By Lucy

I never said it would be easy, I only said it would be worth it.

• Mae West

I woke up around 4 on Sunday and heard someone breathing softly beside me. I shrieked and sat up.

Gah! Where am I? Who is that?

The room took shape around me. I was in Fort Frances. Kyle was sleeping beside me.

Wait, what?

Half awake, he sleepily rolled over and wrapped an arm around me.

Oh.

I laid back down. He stayed? Because he was so drunk he couldn’t find his way back to his bed, or something else?

Actually, I was still pretty drunk too. I waited a few minutes for him to drift off again, then snuck out of bed and downstairs. I couldn’t find my pajama pants from wherever he tossed them, but I figured if Bart could wander around in his boxers, a long shirt was good enough for me. I grabbed a Gatorade and chugged it, then had a Tylenol.

I was definitely missing memories. I haven’t gotten blackout drunk like that in years. Must have been the fact I’d had an empty stomach when I started the shots. Still, I was pretty sure I remembered most of the night up until we got to my room.

Now what? Just go sleep next to him again?

It’s kinda silly, since I spent the last couple of weeks complaining he wouldn’t sleep in my room, but now he had I was so lost and confused.

We both woke up again around 5:30, before our alarms. Oh, right, I have to work today, yay.

“Good morning.” I said nervously, “Slept over?”

“Mhmm.” He says contentedly, wrapping his arms around me and peppering me with kisses.

Well, at least he’s not upset about it. “I’m forgetting shit from last night, how about you?”

“I remember bits and pieces.” Then he started taking my pajamas off.

When we wander downstairs, Victoria is bright-eyed and bushy-tailed on the couch, “Are you two done f*cking like rabbits?”

“Nope.” I say, with a grin. “10 rounds, at last count.” Counting the rounds after my nap, as far as I can remember/ extrapolating from what usually happens, maybe more.

“Must be nice.” She says, grinning back.

Kyle makes a noise as if he’s embarrassed, but I’ve noticed, he never actually blushes or seems genuinely embarrassed. I can’t tell if he’s just good at hiding it or if he really doesn’t care and is just pretending to have some modesty.

“So, I’ve forgotten shit from last night.” I say.

“Yeah, you were pretty drunk. I had to tell Bart to stop feeding you shots.” Victoria says.

Excellent leadership. Not only that, but now his entire crew is technically still intoxicated and probably legally not allowed on-site. “Did I do anything embarrassing?”

“Not especially. Drew got messed up too, he left the room and we heard a crash, found him passed out on his bed, spread-eagle.”

I die laughing.

Work didn’t happen anyway, because it was still so cold the machines wouldn’t start again. We waited an hour and then Bart sent us home.

“Not really surprising, it is minus 27 right now.” I say, as we walk back.

“Minus 27? What kind of godforsaken place is this?” Kyle exclaims.

Northern Ontario. The land that God forgot.

“Well, I’m going to go have a nap.”

“Just a nap?” He asks suggestively.

“Jesus Christ, how on Earth can you still be ready for more?” I yawn. “Usually whomever I’m dating is the one begging for mercy.”

“Jesus Christ has nothing to do with it. And you haven’t reached my limit yet.” He chuckles evilly.

I go and nap for 3 or 4 hours. Wander downstairs, my stomach totally wrecked by the overindulgence.

“Could you make me eggs?” I ask Kyle, who doesn’t seem to have suffered at all from a hangover.

“Sure, what kind?”

“Whatever, surprise me.” I already know there’s not a drop of oil in the house, so I’m not really sure how he’s going to cook them, but it’s a fun dating test.

They were alright for scrambled eggs. A bit dry, not that I’d expect anything else with no oil, although he did say he preferred them that way.

Spent the rest of the afternoon flaked out on the couch with Kyle, Victoria occasionally drifting through. Drew didn’t surface until much later in the afternoon.

“Why are you so scared of Victoria, anyway? What is BPD?” Kyle asks.

To start, the name is bollocks. There’s nothing “borderline” about Borderline Personality Disorder, but it’s a relic of a time when everyone was arguing where the lines were for PTSD vs normal trauma response. Technically it’s short for “borderline psychotic”. It has the usual grab-bag of self destructive behavior, like impulsivity and an empty sense of self, but I’d say what really defines BPD is the black and white thinking. Whereas normal people think “John is a good guy but did a thing that upset me”, BPD people vacillate between “you are the most amazing person I’ve ever met” and “you are the devil incarnate”, with no room for nuance. It’s particularly problematic for me because I’m so good at being whatever other people want me to be, they bond to me very quickly and crash even harder when I eventually get frustrated with them. The prospect of being stuck in a house with one for a month, 24/7, was daunting. Although koodoos to Victoria, she’s pretty good at managing herself.

Speaking of mental health… “What do we think is wrong with Kyle?” I ask Paul.

“ADHD with a side of Bipolar 2.”

Hmm… nah. I haven’t really seen a sign of any actual mania or hypomania in him. No talking fast, feeling invincible, or distractibility. Considering how alike we are, it wouldn’t surprise me if the same thing that’s broken in me is broken in him, but I wouldn’t recommend he get a diagnosis either way, with his criminal history.

I put on Into the Spiderverse out of boredom. “How have you never watched any of these movies? The TV is always on when you’re down here.”

“I don’t watch a lot of TV at home, I’m always on the go. Out biking around, doing stuff. I can’t sit still.” He groans. “This is killing me.”

At the point when Myles hops out of the cop car by himself, Kyle laughs, “That’s not how that works, they have to let you out of the backseat. I’ve ridden in one enough times to know that.”

“Really? How many?” I ask, a little too excited.

“Oh, once or twice.”

“So, at least three times.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“No, but if it was only once or twice, you would have said that.” I grin. “You can tell me, you know, I’m not going to run away screaming.”

He just looks down at his phone and shakes his head.

“Have you been to jail?” I ask, unable to contain my grin.

