Page 13 of Walking on Broken Paths

Chapter Eleven

Toronto, here they came.

But first, Jesse had to survive Mikey’s memorial.

God. Fifteen years . There’d been times after Mikey’s death that Jesse didn’t think he’d make it through the next fifteen minutes.

The memorial was an informal get-together at the home of Mikey’s best friend. Mikey and Clive had grown up together, and the loss of Mikey had cut Clive just as much as it had Jesse and his parents.

Clive was yet another person Jesse hadn’t been there for. Another person to feel guilty about leaving behind.

Dr. Ippolito would tell him that his guilt was misplaced and that he’d been in no position to be there for anyone after Mikey’s death. And while that was true, there was still a part of Jesse that felt like he’d let everyone down.

How differently would things have gone for him if he’d stayed here and grieved alongside everyone else instead of fleeing as far as he could get?

He’d never know.

Clive had married a few years earlier, and his wife was four months pregnant with their second child and just starting to show.

They’d set up in the backyard with food they’d had catered to make their lives easier.

It was obvious this was a home with kids because there was a water table, a soccer ball, bubble wands, and a little kiddie pool.

They’d been moved aside, out of the way, and set up against the side and back fences were easels showcasing some of Mikey’s artwork.

Jesse’s favourite was a sketch of The Windblown . It was simple, with hardly any shading, but Mikey’s love for the sailboat was captured in its clean lines and his attention to detail.

“I keep meaning to ask you,” Dad said from Jesse’s right, his voice a little gruff, his gaze trained on Mikey’s sketch of the family’s sailboat, “if you’d like to go sailing with your mom and me before you head back to Vancouver.”

The breath caught in Jesse’s throat. “I don’t think I can go back on that boat.”

“That’s what we thought too. It was why we wanted to sell it. Believe it or not, though, being on the boat is surprisingly cathartic.” Dad turned to him, his smile so gentle that it hurt. “But I understand why it would be different for you.”

Jesse blinked and it was fifteen years earlier. He was seventeen years old and boarding The Windblown , looking for his brother because Mikey hadn’t shown up for dinner.

He blinked again, and he was entering the sleeping cabin.

A bottle of pills.

A note.

A sketchpad on the end of the bed.

A graphite pencil staining the sheets.

And Mikey, unnaturally still, looking like he’d lain down for a nap.

“Mikey! No, no, no, Mikey, wake up. Wake up!”

Another blink, and he was back in the present, the sun warm on his skin. A shock of wind trembled through the trees, made Jesse’s T-shirt cling to his body. Miraculously, Mikey’s artwork stayed put.

The dichotomy of being in two places at once—even if only mentally—made his head spin and his chest ache.

Swallowing hard, Jesse tore his gaze away from the sketch of The Windblown . “Did you guys give Mikey’s artwork to Clive?” he asked his dad.

“Yeah. He thought it’d be nice to feature some of it instead of photos of Mikey. You know how Mikey felt about having his picture taken. Remember when we tried having those professional family photos done?”

Jesse surprised himself by laughing. “He hid behind me the whole time.”

The family photo that hung on the hallway wall at his parents’ house had been taken during that same photography session.

There’d been much coaxing with promises of Cows ice cream, and finally, Mikey had crept out from behind Jesse to smile reluctantly at the camera.

The photographer had only gotten a true smile out of him when Jesse had stooped to tickling.

The picture had turned out nice.

The memory was better.

Clive appeared on Jesse’s other side, a bottle of beer in one hand, two clutched by the neck in the other. He handed those to Jesse and his dad.

“Do you think Mikey would’ve liked beer?” Clive asked conversationally. He was short, with thinning hair and a touch of roundness around the middle, but otherwise, his face hadn’t changed much since Jesse had last seen him, although it did have more lines.

Jesse grunted. “He would’ve been into fruity cocktails.”

In fact, he could picture it now. In an alternate universe, they weren’t here for a memorial.

They were celebrating Clive’s daughter’s birthday.

There were party balloons and streamers and a bouncy castle, and Mikey was over by the drinks table nursing a strawberry daiquiri as he laughed about something with Clive’s wife.

It wasn’t healthy to dream about what-ifs, but sometimes, it brought an odd sort of comfort. It made his brother feel alive, at least in spirit.

Wind caressed Jesse’s cheek, shaking him out of his thoughts, and he turned to Clive. “Thanks for doing this today, man.”

Clive shrugged, seeming uncomfortable with the praise as one of Mikey’s high school friends pulled Dad into conversation. “Thanks for coming.”

A spike of pain pierced Jesse’s heart. “I’m sorry I never did before.”

But Clive shook his head. “No apology necessary. I get it. Besides, I mostly hold these yearly memorials for myself. A way to keep my friend alive. If other people show up, that’s just the icing on the cake. Shit, speaking of cake... Mikey!”

Jesse jumped at the unexpected shout.

At the food table, a little girl dressed in a pink dress snatched her hand back.

“What did I tell you?” Clive asked the girl. “You’ve got to have real food first. Then you can have dessert.”

She huffed. “Okay, Daddy.” She didn’t sound all that impressed.

