I still had time. I didn’t have to move yet. For this morning, there was nowhere to go. He took a breath in after a moment, his eyes opening slowly. His smile was so tender that I wanted to store it up in my memory, hoarding it to come back to later.
He pulled me back under the covers like I was sinking into a pond. Hands everywhere. Lips on each other’s skin.
“Stay,” he whispered.
“I’ll stay,” I whispered back.
He madeus pancakes in the ridiculously bright early morning light of St. John’s, a slash of light hitting his messy hair, turning light-brown curls into gold like he was the hero in a fantasy TV series.
“You know you’re stupidly handsome.”
He made a scoffing noise. “Being an actor teaches you exactly how handsome you’re not. When I was doing auditions in Toronto, there were all these guys booking roles because they had slightly better cheekbones than I had. And I hated it. It was frustrating watching these model-handsome idiots butchering roles that I would have been great in. But it was even worse when some ordinary guy booked a role, because I couldn’t even blame it on his looks. He was just more talented, right? And then half the time you’d find out he was the son of someone famous, or the nephew of the guy who owned the theater company. It’s something I hated about being an actor. You’re alwayscomplaining about how things are unfair. I felt like an internet troll, furiously compiling lists of enemies and wrongs done to me.”
“So you never miss it?”
“The part I miss was sharing something with an audience. Making them laugh. But now I’m basically on stage five hours a day as a teacher, entertaining these kids, keeping them engaged. It’s not that different, actually. It’s a lot of the stuff I loved about being an actor.”
I imagined him in front of a class. “They’re so lucky. Most of my teachers were chain smokers who gathered for drinks at Fisherman Pub every Friday to talk about their countdown to retirement.”
“How many days do you have left?” Paul asked.
“In Newfoundland? I don’t know yet. A minimum of six days, and a maximum of who knows. Maybe the end of August. Maybe some angel sweeps in and expedites my visa.”
“Can I spend today with you?” he said, tentatively.
“We should probably ask Lisette,” I said. “See if she wants to come.”
Lisette picked up the phone and told us that she had a church breakfast where she was looking for her next boyfriend, who was going to be at least seventy.
“We can wait,” I said.
“Go,” she said. “I think I’m about to get a marriage proposal, and that could take some time. First, he has to get across the room on his walker.”
Paul glanced at me. “Just you and me then,” he said. “What do you want to do today? Tell me what will make you happy.”
“Right now? A change of clothes.”
“And after that?”
“Somewhere you love,” I said.
“Somewhere I love?” He nodded, considering it. “I mean, we already went to the archives. It’s hard to top that.”
“I could do more archives.”
He grinned. “Even I’m not that much of a dork. Do you have hiking shoes?”
“I have sneakers back at my place.”
After we stopped by my apartment, Paul drove me up the coast to a parking lot, and from there we began a hike in toward the coast. We were silent at first, listening to the occasional call of birds. I followed him through shaggy coastal woods, down sloping hills, eventually chatting about Canadian wildlife and our feelings about camping and the first time we’d ever climbed a mountain. We didn’t talk about anything serious. We didn’t talk about how I was leaving.
Finally the woods spilled us out onto a dramatic set of cliffs where a waterfall poured off the edge and down into the open ocean.
We stood there in silence for a long moment. It seemed too huge, suddenly, like a metaphor for something I didn’t know I was capable of feeling. I turned to Paul. His eyes were bright.
“My favorite place.” He gestured like a host on a nature show, sweeping an arm in a glorious half-circle.
I looked around. “You know how in old maps, they imagined that the world simply ended somewhere—that the world was flat, and eventually you would reach a cliff where the ocean poured down into nothingness…”