He looks at me for a long moment, probably trying to decide why he thinks I’m asking, “Weekend jail. Not ‘jail-jail’.”

I should stop tormenting the poor boy.

I get anxious as nighttime approaches, but it becomes clear he has no intention of spending the night in my bed again, which is just as well because I’m still not sure how it happened or how I feel about it. He did make a comment about waking up around 1 himself and being surprised to be there, but that just asks more questions!

How many times have I been that drunk? I feel like the answer is 3, but only one other time comes to mind…

I still feel wretched the next day. I’m dehydrated and I can’t pin down why. I’ve definitely been drunker and not been that hungover. Do I finally have a flu? Or something else?

I wasn’t terribly worried about it until Bart told me I was coming up the scaffold.

My head was swimming and I kept seeing black dots as I climbed the stairs with all my gear on. Feeling like crap on the scaffold is bad enough, but feeling like you’re going to pass out 100 feet in the air is a big no-no.

I hoped the clear air would help me feel better, but no luck. I was a zombie, solely focused on putting one foot in front of the other. I even finally snapped at Victoria because I have no energy for her today. As it turns out, she was annoyed at Virgil because all last week he kept calling her ‘Lucy’.

“Aww, ya miss me, Virgil?”

“Of course, I miss both you lovely ladies.” He lies.

At break, Kyle can tell something is very wrong, and asks me about it.

“I’m dehydrated. And I can’t keep drinking water on the scaffold, because the water bottles just freeze at the top.”

“Ask Bart to be on the ground.” He insists.

“He won’t listen.” I try texting Bart anyway, telling him I’m not feeling well.

No dice. Bart doesn’t even acknowledge the fact that I am visibly green around the gills. Kyle comes as close as I’ve seen him to being angry, and for a moment he seems ready to walk off the job.

As I walk towards the stairs, he grabs my hand. “What are you doing?”

I shake him off. “Bart wants me on the scaffold.”

“If you’re not feeling good, don’t go.”

“Then I have to go home.”

“So go home.” He pleads.

I’m at the point where I’d rather pass out and hurt myself to get Bart in trouble than stay home, and Kyle knows it. I’d bet Bart thinks I’m still sick from the hangover and that he’s ‘teaching’ me some kind of lesson.

Kyle comes up the scaffold with us this time. Bart’s decided Bart’s just going to jog down to the ground to empty the hoist each time. I roll my eyes. This isn’t efficiency, this is madness.

“I noticed he stopped wearing the orange sweatpants after Saturday.” Victoria says to Kyle, as I zombie up holding some gear.

“What?” I ask.

“Oh, you don’t remember.” Victoria giggled. “When we were drunk on Saturday, we told Bart we can see the outline of his dick in his sweatpants.”

(In case you are wondering, grey sweatpants season is a phenomenon not limited to me and Victoria’s wanton natures)

I snort. Well, I can’t walk that back… and it is true.

“Yeah, even I noticed he hasn’t been wearing those since you two pointed it out.” Kyle says, with a laugh.

It amuses and annoys me how often the female gaze makes men self-conscious. We can’t exactly hide our breasts and butts, after all, constantly subjected to an evaluating gaze, but we’re not allowed to check them out? Lame.

After a moment, I say, “Y’know, Kyle, the grey sweatpants thing applies to you as well.”

“Yeah it does. We can all see it.” Victoria adds.

“Ah!” He exclaims, without sounding truly bothered.

When we shuffle home for lunch, I text Bart and tell him I’m not coming back that day. Kyle makes me drink two glasses of water in front of him and tucks me into bed.

I go back and forth on going to the hospital. If it is a flu, I should, because I won’t recover on my own. Or if it’s the adhesions bothering me. Slowly I start to feel a bit better. More water, a Gatorade, a nap.

Everyone gets home late from work. The truck to take gear back to Toronto arrived late. Bart and Drew end up working until 8PM to get it loaded properly. I can clearly hear the telehandler beeping through the window.

“Do you need anything?” Kyle asks, coming up to my room to check on me.

“Soup?”

“What kind of soup?”

I dunno… making a decision seems complicated right now. I’m so dizzy I can’t even sit up. Eventually I decide on chicken noodle. Kyle comes home with three different kinds of chicken noodle soup.

He brings me the warmed soup and heads back downstairs. I eat it and wait half an hour; showering right after I’ve eaten is how I’ve passed out in the shower before. I text him to warn him before I hop in the shower, just in case.

“Is that an invite?”

“No, just in case you hear a thud because I passed out.”

“Jesus Christ!”

C’est la vie.

I wander downstairs for about an hour, it will be hard to sleep if I don’t drag myself out of bed for a bit. Victoria is keeping Kyle company and he does not seem at all pleased about it.

I’ve started following Alastor’s VA, Amir Talai, on social media. He’s an interesting dude, almost the polar opposite of Alastor, very socially conscious and active.

Just before I want to go to bed, there’s a knock at the door and Kyle goes to let someone in. Knowing nothing at all, I’d bet it’s Chris Windows… he keeps sending Kyle novels of text. Victoria is activated and immediately runs over to cuddle me on the couch, “There’s someone here we don’t know!”

Sigh.

Fairness to her, I am annoyed Kyle had someone come over, this late at night. I’m pretty tired and I don’t want to crawl into bed with someone I don’t know downstairs. Especially because there is a non-zero chance it becomes the two of them drinking and carrying on late into the night.

I give him twenty minutes, then I wander over. “Hello, you must be Chris.”

“Oh, hey.” He says, barely able to tear his eyes away from Kyle to glance at me. This guy is hanging off Kyle’s every word.

“It’s almost bedtime.” I warn Kyle.

“Yup, just catching up a bit.” He nods.

About five minutes later, Chris is sent on his way. “He just wanted to borrow my jack, I didn’t know he was going to come in.”

“You can always tell him no, Kyle.”

Silence for a moment. “That’s true.”

