Chapter 43
Two weeks later
“You look sad—” Bart said sympathetically.
Aberlour had attended the funeral the day before. A slow, painful affair, that had sent him spiralling into five-year-old memories. He hadn’t slept a wink. Instead, he’d chosen to chain-smoke the night away.
He wasn’t sure why he’d bothered showing up to work the booth.
It had felt like the right thing to do—or no—like the only thing left to do.
He couldn’t stay home all day. He was driving himself mad with grief again, and there would be no one to bail him out of jail this time. Work had been the next best option.
Aberlour had intended to avoid Bart because he was in no mood to fake mental stability, nor listen to random snippets of gossip. But Bart had found him anyway. He’d caught Aberlour off guard, and as a result, his filter wasn’t working very well.
“You can’t see a fucking thing,” Aberlour snarled. He didn’t deserve his anger, but Abe couldn’t have muffled it any more than he could quench his grief.
Bart merely snorted.
“You’ll have to allow that the expression—'I can hear your seething from all the way over there’ just doesn’t have the same impact,” Bart replied with a light laugh.
Aberlour didn’t comment, since there was nothing to be said.
“Long night?” Bart guessed, accurately of course.
“When aren’t they?” he replied sardonically, unwilling to divulge any more than that.
“You’re talking to a man who knows nothing but night. I might have you beat on that point, dear sir.”
Aberlour winced at the thought. Nothing but darkness forever. That seemed like its own kind of prison.
“Really can’t see anything?”
“A few odd colours now and again. Traces of light when someone shines something into my eyes, but really, no.”
“Since when?” Aberlour asked, almost afraid of the answer.
“Started losing my sight when I was 12, was legally blind by 18,” he answered with a shrug and a funny little smile.
“Fuck.”
“Done plenty of that even without my eyes,” he retorted promptly with a smug grin.
Aberlour groaned at the thought.
“Don’t get all homophobic on me now!” Bart exclaimed in surprise.
Aberlour choked on a laugh.
“I’m not.”
“Then why the groan?” Bart asked, amused.
“’Cause I have to look your boyfriend in the eye when he comes to pick you up, that’s why!” Aberlour huffed in mock indignation, hoping his attempt at humour would come through.
Bart laughed heartily.
“Fair point,” he conceded with a shrug. He was leaning on his cane, as he always did, and looking as comfortable as ever. “So, what is it?”
“What?” Aberlour frowned, even though Bart couldn’t see it.
“What has put you in such a dark mood?” Bart asked, because Aberlour’s evasiveness was a waste of time, and he was just going to keep at him until he coughed up the goods.
“Friend died,” he answered with a shrug, like it didn’t matter. Like Aberlour was fine. Like everything was the same and nothing had changed.
It was quite the trick to pull off. Like standing in a house on fire while serving tea and biscuits.
“What was his name?”
“Oliver,” Aberlour said, his name streaked through him like poison, like music, like sweet, sweet—like everything that loved, killed, and mattered.
“Oliver,” Bart repeated thoughtfully, with the kind of reverence the name deserved. “Known him a long time?” he asked, keeping his tone light.
“Most of my life.”
“Were you close?” he inquired, sounding curious.
“Yes,” Aberlour replied, blunt and honest.
“Did you love him?”
“Yes,” Aberlour confessed, with a shiver he couldn’t contain.
Bart hummed, still leaning on his cane, his smile still casual and easy, like Aberlour hadn’t just poured his heart out.
“I’m sorry,” he said, and Aberlour knew he meant it with every fiber of his being. He was genuinely sorry. Heartbreakingly sorry. He hurt for Aberlour. It was obvious in his voice.
“Nothing you could have done,” Aberlour reasoned.
“I’m mostly sorry you never got to be anything but friends,” he replied because Bart wasn’t afraid of those things. He wasn’t afraid of the things Abe and Oliver had kept hidden.
“How’d you know?”
Bart shrugged, wrapping his hands around his cane.
“You say his name like you’ve whispered it before,” he said, with the kind of honesty that broke you down into tiny little pieces.
Aberlour responded with a weak little laugh and a pointless shrug, as this was yet something else that he wouldn’t admit to.
“I’d offer you a hug, but you don’t seem like the type who likes to be touched.”
Aberlour laughed at the understatement.
“Want to ditch this place and go somewhere?” Bart offered casually. It was a Monday—usually one of their quieter days. The fair wouldn’t open for another hour or so.
“You don’t need the money?”
“I’d rather go to the beach,” Bart said with a shrug.
It was enough to break Aberlour, but he held strong.