Jesse’s mom waved at them from the table. “I’ll make her a plate, Clive.”

Clive waved back in thanks.

“You...” Jesse cleared the grit out of his throat. “You named her...”

“Mikaela,” Clive said with a glance at one of the sketches. “We call her Mikey. Do you think your brother would’ve minded?”

“I think he’d have been embarrassed as hell,” Jesse said truthfully. Clive laughed. “But he would’ve been touched too.”

“She’s too young right now, but one day I’m going to tell her about him. Do you have any kids of your own, Jesse?”

“Nah.”

He almost added that kids weren’t in the cards for him, but he didn’t want to go down that rabbit hole. He’d felt half dead since Mikey died, and the part of him that was still alive didn’t have enough left to offer another person, be it a partner or a child.

For the first time, that thought made him unaccountably sad. Not because he wanted to go out and find himself a life partner right this second. But because of Parker.

There’d been a spark between them lately, hadn’t there?

Parker was the first person in... well, ever.

.. to make Jesse wish that things were different—that he was different.

He thought he’d caught Parker looking at him with interest once or twice, so whatever this spark was, maybe Parker felt it too.

But Parker deserved better than what Jesse could give him. He deserved someone who could give him the world.

All Jesse could do was offer him what was left of his heart, and it wasn’t much.

As if he’d conjured him, Parker walked into the backyard wearing jeans, a T-shirt, and an uncertain smile, like he wasn’t sure he was in the right place. His expression cleared when he spotted Jesse.

“Excuse me a second,” Jesse said to Clive.

“All good.” Clive sighed. “I need to rescue your mother from the picky eating habits of a three-year-old anyway.”

His heart skipping a beat, Jesse met Parker halfway across the yard. “Hey. I thought I told you not to come.”

Parker rolled his eyes, and his voice was teasing when he said, “I don’t take orders from you.”

After burying his father only three days ago, Jesse had encouraged Parker to stay home today. There was only so much a person could take, and with his father’s death so recent, Parker didn’t need to subject himself to more sadness so soon.

Contrary to what Jesse had expected, though, Mikey’s memorial wasn’t sad. It was a celebration. It was hope. It was life despite loss. It was friends and family getting together to remember the life of someone they’d loved.

There was beauty in that and in taking the time to reflect on everything that made a loved one so special.

“Parks, if it’s too hard for you to be here?—”

“It’s not,” Parker said. “I want to be here. For your parents, for Mikey... for you.”

Their gazes met and held, a curl of wind teasing the air between them. Time stretched, a second becoming two, becoming four, becoming eight.

A motley of too many emotions to name settled in Jesse’s stomach, but the one that stood out the most was gratitude.

Scratch that. The one that stood out the most was affection.

What he felt for Parker was like quicksand in his chest—one wrong move and he’d sink into his feelings and never find his way back out.

And there was a voice inside his head he couldn’t shake that quietly asked if that was such a bad thing.

Parker smiled gently. He held out a hand, twining their fingers together when Jesse took it and sending a line of shivers up Jesse’s arm. “Come on. Walk me through these drawings.”

So Jesse did, Parker’s hand warm and solid in his, starting with the nearest drawing, a simple sketch of a neighbourhood cat that used to prowl around after dark.

“Mikey used to leave food scraps out for him even though the cat got plenty fed at home.” He tugged Parker to the next drawing.

“This is from a project he did in grade nine. He was supposed to draw a bowl of fruit, but all we had were bananas. And this one...” On to the next sketch.

“Mom, Dad, Mikey, and I took the boat out for an afternoon, and Mikey spent hours sitting on The Windblown , trying to capture the ocean’s waves. And over here...”

He didn’t realize he’d attracted a crowd until he got to the last sketch. His mom’s eyes were misty, but she was smiling. Dad had an arm around her waist, equally misty-eyed. Parker hadn’t let go of Jesse’s hand and Mikey’s friends were gathered around, hanging on Jesse’s every word.

Until he faltered when he got a look at his audience.

“He made us sit for that one for hours,” Clive said with a laugh when Jesse’s silence went on, gesturing at the final sketch with his beer. He turned to one of his school buddies. “Remember, Robbie?”

Robbie chuckled. “I remember I told him to take a picture of us instead so he could sketch using that as a reference, and he looked at me like I’d suggested we cut the sails of The Windblown into ribbons.”

Everyone chuckled as someone else launched into a story about Mikey, and it was good.

Better than good. It was, at least for Jesse, desperately needed.

He’d feared talking to his parents about Mikey because he didn’t want to upset them, but seeing them now, laughing and joking along with Mikey’s friends, they looked. ..

Not happy, exactly. But content to listen and occasionally contribute. Frankly, they looked younger. More at peace with themselves.

Jesse had to admit that being here was healing. It helped to remember that he wasn’t the only one whose life had been changed when Mikey died. He wasn’t the only one who’d loved Mikey and been affected by his loss.

Listening to them reminisce was almost like Mikey was standing right beside him.

Wind swept through the backyard, bringing with it the scent of saltwater—a scent Jesse would always associate with his brother—and he closed his eyes and breathed.