The more I think about it, the more I wonder. I remember, vaguely, James complaining about Adam Gontier leaving the band, and Winter mentioning she knows someone… maybe.

I feel a fair bit better in the morning, although I am conscious that hitting the ground running will just set me back. I have one of Kyle’s yogurt’s for breakfast, and tell Bart I’m not going in.

I spend the morning flaked on the couch, trying to make myself eat.

I could just not go in… Kyle confirmed today is our last day, so I have nothing to gain from it, money-wise. But my pride is on the line, I suppose.

When the boys come back for break, Kyle confirms they’re just in the yard all day, so I change into my work clothes and go with them.

It’s freakishly warm today… warmer than 0, and everything is melting. The yard is a puddle, although the ice from them flooding it is still present. I still feel a little woozy, but I can take my time. I am still in my coveralls because my jacket died at some point and doesn’t zip up anymore, although fortunately you can unzip the legs of coveralls to let some fresh air in.

At one point, when me and Victoria are helping Kyle sort and stack beams, I call him cute and he replies, “But a rugged, masculine sort of cute, right?”

“Whatever helps you sleep at night, babe!” I laugh, “I sincerely doubt you care.”

He snorts, “Well, you did already call me a golden retriever and say I have average looks.”

“Did you even look up what golden retriever means?”

“No.” He grins.

“It means someone who is loyal and playful. Doesn’t that describe you?”

He thinks about that for a minute, before going back to the bit. “But I want to be a German Shepperd!”

I tweak his nose. “No you don’t.” Or you wouldn’t be so bothered about being a criminal.

As we walk back for lunch, I say, “I can tell you’ve changed a lot in the last couple years.”

“What makes you say that?”

“I know what it looks like when someone is in between who they used to be, and who they are becoming.” Like myself.

“Stop calling me out.” He gives my shoulder a playful shove.

“I will when you do, except neither of us can!”

“True that.”

Flop on the couch.

I tap the scar on his eyebrow. “Used to have a piercing?”

“Used to. Got tired of having it torn out and re-pierced.”

I think back to the bone scar from his broken collar bone. “Brawling?”

He nods. “That’s the first thing they aimed at. Just easier not to have it.” He runs his fingers over it. “Spent a few nights at the cop shop for that.”

“Who ratted you out?”

“No one, we were in the middle of the street.” He laughs.

It clicks then, the tattoo on his back that says “crew”, the brawling and drinking, a few other things he mentioned that I won’t repeat here… He’s a gangbanger. A vision flashes across my eyes, of what he’d be like in a fight, face still serene except for an angry grin and the violence flashing in his eyes… the same look I’d glimpsed once or twice here, when the mask slipped. There’s a lot hiding behind those placid green eyes.

I know I referred to his looks as average and I stand by that – objectively – but subjectively, I think that’s part of his charm. I can never really hide, to a certain extent, because I catch everyone’s eye. But he can play down who he really is, work his little magic, until they love him and he can start to let the mask slip a bit.

“I’ve been in my fair share of fights too, you know.”

“Oh yeah?”

I nod, “I didn’t get in trouble like you, though, because no one could ever believe I did that much damage. Take the collar bone; you can break it with 6 pounds of force. A much better target for someone small, who can’t manage a haymaker.”

His hand drifts to the bone scar. “Huh. There’s lot to learn about you, isn’t there?”

“Yup.”

The last push is a bit much. Bart wants everything in the yard to be perfect, which is a far cry from the guy who was threatening Darren to let us go at halftime with a full day’s pay. Finally we get to the point where we can’t see anything in the yard because the sun has set, and he has to let us go.

After we’re showered and settled in the living room eating dinner, a conversation about TENS machines (you might know it as Dr Ho) turns into a conversation about violet wands, which makes Bart uncomfortable enough to leave the room. Hah!

Drew finally agrees to let Victoria braid his hair. She’s in ecstasy about it.

When Bart finally comes down for Mario Kart, the problems start again. Both him and Victoria want a repeat of Saturday, for some reason. But my stomach is still dodgy and I’m definitely not in a hurry to repeat it, so I decline all shots. Drew also doesn’t want to play, and neither does Bart, because he wants to hit the road at 6. Victoria and Kyle agree, for whatever reason, and soon both of them are pretty drunk.

I retire early, but Victoria is so drunk she’s screaming everything she says and I toss and turn in bed for most of the night.

I wake up around 3:30 and hear the Mario sounds from downstairs.

Ah, I know what’s going on; they’re feeding in to each other’s damage. Her BPD is making her accommodate him, and he’s unable to not take advantage of it, because it’s another night when he can’t turn his brain off.

Alright, time to be party-pooper Lucy.

I wander downstairs. They both look like zombies. “Alright, you can finish this round, and then I’m taking the Switch away.”

“We were going to shut it down soon anyway.”

Maybe that’s the truth, maybe it’s not. I’m enforcing it anyway.

When I go back upstairs, Kyle follows me. What a curious change of pace.

It takes me two hours to wear him out, his mind is clearly running a million miles a minute. I’m both tired and not really in the mood, but I do my best to keep up and eventually he’s snoring next to me.

Shortly reawakened by Bart, stomping around the house to throw stuff in his car as he leaves before dawn. I’m willing to bet he’s going out of his way to make extra noise, just to spite us. I have half a mind to go punch him out; he can’t fire me now!

Nonetheless, both of us are awake again at 10. Kyle seems none the worse for the lack of sleep and being still drunk. They killed an entire bottle of tequila and got into a second one. Of course, his stint in rehab and sobriety probably went a long way towards recovering his liver’s capacity.

The bathroom garbage is full of Zolt packages.

Kyle makes himself a bowl of my beef stew for breakfast; he must really like it. I can already see all the ways this works; he can’t cook to my level, but he can feed himself, and we’re both tidy people, but he might be more of a neat freak than I am. We fit together neatly, like pieces of a puzzle. I’ll cook dinner and he does the dishes after.

