Chapter 36
It was the last he heard of Oliver. There were no more messages flashing on his answering machine and no more invitations delivered by courier. Aberlour had asked for radio silence, and he’d gotten it.
Life got easier in some respects. Days passed and though he never quite forgot—how could he ever?
—grief settled over him like a heavy blanket.
Not quite comfortable, slightly suffocating, but—familiar and protective almost. He acknowledged that he really wasn’t living.
Not as he had done previously, but he didn’t feel like he was dying either, so it was a distinct change.
Bart helped.
Something about the blind, sassy, over the top, proud gay man, healed parts of Aberlour in ways he didn’t fully understand.
Gradually giving in, Aberlour began accepting his invitations.
He met Bart’s fiancé Michael, and they frequently went out for drinks after work.
They were friends, he supposed, even though it was nothing like the tight bond he’d had with Team Specter, it was—good. Easy. Undemanding.
At least, he wasn’t completely alone.
Not quite two years later, on a Saturday in late June, Bart talked him into attending his first drag show.
Aberlour checked his reflection in his rearview mirror again.
He probably should have shaved. Or—maybe tried to style his hair?
It was falling every which way. Too long on the top and in the back.
His nose was peeling from a recent sunburn, and the noticeable bags under his eyes were darker than the grey of his eyes. It was pitiful. He was pitiful.
He wasn’t sure why he’d accepted Bart’s request that he attend. A moment of weakness no doubt. Bart’s suggested going in that casual, charmingly persuasive way of his that Aberlour found it difficult—well, okay, impossible—to refuse.
It was really a drag show brunch. He was going to a drag brunch with Bart and a few of his friends. He hoped Carlos was looking down and mocking him. He would have loved this.
The Brunch Restaurant was hosting several special events in June—Pride month—as Bart had explained. They were collecting money for an LGBTQ+ foundation, and Bart’s fiancé had helped to organise it. He’d been beaming with pride as he’d invited Aberlour to join him and his friends.
He still was today.
When Aberlour arrived, Bart sat alone at a table, leaning back in his chair, looking relaxed and perfectly comfortable.
The bedazzled cane he carried everywhere was folded up on the table.
He looked good. Young and full of life. Wearing something colorful with ruffles that fit him perfectly, his dark brown hair styled to flatter his face.
How he managed to fix his hair so well when he couldn’t see mystified Aberlour.
“Hey, there you are,” Bart said, as Aberlour approached his table.
Another unworldly skill was his ability to quickly identify Aberlour as he walked up to him. Perfect hearing, he supposed, had its perks.
“Said I’d come,” he answered, a little too gruffly.
“And right on time, I’m guessing,” he observed with a smug grin as he pressed a button on his phone and a female voice intoned “10:00 a.m.”
“Old habits!” Aberlour snorted and laughed.
“Come on, sit, the others will get here soon.” Bart used his foot to push out the chair next to his.
A few minutes later, Bart’s fiancé Michael dropped by their table, but he was quickly pulled away to help with the final arrangements for the show. He looked stressed but excited, and the smile he pulled from Bart as he kissed his cheek was a testament to their mutual affection.
“How’d you meet?” Aberlour asked, as they waited for the others. There was a mimosa in his hand, and it wasn’t his first. He didn’t normally ask questions or dig for information. Bart usually did enough of that for both of them. The champagne bubbles were obviously doing a number on his head.
“Michael and I? College.” Bart answered, smiling fondly at the memories.
“You went to college?” he asked, then immediately regretted sounding so surprised.
Bart snorted and laughed.
“Still am. Studying economics with a minor in music,” he answered with pride.
“Really? What about the fair?”
“Summer job to make some money. My brother used to work there in high school. I knew the owner, so when I pitched him the idea, he heard me out.” He shrugged and smiled.
“Hmm.”
Aberlour looked around the restaurant. Staff was weaving around the tables, taking orders. The show was set to start in 15 minutes. Bart’s friends had yet to arrive.
“Michael is a Communications major, minoring in musical theater. We met at rehearsal. I was leading the orchestra, and he was a pain in my ass.”
Aberlour burst into laughter.
“Sounds about right,” Aberlour nodded, sipped his mimosa, and then asked, “Was he out?”
“He was studying musical theater,” Bart replied drolly, like the answer should have been obvious, and maybe it was. “But I wasn’t,” he said, surprising Aberlour.
“Really?”
“What?”
“I just—figured you’d always been out,” Aberlour said.
“You saying I look gay?” Bart baited with a smirk.
