Patchwork Paradise(22)

I ducked my head. “Yes.”

“And you’re not afraid of drowning.”

“Well, I’d rather not, obviously. But being in the water or falling out of the canoe doesn’t scare me, no.”

“So I acted like a total idiot grabbing you like that. And telling you you were going to be fine. You were fine all along.”

My heart ached. “Thomas, I really didn’t mean to embarrass you or anything. I—”

“It’s fine.” He rose to his feet in short, jerky motions, dusting me lightly with sand as he walked to the water. “The others are coming down the river.”

“Thomas . . .”

He shook his head, and I didn’t press it, because there came Cleo, laughing as she saw us. “You guys tipped over? That’s priceless. Hey, Imran! They capsized! Man, I wish I’d seen it.”

We ate an only mildly plastic-y lunch. I kept quiet when Thomas suggested he and Marjory share the canoe the rest of the way. Imran thought nothing of it, but Cleo gave me an inquiring look. I didn’t acknowledge her, I climbed into a kayak, heart heavy and a knot of feelings in the pit of my stomach I couldn’t even begin to decipher.



The worst thing about holidays is returning to work afterward. I didn’t mind work. At all, actually, but I needed to be in the groove, in the habit of it, and I hadn’t been for over a month.

I was wrecked on Tuesday morning. The small hours had plagued me with strange thoughts again. I wondered if I should worry about thinking the way I did sometimes, but the worst of the darkness always fled when dawn came.

It felt weird to get ready to go in the morning all by myself. No one to squabble with over the shaving cream. Sam wasn’t there to pretend to be grossed out when I used his deodorant stick. I could shower twice as long as usual and I’d still get to work in time. I ate breakfast by myself at seven thirty, and it tasted like ashes in my mouth.

Somewhat appropriately, it was raining when I stepped outside. The tram was dank with wet bodies. I had a car but mainly used it for driving to the hospitals I needed to visit. If I had to go into the office, it was easier to take a tram than wrestle through Antwerp traffic and search for parking.

At least school hadn’t started yet, or I’d be squashed among a bunch of teenagers in badly put on uniforms. Instead I got to ride quietly, staring at my reflection as the tram entered the dark tunnels leading to the center of Antwerp. I had no idea what waited for me at work, but I doubted they’d send me out to a hospital on day one. I cringed when I thought of seeing my coworkers and their pity.

I wasn’t wrong. Lesley, our receptionist, started crying when she saw me. Ben Dalemans, my boss, gave me an awkward pat on the back, and everyone else pretty much avoided eye contact. Most of them had been at the funeral, and they’d seen me at my worst. It was embarrassing. I was glad to grab my morning coffee and hide in my small office with its view of the central station beneath me. If I squashed my face to the window, I could see the Antwerp Zoo, but I’d stopped trying that when I realized the windows only got washed once a year.

I answered emails all day long. Slowly my coworkers trickled in to offer me their condolences and to tell me I should let them know if they could do anything for me. An evil part of me wanted to take advantage and ask them to bring me coffee and lunch and more coffee. But I heard Sam’s voice admonish me, so instead I smiled and thanked them and said that no, I was okay. Even the token homophobe came in to mumble sorry before he hurried away. He never set more than one foot into my office. Maybe he was afraid to get gay cooties.

Don’t worry, I thought meanly. The gays don’t want your fat ass.

And then it was evening, and I got to do the same bedraggled trek home again, only now the bodies were noticeably less well washed than they’d been that morning.

The next day I did it all over again, and so I went on week after week. I pushed through life as if it were a slightly monotonous and far too long novel, a page-by-page review of dreary, everyday details no one wanted to read about.

Simon called me once, asking if I had taken some time to think things through. I told him my answer was no. The house was mine by Sam’s will, and if they wanted to fight me on it, they could. When he told me I was being ungrateful, that they’d treated me like a son while all I had ever done was take advantage, his words cut deep. Simon had been like a father to me, and yet here he was, throwing me out of my own home.

I heard the anger in his voice when he told me their lawyer would be in touch, and that he was disappointed Sam hadn’t meant more to me than this. He said Sam would be shocked if he knew how much pain I was putting his parents through. When he hung up, I threw my phone across the living room in rage, but all it did was bounce harmlessly on the couch.

This house was my home. My last link to the man I had loved with more than just my heart. If Simon thought he could bully me into giving it up, he had another think coming.

And suddenly Sam had been gone for six months, and I awoke on an early December morning not reaching for him, not wondering where he was. That split second when I believed he was still alive was gone. I waited for the tears, the grief, the anger, the bargaining, the acceptance of this new loss, but they didn’t come.

“You need to go on a date,” Cleo told me at a bar one Saturday evening. I didn’t go to the Nine Barrels anymore, and if the others did, they never told me. If anyone had asked me a year ago whether Sam held our group’s friendship together, I’d have said no, but we’d undeniably seen a lot less of each other lately, and I felt guilty. I hadn’t tried very hard to reach out to my friends.