Drew surfaces around 10, packs up and heads out.

Victoria wakes up around 11 and also immediately packs up to head out. Kyle helps her carry her heavy bags out to the car, gentleman that he is. She stays for an extra 20 minutes to have a coffee at the house. She has so many open liquor bottles… she just kept buying new stuff as the mood hit her.

And then there were two.

“Now what?” I ask, smiling.

“Pants-less party!” He exclaims, and tackles me onto the couch.

---

Sometime later, as we’re cuddling on the couch in the afterglow – and joking about how annoyed Bart will be with us for f*cking on the couch – it occurs to me that I should talk about my episode the other day.

I pull on some clothes. Kyle puts on his boxers and jeans, still undone and hanging around his hips, and wanders into the kitchen to make coffee. He comes back with a steaming cup and pauses, framed perfectly in the doorway, and my breath catches. In the cold light of day, you can see every ab, even the V muscle/ligament disappearing below the belt line. I have been deprived of seeing him in the proper light.

“What?” He asks, looking worried for a second, at whatever my face is doing.

“I wish I could take a picture of you right now. Perfection.” I blow a chef’s kiss.

He smiles, but he doesn’t say yay or nay so I don’t.

I glance back at the couch. Josh always preferred sex on a couch… he said it forced you to get “closer”. That was one of the ways he was worse than your average teenage boy… he didn’t just want notches on his bedpost. He wanted emotional intimacy… like Hannibal Lecter, he wanted deep inside your soul, the things you’d never told anyone, and then he’d leave the girls a husk and move on to the next one.

And yet… I was different, to him.

His mother, smiling sadly at me from across the living room, her eyes the same ethereal blue as his, “I never understood why the two of you didn’t get together.”

I say, “So, do you remember how I froze up when you blew the pot smoke in my mouth?”

(Note; I forgot to include it in the blog because the flashback hit me so hard I forgot which day it happened on.)

After a moment, he says, “Yes. I wasn’t sure if I should ask you about that.” He turns to face me, in the narrow kitchen. “You said it reminded you of someone. He used to give you supers?”

“Supers?”

“When you blow the smoke in someone’s mouth.”

“You do that a lot?”

“A few times. Girls who want to get high but not smoke it.”

I snort. That’s some entry level snow bunny shit. I wonder if he’s ever picked up a snow bunny… there was something tender, but commanding, about the way he did it… without asking me, first. I shake my head to clear it; that’s also me delaying telling him the story. “He didn’t do it to me often… he’s just the only one who has. Josh. ” I inhale and exhale slowly, before telling him the story.

I hold back the most important part…

“How long were you with him?” He asks.

“14 years.” I say automatically, although that’s probably an overstatement. I met him when I was newly 14, but we stopped talking almost 3 years ago, when I was 27… so 13 years, and a half, maybe?

The only person I thought ever really understood me was Josh. Every time I thought I found someone else, the illusion would shatter and I’d go running back to him.

In a sense, choosing to give up on Josh was choosing to be alone and misunderstood forever, in my mind. Consigning myself to the twilight between life and death.

But what choice did I have? He was never going to commit to me. As far as I’m concerned, you’re already dead.

Kyle wouldn’t do that.

And Kyle… understands me. Like no one else before him. Maybe…

Of course, that’s what makes me and Kyle dangerous. He’s in between whatever he was before – some kind of gangbanger – and who he is becoming. I’m not unaware of the fact that I am risking dragging him back into that, because I am no angel… and he can’t be blind to it, either.

Outside of all that, it’s interesting that it’s still what I’m drawn to. Three years and several different kinds of men later, what instantly grabbed and held my attention is that personality, that persona.

So maybe that is what I really wanted after all.

The conversation moved on organically. What shall we do? We had all the time in the world… I had to be back in Thunder Bay for my dentist appointment Monday, and he had to be back in Toronto for an appointment with his… probation officer? But other than that, he’s already stated he’d rather just stay in Fort Frances than drive back to Toronto for Christmas, which I find encouraging.

“Where are you staying in Vancouver?”

“Oh, I’ll be pet-sitting for people out of town. There’s a website for it.”

“Oh, cool. You love pets?”

I snort, “No, I hate pets. But I’m good at it.”

He gives me an odd look. By way of explanation, I tell him about James’ cat, and my relationship with James.

“You know… it sounds like you view all of your relationships transactionally… but you also never get what you want out of them.”

I look down at my hands. As my mind spins for how to answer – to push back that every relationship has give and take, to argue that I am a provider and not a victim – I realize that deep down, he’s right. I definitely view every relationship as a transaction – which is why I eventually gave up on normal dating and started sugaring, because why not just go right to the source – but I also have a hard time getting what I want. I struggle with feeling like I’ve ‘paid enough’ for it.

I put on Crimson Peak to pass the time. Crimson Peak is definitely a comfort watch for me; classic Del Toro, lurid and gothic. There’s not much in the way of a twist; the one at the end might surprise you like a bolt from the blue, or it might seem predictable, depending on your life experiences. But the subtle details are in the dialogue, like early on when Edith is complaining about how baronets are parasites… and then marries one. Or the scars on Lucille’s face, that only show in a certain light. As the story settle into the usual psychological thriller beats, some of that nuance fades into the background, but it’s a good rewatch.

The things we do for love like this are ugly, mad, full of sweat and regret. This love burns you and maims you and twists you inside out. It is a monstrous love, and it makes monsters of us all.

“Do you mind if I call you my boyfriend?” I ask Kyle, because I figure it’s a straighter answer than asking if we are in a relationship. Can I call you that, and all it implies, yes or no.

He chuckles at that, and leans over to tickle me.

“Hey!” I exclaim. I try to tickle him back, and it turns into a tickle war that ends with both of us wrapped around each other on the couch, out of breath. “That’s not an answer!”

“No?” He chuckles again, and sighs, a little sigh. “I guess you can.”