“I’d like that,” he answered.
So much had changed, and yet it was the same. It wasn’t the same beach, but it might as well have been. Hot sand, waves, salty air, bright sun. Any moment now, Oliver would come running up the beach, glistening with sweat, wearing that heartbreaking smile.
Any moment now. A voice whispered in his mind.
“What was he like, your Oliver?”
Aberlour grabbed a handful of sand. He watched as the grains slipped through his fingers, the long trails of sand like the dripping stream in an hourglass.
They sat on the sand, sharing a beach towel barely wide enough for two men.
They’d been silent for most of the drive and, apart from working out the directions on how to get there, remained silent for most of their time on the beach as well.
They listened instead. They listened to the seagulls, to the waves crashing and pulling everything in their path back out to sea.
They listened to children and lovers as they laughed and played near the surf.
“I’m not sure how to—” his voice drifted off, his thought incomplete, his throat tight.
“How about you just tell me about your favourite memories instead,” Bart offered, his smile easy, as he faced the ocean. “That’s what we are, really, after all is said and done. A collection of moments.”
Aberlour swallowed against the grief in his throat and nodded in agreement, even though Bart couldn’t see it. He grabbed another fistful of sand, watching the grains fly by like the minutes of his own life.
“There was this one time, at the beach—” he began.
The sun was low in the sky by the time he’d laid their story to rest—Bart gazing sightlessly at a darkening world and none the wiser to the fading light. He’d been remarkably patient, letting Abe talk for hours about some of his favorite memories.
“And now,” Bart said, voice rough from unuse.
Aberlour hiked an eyebrow the man couldn’t see. “Now?”
“You’ve buried your life and your love,” Bart said, in that way he had of cutting right through the bullshit. “So what will you be now?”
Not who, but what.
Men don’t change. They evolve, stretch, bend—but they do not fundamentally change.
There would be no changing who Gavin Aberlour was—but what he was, that was still up for debate.
He’d once been a Marine, a brother, a son—a lover.
He was no longer any of those, but the world—God, the world carried on, and so must he.
“Only thing I ever wanted to be, I already was,” he whispered, shaken at the reminder of how true that was, feeling lost all over again.
They sat in silence for awhile, and Abe thought Bart might leave it at that. But suddenly, Bart began relating his own story.
“I wanted to be a painter, once,” Bart snorted.
“Loved to paint—landscapes, portraits—” he drifted off.
“So when they told me I was going blind, I painted as much as I could, for as long as I could—sold as many as I could find buyers for and turned myself into a painter. It was all I’d ever wanted, so I made sure to become it—I was around 14, and my works were probably fucking rubbish, but—” he snorted.
“Tell you what—the paintings of a kid going blind sell like hot cakes!”
Aberlour had to laugh at Bart’s self-deprecating humor.
“And then I went blind, and I couldn’t be a painter anymore—and I just remember thinking—what now? And every time I asked myself that question, I couldn’t see anything there.”
Bart couldn’t keep a straight face and Abe didn’t miss the smirk at his pun.
“Fucker,” Abe muttered because he knew how much Bart relished his ability to annoy Aberlour with his ridiculous puns.
“But you know what I realised?”
“What?”
“I’d loved painting, but I loved art more. So, I sat down at the piano and taught myself to play, and I found art again.”
“I failed arts and crafts in high school,” Aberlour muttered, skirting the question. Bart was not fooled by this deflection, nor was he to be deterred from finding out what he wanted to know.
“What were you, before?”
It felt—terrifying, to be asked so directly to put himself and his life on display.
He nearly pulled away so he could get to his feet and insist it was time to go, but he forced himself to stay.
For once, he had to find it within himself not to balk at the idea of being known by someone other than Oli.
“A Marine—a squad leader,” he began. He thought of the stories. Of his life. Of the memories he’d laid there on the hot sand for Bart to hear. “A son. A brother. A perfect shot—” he didn’t dare say the last one, but it hung in the air, and he was fairly certain Bart heard it.
“Sounds to me like you were looking to belong, and willing to do anything to make that happen,” Bart said with a smile. “Maybe now you should find someone else to belong to—someone deserving of you.”
“And how does that answer the what?” Abe asked, more than a little confused and reeling from Bart’s advice.
He sighed and there was genuine emotion there, like he wished Aberlour had figured it out by himself.
“Because next time you’re at the beach, and someone asks you what you are—I hope you’ll say you’re happy. That’s what you were, once. With your men, with your—Darling. Find someone else to care for. Learn to be happy again.”