Chapter 18 #3
“Uncle Aiden, you just said the S word.” Logan’s feet are obviously getting used to the ice water. Either that or they’ve gone numb, as he stomps around in the swell, kicking the sea towards the horizon.
Pi turns to me and mouths, “Sorry,” but I wave him away. I know for a fact that Jody swears in front of Logan. He’s told me several times.
“Dad, what does ‘wanker’ mean? Mummy screamed it out of the car window today.”
The water sucks back, builds, then rushes forward again. I watch Pi’s toes scrunch into the sand before the next wave courses over them.
“WOOOOOO!” he cries. He’s still yelling as he says, “Did you know the Atlantic Ocean is the second biggest ocean on earth?!”
“YES!” Logan shouts, chasing the water on its way back out. “I have a book, and it’s my favourite book, and it’s non-fiction. It’s called Britannica All New Children’s Encyclopaedia, and it says the Atlantic Ocean is forty-one million square miles.”
“I had that book too!” Pi says. “Though yours is probably a newer edition than mine. Did you also know that the currents in the Atlantic Ocean affect the weather all over the world?”
“Even in Australia?” Logan asks.
“Well, I’m not sure about Australia. There’s a lot of land and sea between here and Au—” Pi begins, but in typical Logan fashion, he’s already bored with the answer.
“Have you ever been bitten by a black widow?”
Pi looks at me. “No. That doesn’t happen as often as people think it does.”
“One of Logan’s special interests at the moment is spiders, Spider-Man, and spider-related fatalities.” I shoot a double thumbs-up to let Pi know that if he doesn’t shut the conversation down stat, he’ll be here all day giving answers to my son’s questions, which he won’t even bother listening to.
“Aren’t you coming into the sea?” he says to me instead.
I shake my head. “I’m good here.”
“Please, Dad,” Logan whines.
Pi takes my hand and pulls me into the waves. “It’s not even that cold after a wh—ILE! Holy crap! That went right up my leg!”
I’m too far in to dodge the next wave. The only thing I can do is grit my teeth, brace for impact, and wait for hypothermia to engulf me.
I grew up in Newquay. I’m used to the sea’s sub-zero temperatures. We came here all the time as kids, to go fishing or have a barbeque on the sands, or just walk the dogs. I ain’t never dipped my sun-deprived piggies in the middle of winter, though. I’m not a masochist.
And yet, it’s somehow colder than I could ever have imagined.
“FUUUUUCCCCKKING HELL!”
A pair of dog walkers some way up the beach turn to look at us. One yells, “You’re braver than I am!”
“You say braver; I say stupider!” I call back.
Pi laughs. “That’s the most British exchange I’ve ever heard.” He takes my other hand and pulls me further into the swell while I make noises like I’m auditioning for Scream 8.
“Uncle Aiden, are you my dad’s boyfriend?” Logan says when I’ve calmed down. He lobs a massive pebble into the surge.
“No,” both Pi and I say in unison, but neither of us will look at the other.
“Mummy said I shouldn’t ask you that question.” He throws a bigger rock. This one barely makes it a metre before slapping the sand and spraying ice water in every direction.
“Watch your feet,” I tell him. “No, Uncle Aiden and I are just friends who are boys. We’re not boyfriends. There’s a difference.”
“Is the difference that one you kiss and one you don’t kiss?
Because if that’s the difference, then I have lots of not boyfriends but boys who are friends.
Except Reuben. Reuben used to be my best friend, but we broke up because he strangled me in PE.
We just liked talking about Pokémon and playing Vikings versus Dragons, but we never kissed. Do you kiss Uncle Aiden?”
I share a glance with Pi. His ordinarily tanned skin flushes a deep pink. Thankfully, neither of us has to answer the question. Blessed be my son’s ADHD.
“Mummy has a boyfriend. She also told me not to tell you that. His name is Brandon, and bro has the biggest muscles I’ve ever seen.” Logan flexes his biceps. “Can I take my coat off? I’m hot.”
“The biggest muscles you’ve seen . . . so far.” I flex my own, and Logan shrieks with laughter. “And no. Leave your coat on, at least until we get out of this bleddy tundra.”
After the novelty of having numb extremities wears off, we go back to Pi’s hotel and wait in line to meet Father Christmas in the main dining hall.
Logan asks for a “Spider-Man scooter, but if the elves can’t make it in time, a Batman one would be fine, or even just a regular scooter, but please can it have lights on it. ”
Santa also recognises Pi and me, and tries to organise a photo of the four of us, but Pi declines, staying behind the camera. Logan’s gifted a book about football which is promptly and vociferously rejected by him.
We go back to the hotel room and wash our feet in the shower, and then Pi drives us to my parents’ house.
Trekkie does not get on with Gristle and tries to mount my mum’s satanic rescue several times while Gristle attempts to remove Trekkie’s face with his three remaining teeth.
Pi offers to leave his dog at The Headland, but Logan’s exhausted, so we take him back to Jody’s, tuck him into bed, sneak his gifts under the tree, and then head to the hotel.
My folks would be upset if they only saw me for a couple of hours on Christmas Day, so I drop Pi off with the room service menu and grab a taxi home.
I explain to Mum and Dad that Pi’s tired, and that we’ll both be over tomorrow for dinner.
I’m met with a full-on sermon covering the topics of how much they admire Pi as a player—“he’s some boy”—how agreeable he comes across in various news articles they’ve read, and that they don’t blame him for wanting to get some rest.
“It’s the sea air. It’s the sea air,” they say repeatedly, while also dropping the least subtle hints that, “I could do a lot worse than that lad.”
So that makes every single member of my family at least partially aware there’s something going on between us.