There is no earthly way to measure how happy that made me.

Outside, the snow picks up with huge gusts of wind, and the house shakes and groans.

I give in and buy Metroid Prime 4. I’ve only been waiting for the game since, like, 2008, when I finished Metroid Prime 3 and there was a stinger with Sylux. Which is funny in and of itself, because the only people who would know who Sylux is are the people who played Metroid Hunters on DS.

It’s good and it’s not. I’ve not finished it as of writing. If you want more classic Metroid Prime, this will scratch the itch. The battles with Sylux play a lot like the battles with Metroid Prime. Contrary to 2 being all about the shooting, there’s much more exploration in the game, which is good until Retro Studios sinks into the problems they had with ReCore. It takes too long to reach the “hub” level, which is a huge desert filled with sand… and that’s it. Like the hub level for ReCore, it is interminably big and takes too long to navigate, even on the motorcycle (why is every game adding motorcycles now?).

It’s also a little less inspired than previous games… there’s “psychic” powers now, so they just used find-and-replace to make everything “psychic”. It’s not morph ball bombs, it’s “psychic” bombs. It’s not grapple beam, it’s “psychic” beam. That being said, some of the new powers are pretty cool and would have been more fun on the Wii, miming everything. Like, now you can lay a morph ball bomb, then hop back into regular mode and grab the bomb and throw it, which would be more fun with a button press and a flick of the wrist, instead of a button press and a flick of the joystick.

Anywho… yes, if you want more Metroid Prime, 100% buy it. It’s good, just not world-shatteringly good.

I’m also calling it now; there’s some timey wimey nonsense and the random GFC trooper you pick up as a chatty “man in the chair” (seriously, he talks far too much) is gonna end up being Sylux.

Around 8:30, I can’t fight the yawning anymore. I don’t even want to know how little sleep I got. I stand up and stretch, “Bedtime.”

I meant that more as a ‘bedtime for Lucy’… I wasn’t entirely sure how Kyle would react, but I expected him to just say “goodnight” and continue watching TV. To my surprise, he turns off the TV and follows me upstairs.

Umm…

Whatever! Not arguing!

Well… sort of arguing. For someone who likes to ask me about myself, he talks about his own feelings preciously little. The more I learn about him, the more I’m surprised he let himself get close to me, or even hopped into bed with me at all… but then, you could say the same thing about me. I can infer certain things from our similarities… but I wouldn’t mind some confirmation.

When we peel ourselves out of bed and turn on the TV the next morning, the scroll informs us all the buses are cancelled in and around Thunder Bay. Sounds like a good day to stay home!

I look at myself in the mirror as I wait for the shower to warm up. I’ve lost inches around my waist and gained inches around my bicep. All my clothes are loose on me. This is the closest I’ve gotten to looking like my pre-cancer self in 7 years. Am I finally whole?

Around 11, we head out to tour Fort Frances. The museum isn’t quite open yet, so we duck into some little knickknack store and take a look around.

The museum is nice as well. The only person operating it was a young woman who moved here last year for the job. She was baking cookies and making icing for a kids’ event later on in the day, but she was more than happy to stop and chat with us about the building. The number of people who touch and break stuff, the number of buildings that have burned down along Scott St (almost all of them). The building the museum is in was intended to be a school when it was built, and then it was the cop shop for a bit. There’s a display on the ground floor about the police service in the area, which made Kyle a little snarly. I can’t tell if his animosity towards cops is a real reaction or an affectation he puts on because it’s expected of a criminal.

After the museum, we go for a drive along the waterfront. I suggested climbing the lookout tower, but the wind is howling and you can’t see anything, so it would be pointless. We go to Harbourage instead and grab lunch.

And… that’s it for the grand tour of Fort Frances.

Well, that’s not true. There’s definitely more to do, but it involves spending money and freezing in the minus twenty temps, which neither of us want to do. The most annoying thing about the blower is that we can’t use the remote start, or leave the truck running to warm up. It does, ironically, make his truck theft-proof. We head back to the house for a bit to hang out.

Around 6, we head out. There’s a bar in town that the boys spent a lot of time at in the summer, to the point that they all bought hats for it; the Hallett, named for the tugboat that used to toot around Rainy Lake. Both the taxi driver and the bartender remember Kyle; he’s so genial. The bartender, a pretty blonde woman, also nervously asks Kyle if Leon is back.

So, back in the summer for the build, it was Kyle and Bart, but also Draper (who was at Dryden, but I didn’t mention him by name then), Shane (also at Dryden), Ibrahim (thirdly at Dryden) and some guy named Leon, who was a live wire and a drunk. Leon hassled everyone to the point that Shane punched him out and he got laid off for it (yes, you read that correctly, the guy who was punched was the one who was fired. He deserved it).

Which has also caused some speculation… what if I had gone to Fort Frances with the boys instead of the Thunder Bay mill? What a twist of fate… But that also means more months with Bart, and Ibrahim, and putting up with everyone being drunk and fighty instead of drunk and playing Mario Kart.

We both order cocktails and a charcuterie board and sit around talking for hours. About Barrie, Toronto, being carpenters… The bar is hosting music trivia, for ten bucks! I’m undercharging, it seems. Me and Kyle take guesses at the songs and between the two of us, we know most of them. He sings a few of them under his breath.

“Finally, he sings.” I tease. “Do you sing along with your guitar?”

He chuckles, in an exhausted way, “I’ll sing back-up, but I’m not a lead vocalist.”

“Do you ever write?”

“I’ve written a few things.” He leans over and kisses me, “I’ll play for you one day.”

When music trivia is over, a live musician sets up at the front. Unfortunately, he starts playing some really melancholy songs. He’s really good, mind, just… bringing the mood down. Me and Kyle pay and head out because he’s triggering both of our melancholy souls.

Around 3 in the morning, we were awoken by a loud bang. You can tell we’re both damaged and our minds went to the same place, because he immediately went to the door and cracked it like he was expecting an armed intruder.

