Page 28

“Any chance you’re overthinking this one?” Yu asked.

Under different circumstances, A.J. might have smiled. It was nice to be known at least. “He . . .” A.J. stopped himself. He’d spent the entirety of first period thinking it through. Bren hadn’t lied—not really. “He didn’t tell me something. Something really important.”

“OK. So he was under-thinking.” It looked like Yu was trying to suppress a grin and A.J. had to remind himself what a good friend he usually was. “Sounds like a good balance to me.”

“OK, bu—”

“Ladies! Less gossip, more welding!”

A.J. jumped so quick he almost dropped the scrap metal he was holding.

He had enough time to catch Yu’s eyeroll as he headed to his cubicle along the cinderblock wall and drew the curtain. Streaming orange flames shot out of the end of the torch after the spark caught. The hand that was supposed to dial up the oxygen to tame the crackling flames into something usable remained stubbornly still.

Did he really want to make a decision that would have him spending the rest of his life tearing up at everything Bren-coloured? He loved Bren more than he’d known it was possible to love someone, and Yu was right, they balanced each other out. There probably weren’t many people on the planet who could listen to his spirals and make it so they both came out of the other side smiling.

But at the end of the day, their relationship would only demand more sacrifice as time went on. What happened if one of them gave up their entire life back home and things didn’t work out? Could they make it through that without hating each other?

A choked noise fell out of him at the idea. He’d like to think Bren could never hate him, but what if he was wrong?

His thumb dialed on the oxygen and the crackling orange condensed into a bright blue bead at the end of the torch.

If only you could weld people.

12

The ripples from the last stone hadn’t settled by the time the next one fell with an echoing splash. Bren ran his hand along the formerly rocky patch of ground to his right. He could only hope that if there were any fairies up here, they were less territorial than the ones back home.

He scraped the bottom of the plastic container like he hadn’t done that thirty seconds ago. Maybe he’d head back to Snow Hut and pick up another sundae. If he got a banana split this time, that counted as a proper lunch, right?

Another rock splashed into the river below him before he knew what he was doing. Three hours in and he still couldn’t figure out what the fuck had happened. One second he was looking at his boyfriend like a dopey idiot, and the next A.J. was telling him he was a bastard for coming to Canada.

More food was the right call.

Blood surged back into his rubbery legs. He took a couple steps away from the slope down to the river and tried to rub some feeling back into them.

“Oh. Hey.”

His heart lurched at A.J.’s voice but he kept his eyes on his thighs. Of course he’d found him. How many spots in town did he know about?

A.J.’s footsteps shuffled closer as pins and needles tingled along Bren’s legs. He couldn’t look into those eyes or it would be all over.

“You, uh, forgot your lunch in the van.”

Bren made sure their fingers didn’t brush during the hand off, but he managed to grunt out something that sounded almost like ‘thanks’ before he sat back down. With his eyes fixed on the water, he could still see most of A.J. as he sat down near him. He had an earbud in.

The wind rustled the trees in the silence that stretched between them.

“If this happened last week, Burger Cabin would have still been open.”

The corner of Bren’s mouth twitched up for a split second. A.J. had raved about the mushroom burgers at the place, but they kept getting distracted with their shirts off and never got around to visiting there before it closed for the season.

Bren’s stomach rumbled and he opened the lunchbox. Sitting on top of the sandwich and a packet of Ketchup crisps that he’d packed that morning was a chocolate bar. The smile threatened to return when he pulled it out to confirm—a Coffee Crisp. A.J. had introduced them to him that day in the greenhouse. The day they became mates.

“Full-sized and all?” he asked, tearing it open even though his body was begging for something that wasn’t sugar. Something that wasn’t the taste of A.J.

He took a bite and saw A.J. smiling for the first time all over again. Hopefully he wouldn’t choke to death this time. His stomach sighed in relief when he took a bite of his sandwich—even if he hadn’t completely swallowed the Coffee Crisp yet.

“I’m sorry I said you should go back to Ireland. I’m so happy you’re here.”