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—butwhathe 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.