We both did a lap of the house and didn’t find anything, but the bang was so loud it sounded like a bookcase had fallen over. Was it a frostquake?

Unfortunately, my stomach decided it was awake. After I thought he’d fallen asleep, I went back downstairs and grabbed the bag of jerky.

My mind is also racing, now. The clock is ticking. Soon he’s leaving, and I have no guarantee of seeing him again.

After a few minutes, Kyle came down to join me.

“Are you ok?”

Stop it. “Yeah, my stomach was just grumbling. Can’t sleep until I eat something.” I force a smile. “I’ll be back upstairs in a minute.”

“Ok.” He comes over and kisses my cheek, then goes upstairs.

It hurts.

Even once I go back to bed, it takes me a long time to fall asleep again. He later confesses he was laying in bed awake as well. We should have just stayed downstairs and watched something together.

In the morning light, we notice the driveway was plowed and someone walked up to the front door. Was that the bang? Maybe the landlord came by to clean the place, since the boss told him we’d all left? 3AM seems like a strange time for that, though.

Time to pack up and head out.

We do one last load of laundry before we head out, which is what takes the longest. I take not even five minutes to pack, since I packed light. What to grab from the fridge, from the freezer? Not much, since I’ve been trying to shop sparingly.

Kyle has several bags and an even harder choice. Some, like Bart and Victoria, were planning to come back after Christmas, but Kyle is torn. His old job is courting him, but his feelings are still hurt from being fired. Does he pack everything, assuming he isn’t coming back? Or risk changing his mind?

Finally we leave, shortly before 11.

We spend the first two hours of the drive driving in silence, just me singing along with the radio. Eventually I work up the courage to ask him some questions about why his marriage failed, which turns into a talk about his childhood and some of the trauma both of us have endured. Like every deep conversation, it just underlines how alike we are in thought. It feels like I’m looking into a mirror of what I would have been like, had I not been born female and with cancer.

One question I’m afraid to ask is if he knows Josh. It’s not outside the realm of possibility… it’s very possible, actually, knowing what I know about both of them.

At one point Kyle makes the rookie mistake of trying to pass a tractor trailer on a snow-packed highway, and fishtailed badly. He managed to wrestle control of the truck after travelling sideways down the highway for a long time.

I checked my Fitbit. Heartrate stayed below 80. “Have you learned your lesson now?”

“Nope, I drive sideways down the highway all the time.” He says, although I can hear the fear in his voice. He doesn’t attempt it again.

We arrived at the hall around 4. As we walk in, the job steward from the mill is walking out. He can barely say hi to me. Everyone’s that sore about me working for another company?

“This is Kyle! I’m trying to convince him to move to Thunder Bay and join our hall!”

Mandy and Julie exchange a knowing look. Is it that transparent, or is it because there’s only one reason I’d be trying to recruit for the hall?

Sofia is there, so I chat with her for a bit while Kyle asks Mandy about reciprocals. Then I notice Bruce is still here. The Level 2 class finished today, so he’s throwing the cast off wood in a trailer to take home and burn.

“How was Fort Frances?”

“We just got back, actually.” I say, and tell him some of the things that happened.

“Well, we’ve all done stupid things at this job.” He says, “I can’t throw stones in that department.”

“No, but where do we draw the line…”

Just then, the door opens and closes. Kyle’s here.

“Oh, this is Kyle. Kyle, this is Bruce, our trainer.”

They shake hands. Bruce also gives me a knowing sideways look, but in a different way. Bruce interrogates him about his work experience.

Onwards!

To my apartment. Emily is away at work until after me and Kyle leave, so he only meets Hanuman that day. Emily made and hung a stocking for me, which immediately makes me wish I had stayed in Fort Frances. We all talk shop for a bit, then hide in my room for a bit.

He originally planned to stay at Draper’s house, but apparently Draper is fighting a monster of a flu. Shane’s apartment is also an option, but he is understandably leery of staying there. He starts looking at hotels, but he’s looking for a hotel room, last minute, around Christmas. Eventually me and Hanuman convince him to accept a bed at the hostel. He ended up getting the room all to himself anyway, the only difference is that I wasn’t allowed to stay.

We head out to the hostel shortly before 8, which is good because they stop accepting guests at 8. The new front desk girl hasn’t met me, but she asks for my name and I wonder if it will get back to Holly somehow.

We walk down to PA. The Foundry isn’t open until 10, lame. Bloom is closed. Nortenos and On Deck are fine for an average Friday, but not if I’m trying to convince someone to move here. We go to Barkeep instead.

“Holy cow, look at these prices!” Kyle exclaims, as soon as he sees the menu. “This is how you should convince me to move here, these are at least 10 dollars cheaper than Toronto!”

I laugh, “And your pay stays the same, isn’t it great?”

We sit at Barkeep having drinks for a couple of hours. At one point, when we’re discussing the transfer of power (I’ve mentioned here before how Turkey was the world power before the US), a woman who was sitting next to us having a drink by herself stood up to leave. She tapped my shoulder and said, “Not to be nosy, I just wanted to let you know I think your opinions are very interesting.”

What? “Oh, thanks!”

As she heads for the door, Kyle says, “What about mine?”

She frowns and does the “so-so” hand gesture.

I burst out laughing.

He smiles, “I knew she’d say something like that, I just wanted to see what the reaction was.”

“Uh huh.” I snort. Well, he’s probably telling the truth, but now he’s made himself just every other man to her.

Shane calls him, “Where am I? Barkeep with Lucy. Yes, Lucy from Dryden.”

Facepalm. Oh, I cannot wait to hear about this at work…

Then it’s time to go to the Foundry. Fortuitously, Landon’s band is playing tonight, and I say that just because I know they’ll put on a good show and I want to show Kyle there’s an active live music scene. I don’t think there’s a band on at Nortenos or Red Lions’. There is a band playing at BPP but I don’t know them.