“As the day is long,” Aberlour replied.
Bart always laughed at Aberlour’s jokes like it would be his last laugh. Head thrown back, throat exposed, the sound loud and unabashed. It reminded Aberlour of Oliver each and every time.
Aberlour loved to make Bart laugh.
“Here I am,” said a petite brunette as she sat down across from Bart. She was around his age, sporting a septum piercing, and had a sleeve tattoo on her right arm.
“Anna!” Bart exclaimed happily. “So, was traffic hell today?”
“Oh, stop! I’m barely late,” she protested.
“You’re the first of the tardy gang, in any case,” Bart said, although he didn’t sound the least bit upset about it.
“Anna, this is my friend Gavin Aberlour.” Bart waved a hand in Aberlour’s direction.
“Heck of a mouthful! Nice to meet you,” she said with a charming smile.
Aberlour liked her instantly.
“I’m Anna, best friends with this asshole since 2nd grade when he poured a vanilla pudding cup over Evelyn Dumphrey’s hair,” she told him.
Aberlour shot Bart a surprised look and chuckled.
“She deserved it,” Bart nodded approvingly.
Anna, or A, as Bart called her, was a florist with her own little shop off Main Street. She had just recently broken up with her girlfriend, and was entering her hot girl summer era, which Bart said would probably only last half a week.
“Lesbians,” he’d said, snorting derisively. “They meet, fall in love, adopt a cat, U-Haul into each other’s lives only to break up before the month is up.”
Aberlour had expected Anna to put up a good argument, but she’d just shrugged and agreed.
The next to show up had been Dollie, who, if Aberlour was keeping up, was actually Bart’s friend from high school. They’d reconnected in college, and Bart had helped Dollie through her transition. She was a trans woman, and her conservative parents had not been, to put it simply, “down with it.”
Aberlour had smiled and pretended to understand the words being thrown around.
Then Riley and Paul arrived, and Aberlour had officially lost the plot of the entire day.
Pansexual, demi-sexual, polyamorous, trans, FTM, MTF, top surgery. It was like, all at once, Aberlour had lost the ability to speak English. He’d participated as best he could but had fumbled like an idiot anytime a question was asked.
“What are your pronouns?” Riley asked, after mentioning that theirs were they/them.
He’d stared at them, then kicked Bart in the shin for help.
“Aberlour’s a little new to the game, I think he/him pretty much sums it up,” he’d said and Aberlour had felt like kissing him.
“Sorry,” Aberlour apologized, hoping not to offend anyone.
“Hell no, no sorry needed! You’re here! That’s amazing,” Riley said reassuringly, shooting Aberlour a glittery wink.
Riley was a gender-fluid attorney, and their partner, Paul, was an accountant.
“We wear beige, grey, and pastel all week, so we go big on the weekends,” Riley explained, gesturing to the purple sequins on their crop top.
“Same,” Aberlour had said, gesturing to his own shirt, which was—predictably—black.
That had gotten a laugh from the whole table.
“Do you have a partner, Aberlour?” Paul had asked him, a few minutes before the show had begun. Aberlour was nursing his third mimosa, which was already halfway done. He was feeling no pain at this point.
“Partner?” he asked, taken back for a moment. He’d been listening to one of Riley’s stories about their job in the city.
“You know, like a boyfriend or girlfriend.” Paul was a good-looking guy, maybe a few years older than everyone else at the table. He looked Middle Eastern, with kind eyes that displayed keen intelligence, and he didn’t shy away from maintaining eye contact.
“Oh, sorry, in my line of work, partner usually means something else. No, I’m single.”
It felt good to have the option. He thought of Oli—he often did, although he’d rather not admit to it—and how startled he would have been by such a question.
“Line of work? I thought you owned a booth next to Bart—do you have a co-owner?” Paul asked, looking baffled.
Aberlour cleared his throat and shook his head. He sat up straighter and took a quick sip of his mimosa.
“No, I—ah, I was military.” He was brief as possible.
“Oh,” Paul said curtly, looking—disapproving, which was something that Aberlour had rarely encountered before.
“Retired?”
“No, honorably discharged.”
Paul appeared to have something else to say but then subsided with a brief smile, even while his gaze stayed focused on Aberlour. It made Aberlour uncomfortable.
“How’d you meet?” Aberlour finally asked, nodding towards Riley, to get everyone’s attention turned towards someone else.
Paul didn’t seem fooled by Aberlour’s obvious ploy, but he took the bait and proceeded to share the story of how he and Riley got together.