What just happened? Felix staggers forward, leaning onto the door for support. What could Kade have gotten out of that, just touching him? Why didn’t he want to stay? They aren’t lovers anymore, but Felix is more than willing to touch him in return.
Don’t go, he wants to say. The bike roars outside, and he imagines Kade backing out the driveway, his eyes hidden behind his helmet. His laptop is still in the kitchen. Felix is certain he’ll be back for it.
And no matter how many times Kade returns after this, Felix will be willing to spread for him, every time.
12
Kade 20 Years Ago
The first time Kade meets Felix, he’s running late for art class.
He dashes into the classroom after splitting his lunch with his brothers, because they’d gone and lost theirs somewhere. And they’d almost spilled his lunchbox, too. So Kade dashes through the door three minutes after the bell clangs, hoping the art teacher isn’t there yet.
“Sit down,” Mrs. Penny says, frowning over the rim of her glasses. Kade scowls. Not his fault his brothers argued over his lunch.
All the seats are filled except one, at a table where a skinny blond boy is picking out pencils from a case. Kade drops into the chair next to his, blowing a sigh. He hates art class. Nothing he draws ever turns out decent.
“What’s wrong?” the boy asks, looking over.
Sheets of blank paper cover his desk, and the pencils roll across them, all sharpened, their paint coating unchewed. Kade’s never seen anyone with cared-for pencils like that. The boy smiles shyly.
“I guess you need some paper, too.” He slides a large sheet over, but not the pencils.
Kade stares down at the paper, still panting. Maybe he should’ve gotten here earlier. This blond kid isn’t so bad. “What’re we supposed to draw?”
The boy looks up at the chalkboard, where Mrs. Penny has written Garden in cursive letters. “Plants, I guess. What’s your garden like?”
“My mom has a huge one,” Kade says. “She likes the roses and the tulips most, but it’s so hot in the summer that the tulips always wilt. She makes me dig them up. Bah.”
The boy giggles. “It must be fun to dig up plants! I can’t touch mine. The gardeners take care of our gardens, so they always look like the parks.”
Kade shrugs. He only looks at flowers when his mom points them out to him. What sort of family can afford gardeners? “What’s your name?”
“Felix.” The boy picks up a pencil, tracing faint curves over the sheet. “What’s yours?”
“Kade.” He pulls his pencil case out of his bag, picking out a chewed, blunt pencil. “I don’t like drawing. It’s stupid.”
Felix shrugs. “It’s fun.”
Kade tries to draw the roses along the front of his house, but they turn out looking like lumps of coal. He erases the drawing, scowling when the eraser leaves smudges of black across his paper. “Screw this.”
His desk-mate looks over. “Here, why don’t you use mine?”
He hands Kade a pink square, his own sheet covered in flower-dotted bushes, rocky paths, and a sky full of puffy clouds. Kade gapes. In the same time Felix took to sketch that, he had only drawn three flowers. “You just drew that... that garden.”
Felix tilts his head. “Yes, I did.”
“How?” The only other person who draws that well is Kade’s mom, and she has some old sketches of horses and whales hanging on the walls at home. “That’s really good.”
A wave of red sweeps up Felix’s cheeks. “Oh. Well, I practiced. It’s the only thing I’m good at. At least, that’s what my father says.”
He’s pretty, Kade thinks, staring at the forest-green of his eyes, the curve of his lips. “I’m good at lots of things,” he says. “I’ve been helping my dad fix the computers at his work. They have ten of them there!”
“Wow.” Felix’s eyes grow round. “I’m not so good with computers. You must be clever.”
Kade puffs his chest out. “‘Course I am. I’ve been getting full marks on my tests. And my mom says I’m learning a lot.”
Felix smiles, then looks down at his drawing. “I wish my father would say that. My brother’s better at everything, and Father transferred him to a different school so he can learn faster.”
Kade didn’t know people learned at different speeds in other schools. He shrugs, leaning in to nudge Felix. “Well, you can come join me in the playground. I build my castles there in the mornings.”
Felix brightens, his eyes shining. “Really?”
“Yeah,” Kade says. “I need help building sandcastles. My dad says we gotta dream big. So I’m gonna dig holes into the playground and build all the things.”
Felix giggles, and Kade grins along with him. “Okay.”
13
Felix Present Day
Felix steps out of the employee washroom, wincing. Two months since the lemonade stand, and the morning sickness hasn’t abated. He sniffs at his work shirt, trying to decide if the faint sour tang comes from the dregs of scents in his nose, or if his shirt really does smell like puke.
I guess that’s what pregnancy and child-raising is. Puke and more puke.
The store is blissfully empty, and he finds Susan behind the counter, her eyes narrowed. “Please tell me he knows,” she says.
Felix winces. His morning sickness rears its head during his morning shift sometimes, while Susan is around, and it’s painfully obvious when he’s been dashing to the bathroom with no warning at all. “You noticed?”
“I guessed it the second week in,” she says, moving over when he rounds the counter. Felix cringes. “It’s just painful watching you talk to him when you guys are, like, two-hundred percent smitten.”
“We’re not.” Felix glances down at his baggy shirt, to convince himself that the little bump of his abdomen isn’t obvious. “I mean, we see each other occasionally. Like once every two weeks.”
By “see”, he really means “fuck”, when Kade drops by his place to check on his website, and he ends up bending Felix over on the kitchen