There was some sort of Christmas party going on before, and the stragglers are very drunk. Eventually we manage to fight our way to the bar for a drink, then grab a table.

Not even halfway through the first song, Kyle says, “I can see why you like him.” And starts laughing.

“Oh, hah.” My cheeks burn, “They’re good, no?”

“They are good, yes.” He tickles my side.

He also agrees, when they play an original song, that their original compositions are not very good.

At one point later in the set, they start playing Mr. Brightside. Kyle looks into his drink, “This is our song, isn’t it?”

“What? It started out with a kiss – “

“- How did it end up like this?” He glances over at me and smiles.

Well, I know where your head is at. “I suppose that’s true.”

After the show is over, I book an Uber and he walks back to the hostel.

The next morning, we went to the farmer’s market for a looksee around. I ran into Shelley, the former president from Rotary, and time started to slip away from me. I dodged two Soroptimists; I knew we’d never get away if they noticed me and started asking questions.

Brunch got away from me. I thought, 5 or 6 people for brunch, to show him how friendly people are here. Somehow that ballooned to 10 people! Nisha; Kev and Heidi; Heidi’s friend and his kid; Hanuman and Emily; and Marissa showed up. Fortunately, everyone has fled the city for Christmas, and we managed to get a table right away.

“Landon was playing at the Foundry last night, you missed it.” I tease Marissa, “He was wearing ‘that’ shirt and everything.”

She fans herself, “Oh, I wasn’t even working last night! I should have gone!”

After brunch is over and we’re all filtering out, Kyle runs to the bathroom and I end up standing outside with Kev, Heidi and Marissa.

“So, who is that?” Kev asks.

“Umm, you know, we met at work, and…” Oh, everyone can tell anyway, can’t they? “He’s my… boyfriend?”

They all nod. “Thought so.”

Why is it so obvious?

The blower throws a fit; it doesn’t like being left in the cold truck, but I guess Kyle didn’t want everyone asking about it.

After we leave, Kev texts me, “What about Jeremy?”

“What about Jeremy?”

“Don’t you think he’s upset you have a new boyfriend?”

Don’t… I… what? No! I don’t think Jeremy likes me that way! Or does Kev know something I don’t…?

…

Out to Kakabeka! Bad luck, though, despite it being minus 5 all morning, a devilish wind springs up. We barely have time to snap photos before it sends us running back to the truck.

“Well, I showed you Kakabeka, no one said it had to be a long trip.”

Shane calls on the ride back to town and somehow we end up at Draper’s house.

Here Kyle really annoyed me. Keep in mind, the blower won’t start if it detects any blood alcohol, and he has no idea what I’ve planned for the rest of the day, and we’re stuck using his truck to get around. He doesn’t ask me if I want to spend the rest of the day at Draper’s before cracking a beer.

“Dude!”

He freezes, can to his lips.

“What about the blower? What’s the plan?”

He lowers the can guiltily. “Well, it’s too late now.”

No, no it isn’t! Your body still processes alcohol, you could just stop drinking and be clear within an hour. And yet he goes on to finish the beer.

Whatever.

The only real reason I’m annoyed about the beer is because the plan for dinner was to meet Paul, otherwise I’d have a drink myself and get an Uber home and not care.

Shane and Draper are fine. Shane is what you’d expect of a guy who punched someone out on a jobsite while already on probation for assault; loud and obnoxious. He remembers me and Duff being attached at the hip at Dryden. We all reminisce about Steve getting fired for losing his mind at the drug dealer. Draper just bought this house a month or two ago and is still unpacking, so he gives us the tour.

I’m nervous the whole time, I can’t lie. I know I’m dangerously close to being cast as “the girlfriend” and losing all my street cred. I wait for the question of “how did the two of you end up together” that never comes.

I am intensely curious, though, this is punk gangbanger Kyle on display, a side of him I knew existed but hadn’t seen. High energy, laughing a lot, goofing off; feeding on the energy in the room. He unravels quickly, some pent-up energy working itself out.

It’s also interesting how quickly he ingratiates himself, almost to my level. Both Draper and Shane were 1000% on board with me convincing Kyle to move here and practically begging him to do it.

At one point, they move to the living room to watch the Harold and Kumar Christmas movie. I find those movies traumatizing, so I just stay in the kitchen scrolling on my phone. I debate having Paul just pick me up and then the two of us can hang out while Kyle gets stupid with Shane and Draper.

Kyle quickly comes back to figure out what’s wrong.

“Why won’t you watch Harold and Kumar? You can watch movies that don’t have blood and guts in them, you know.” He says teasingly.

What a curious remark. I neglected to mention we rewatched Smile 2. That was the only horror movie I chose to put on; as you can see from the rest of my writings, most of them were feel-good animes. And yet he seems to have picked up that that one was my favourite. Or perhaps he just wanted to tease me.

I still have no idea what he prefers to watch. He was equally engrossed in all of them, and didn’t turn away from the blood and guts in Smile 2… but then, it’s hard to say how much blood he has seen in real life.

“It’s fine, go hang out with your buddies.” I say, but everyone walks thru the kitchen to go for a smoke and end up hanging out with me again anyway.

Shortly before 5, Shane’s girl comes to pick him up. Paul arrives twenty minutes later and manages to clean off a seat in the back for us to stuff Kyle into.

Paul wants to go to Mongo’s. I’ve never been, why not. They’re interesting, some sort of “serve yourself” hotpot thing.

Kyle doesn’t talk a lot, although he does tweak that he’s hiding in his hat and hood again and takes them off after a minute. It’s jarring when he was just super chatty with the boys. He mostly just listens to me and Paul talk. Paul mentions a few stories and tweaks the details in an effort to make me sound better, although I feel like it just makes me sound like more of a flight risk. Perhaps he thinks Kyle is motivated by the chase?

We all have soft drinks with dinner. After dinner, Paul drives us to Superstore to go grocery shopping, since I have nothing left. We drop off my groceries, then take Kyle back to his truck, which fortunately starts.

