, and yet here he was, throwing me out of my own home.

  I heard the anger in his voice when he told me their lawyer would be in touch, and that he was disappointed Sam hadn’t meant more to me than this. He said Sam would be shocked if he knew how much pain I was putting his parents through. When he hung up, I threw my phone across the living room in rage, but all it did was bounce harmlessly on the couch.

  This house was my home. My last link to the man I had loved with more than just my heart. If Simon thought he could bully me into giving it up, he had another think coming.

  And suddenly Sam had been gone for six months, and I awoke on an early December morning not reaching for him, not wondering where he was. That split second when I believed he was still alive was gone. I waited for the tears, the grief, the anger, the bargaining, the acceptance of this new loss, but they didn’t come.

  “You need to go on a date,” Cleo told me at a bar one Saturday evening. I didn’t go to the Nine Barrels anymore, and if the others did, they never told me. If anyone had asked me a year ago whether Sam held our group’s friendship together, I’d have said no, but we’d undeniably seen a lot less of each other lately, and I felt guilty. I hadn’t tried very hard to reach out to my friends.

  Cleo and Imran had solidly made up during our trip to the Ardennes. Thomas had dated Marjory for another week or two before distance drove them apart. I had . . . worked.

  “A date?” I wrinkled my nose. The music was loud in this bar, and not at all to my taste, but finding a new hangout was proving difficult. I liked the trendy interior with the gray walls and the wooden floor, but the acoustics were all wrong and the music grated on my nerves. I was glad we’d found a seat hidden away in a corner.

  I looked around to see where the others were, stalling so I didn’t have to answer her. Imran was getting us more drinks, and Thomas was . . . somewhere. The two of them had barely said a word to each other, and their awkward silence made me feel like I’d start to hyperventilate. “I don’t know if I’m ready for that.”

  “You’re not. But you never will be until you start.” She set her wineglass down and leaned across the table to hold my hand. “You don’t have to jump into a relationship, Ollie. You need to go for a few dinners, have a few drinks. Meet people. It’s part of the healing process.”

  “You specializing in psychology or something?”

  It was a joke, but she turned red in the mood lighting. “No. I may have read up a little bit on how to deal with grief and move on.”

  I bristled. “I’ll move on in my own time, Cleo.”

  “But will you though?” Imran planted a Hoegaarden in front of me, and I made grabby hands at it. He slid it away from me. “She’s right. You need to get out of your shell again or you’ll be stuck in that house until it’s a mausoleum.”

  I could feel my anger build. How dare they put a time frame on my grief? I had opened my mouth to tell them exactly that when someone behind me said, “It’s been six months. Don’t push him.”

  I jumped a little and glanced up at Thomas, who slid a chair out and wouldn’t look at me. We hadn’t seen much of each other since we went to Bouillon. I’d told myself it wasn’t because of the canoe incident, but I’d been fooling myself.

  When I finally caught his eye, I mouthed, Thank you. The corners of his mouth lifted, seemingly reluctantly, and a foot bumped mine under the table. I smiled and reached for my beer, but Imran’s scowl made me uneasy.

  “I’ll think about it, okay?” I said, trying to appease them a little so we could just get on with our night like the friends we’d always been. “But I’m not promising anything.”

  Thomas studied my face, but I couldn’t read his expression at all.

 
“Okay, good,” Cleo said. “Now. On to Christmas. I need to know the when, the where, and are we doing secret Santa?”

  All the men groaned. “It’s Ollie and Sa—” Imran snapped his mouth shut.

  “No, you’re right,” I said before the silence could suffocate us all. “It was our turn and we can still do it at our house. In fact . . .” I warmed to the idea. The thought of filling my too empty, too quiet house with my friends made my heart feel lighter. Maybe for the last time, if Sam’s parents got their way. “I think that would be great. We could do it on the twenty-third or the twenty-sixth and everyone can stay the night.”

  “We’re going to see my family on the twenty-sixth,” Imran said, and Cleo nodded. “But the twenty-third works.”

  “In that case . . .” Cleo whipped her handbag out—or clutch, or whatever they called those wallet-sized things. Why she didn’t just carry her wallet was beyond me. She removed four pieces of paper. She held them up to me first. “Choose.”

  I mumbled something rude under my breath and pulled a name. She did the same to Imran and Thomas, then folded open her own name. She made a face, looked at Thomas’s, grinned, looked at mine, and snatched mine out of my hand.

  “Hey!” Imran said, laughing.

  “Well, what’s the point of that?” I asked. “It’s supposed to be secret Santa.”

  “I pulled that one last year. I want someone else.”

  I glanced at my name and frowned. Thomas. Hadn’t she had Sam last year?

  “So you know the rules,” Cleo went on before I could point out her mistake. “Don’t spend over twenty-five euros, and no gag gifts.”

  “Fine,” Imran groaned. “Whatever makes you happy, babe.”