He heads off to Shane’s apartment and Paul drops me off at home.

“Dare I say the L word?” I say quietly.

“If it’s not big L, it’s L adjacent.” He nudges my shoulder. “It’s amusing to watch you have feelings and shit.”

“I hate it.” I clutch my hands to my chest, which aches, “I wish I had alcohol.”

“Make a tea and have a little cry.”

“I don’t want to.”

I don’t cry, and sleep takes a while to come.

The next morning is a slow one. Kyle got absolutely wasted… at least, that was my understanding of it. He doesn’t want to talk about how his night was at Shane’s place and I don’t push. He did mention that Shane’s girl wanted to have a threesome in Fort Frances and he declined, and my concern is less that he ‘cheated’ and more that he got assaulted… He doesn’t surface until it’s almost noon. He certainly doesn’t want to repeat the stay and makes plans to stay at the hostel again. He does go on to explain that he wants a hotel room so we can have sex.

I throw my head back and laugh. Of course, he could have been getting sex every night at the AirBnb and didn’t, but now that we’ve left it he’s decided he wants more.

“There’s always Kangas.” I offer. Kangas is well known for being a place people go for affairs; it’s cheap, private, and every sauna is equipped with a shower. Me and Paul have amused ourselves by checking out the names of lovers carved into every wall, and I’d imagine the staff at the front think we are having an affair.

He shows up at my apartment having made no plans. Before I go let him in, I warn Emily and Hanuman that he’s here, “I’m not sure what he wants to do, if he’s coming or going.”

Hanuman smiles, “Don’t worry, neither is he.”

We hang out at the apartment for a bit. He’s hungover. I make him drink some water and have a bite to eat while I play on the computer.

We book Kangas for 4:30. He perks up a lot at that point.

Pack up a bag and head out. When we get in, I set a timer on my phone so we don’t lose track of time, which was a good idea because we almost did. He feels much better afterwards, both for the sauna and the release.

Shower and head out. Where to go for dinner? Everywhere is closed except Red Lions’, which is basically dead. We order dinner from the extremely stoned server, and nurse soft drinks. He tells me about some of the jobs in Toronto.

“Drew’s coming along nicely, learning to be an alcoholic.” I joke.

“Oh, he already was.”

“Really?”

“Oh, yeah. I didn’t like working with him at first ’cause he’d not show up, or he’d show up and be useless because he was hungover. We’re slowly whipping him into shape, teaching him to work through the hangover.” He pinches the bridge of his nose. “You didn’t notice he was going through, like, twenty Blackfly’s a night?”

“I did not.” Drew often drank in the basement, out of sight. I did notice there seemed to be a weird number of empty Blackfly cans around the place…

Christ. And everyone is giving Kyle shit for being an alcoholic? He’s just everyone’s favourite punching bag.

After dinner, we go back to my apartment. He should be going to the hostel, to go to bed for the long drive tomorrow, but I don’t want to say goodbye and neither does he.

Darryl keeps calling and calling. On the fourth call, I pick up (with Kyle’s blessing). “You are interrupting date night.”

“Who are you? Where is Kyle? Is he ok?”

Head tilt. I wonder if Kyle told anyone about me…

“He’s fine.” I giggle and hang up. “He really wants you back, huh?”

“Yeah.” He pinches the bridge of his nose. “It still hurts, though. I know I got the work truck impounded…”

“Wait, you did? No wonder they fired you!”

“Ouch.” He chuckles, “I didn’t tell you the story?”

“No, you never told me about how you got the DUI. You just said it was a working lunch. And you don’t have to tell me now.” I add, “But, a work truck!”

“Well, yeah. I just left my truck in Peterborough because I used the work truck all the time. I was still dealing with the divorce. Daryl had just made me foreman and gave me the oil refinery job, and I had to wrangle 15 baby scaffolders and find them brass hammers that don’t spark at the refinery, and get them this and that and make sure they do this and that ’cause if they f*ck up they’re blowing up half of southern Ontario -“

He takes off his hat and runs his hands through his hair in frustration, green eyes wide as he flashes back to it.

I hug-tackle him. That’s too much for one person, and considering how much he’s like me, he probably just tried to muddle along in silence. If he hadn’t gotten the DUI, how long before he broke?

“And then I got the work truck impounded for two weeks, and they fired me, and my insurance is through the roof now…” He murmurs into my shoulder. “And I know I messed up, but everyone always blames me. The owner of the company drank just as much as I did, but only I got caught. I’ve had other foremen like that. One of the bosses even called him out for it; you always complain about Kyle, but he’s also the first one you ask for, every job! Either he’s great or he’s terrible, which is it?“

“That’s awful!”

“Mhmm.”

We break the hug and lay on the bed next to each other. He looks into my eyes. I have a hard time meeting his.

“Are we doing the long distance thing?” I ask.

“I dunno, you keep calling my looks average. Can you survive with an average guy?”

I laugh. I always joke that I’ll be the ten in any relationship I’m in, anyway. Like the part of Harry Potter when Bill get mutilated and Mrs Weasley thinks Fleur will leave him, but she declares, “I am beautiful enough for both of us!” I like what’s between his ears. The body is just a cherry on top.

And he’s far from average. Did you know green eyes are the rarest eye colour? Depending on the ethnic group, blue can be fairly common, but green requires so many things…

“Yes or no, stop dodging the question.” I demand. “I’m a big girl, I can handle it if you say no.”

“Oh, you’re a big girl, huh?” He tickles me and we get in a tickle war for a bit. Finally he says, “I suppose we are.”

You might expect that we stood by the door making out for a while, but instead we were locked in a hug. Words unspoken, feelings heavy in our chests. Hope, the thing with the wings, fluttering away.

Why does it feel right every time I let you in?
Why does it feel like I can tell you anything?
All the secrets that keep me in chains, and
All the damage that might make me dangerous

And then he was gone.