Page 23 of Walking on Broken Paths

Chapter Seventeen

When dawn light began filtering in through the blinds of Jesse’s bedroom the following morning, he was already awake, staring at a sleeping Parker in the bed next to him. Parker, his face smooshed into the pillow, looked soft and delicate and peaceful in the fragile light.

Jesse’s fingers itched, desperate to touch the smooth skin of Parker’s back, his knobbly spine, his strong shoulders. But Jesse also didn’t want to wake him.

Last night’s date had been illuminating and heartbreaking all at once. Jesse would rather remember how Parker had smiled at him at dinner and how the sunset had cast shadows over his face than how it had fallen in devastation when Jesse had admitted that he didn’t have enough to give.

Parker deserved more, but... maybe that wasn’t Jesse’s call to make. Parker believed Jesse was enough as he was.

Jesse just wasn’t sure he believed him.

He had a virtual appointment with his therapist this afternoon, and he could only imagine Dr. Ippolito’s response when Jesse told her about his and Parker’s conversation last night.

“What on earth makes you think broken people can’t have committed, loving relationships?”

What on earth, indeed.

Parker had driven Jesse home last night, their hands clasped on Parker’s thigh, and although the drive had been silent, it had been filled with the promise of hope.

It had been a long time since Jesse’s guilt and shame had been replaced by something else, but there was the hope, dangerously spreading through his chest.

Parker had walked Jesse to his door, given him the softest of goodnight kisses, and told him to think about what he’d said.

How could Jesse not?

I want to dream with you, Jess. I want to dream big with you.

His words made Jesse tear up again hours later, filling him with wonder and that treacherous hope again.

He hadn’t been able to let Parker go home. Whatever happened between them in the future, the thought of Parker home alone after the evening they’d had...

Just no.

So he’d asked Parker to stay, and they’d undressed to their underwear, slipped into bed, and talked until Parker had fallen asleep mid-sentence.

Parker had told him about his first apartment in Montreal, and about how if he used the microwave, the internet stopped working.

Jesse had told him about how he’d contacted his billet family to apologize for how he’d acted when he’d lived with them, and they’d been more understanding than he’d felt he’d deserved.

They looked up old classmates neither of them spoke to anymore and giggled like the schoolchildren they’d been over one of their old friends’ comics.

Parker told him that his dad had told him , before he’d died, to sell the business because it would never make him happy. “That’s the first time I’ve acknowledged his words to myself,” Parker had said quietly. “But I don’t think I can do it, Jess.”

Jesse told him that he hadn’t been on The Windblown since he’d found Mikey’s body on it. “There are a lot of really good memories on that boat, but the last one erases them all,” Jesse admitted. “I don’t think I can do it, Parks.”

Parker told him about a guy he’d dated for a few years when he’d first landed in Montreal. It hadn’t worked out—Parker had been focusing on his career, but his partner had wanted to settle down and start a family. They’d been in different places in their lives.

Jesse told him that he didn’t date, but he did have a couple of guys he called on for stress relief every once in a while. It wasn’t serious with either of them.

Parker fell asleep while telling him about the condo in Boucherville he’d sold before moving back in with his dad last summer, and Jesse spent the remainder of the night watching him sleep like some kind of obsessed stalker.

Jesse loved him.

It was as easy, as simple, as quick as that.

Or maybe it hadn’t been quick. Maybe it was inevitable.

And maybe it wasn’t easy given Jesse’s state of mind, but the slide into love had been as easy as lacing his skates for a game.

Own the broken parts of you, Jess. Because they’re beautiful. They’re perfect.

Jesse launched himself out of bed before his circling thoughts could make him crazy.

In sweatpants and a hoodie, he got the coffee going in the kitchen, looking around as he did so.

Now that the living room was done, the kitchen was next.

The entire thing needed to be gutted. It had a nineties vibe he wasn’t a fan of—gross taupe tiles, yellowed appliances, red-and-white patterned backsplash that clashed with the floor, and stark-white cabinets.

What happened after the gutting, Jesse didn’t know. He’d figure it out as he went.

As the coffee brewed, he set about making breakfast, but a draft swept into the room, sending the pile of Mikey’s sketches that his parents had given him after Mikey’s memorial onto the floor.

“What the fuck?” Jesse muttered as the pages fluttered lightly to the tile.

He’d never found the draft in the living room. Now there was possibly one in here too?

“Fucking great.”

Every sketch had fallen onto the floor face-first except one. Jesse stooped to pick it up and sucked in a sharp breath.

It was him and Parker, aged... fifteen? Sixteen? They sat on the deck of The Windblown in shorts and T-shirts, their hair in complete disarray.

Jesse had never seen this sketch before. It hadn’t been part of the display at Mikey’s memorial, and he didn’t remember seeing it when he’d flipped through the folder when his mom had handed it to him afterwards. Admittedly, he’d gone through it quickly, but still.

Had someone else drawn this?

But no. It was done in Mikey’s style, and there was his name in the right corner, a lazily scribbled MM for Mikey Melnik, as though his signature had been an afterthought.

It was the smiles, though, that captured Jesse’s attention.

Jesse had wanted to kiss his best friend, even way back then, and that desire was clearly etched all over his face with Mikey’s candid accuracy.

And Parker... he was smiling at Jesse in the same way.

Had he wanted to kiss Jesse back then too?

A tug of yearning blossomed in the pit of his stomach. Yearning for what could’ve been. For what was.

For what could be.

Carefully, Jesse picked up the sketches and tucked them back in the folder. The one of him and Parker, he left on top, wishing he could go back to that moment and tell his younger self to pay better attention to...

Shit. Everything.

An incessant beeping interrupted the silence of the morning, followed by a groaned curse. A moment later, the beeping ceased.

Parker’s phone alarm.

Jesse strode to the bedroom and leaned against the doorjamb. “Morning.”

Parker made a desperate sound of despair and hugged the pillow closer. “I hate Mondays,” he grumbled. “And Tuesdays. And Wednesdays. And Thursdays. And Fridays. And Saturdays. Sundays. Sundays are where it’s at. No copywriting, no dinner cruises.”

It was on the tip of Jesse’s tongue to ask—again—why he didn’t simply sell the business, but he refrained.

Jesse may have fled across the country to escape Mikey’s death and anything associated with it, but the suicide note he still kept in his wallet fifteen years later was proof that he understood the basic desire to keep a deceased loved one close.

Tangible reminders were often the best way to do that.

Plus, Parker had said just last night—early this morning? Whenever.—that he didn’t have the heart to sell.

“Why don’t you go back to sleep?” Jesse said. “It’s only six.”

“Why are you up?” Parker asked, peering at him blearily.

“Couldn’t sleep.”

Parker’s eyes blinked slowly closed before he snapped them open. “I’m awake.”

“Parks,” Jesse said with a laugh. “Go back to sleep. Why do you even have your alarm set this early?”

“Usually go jogging.”

It had been much later in the morning when Jesse had encountered Parker jogging on his street a few weeks ago—Parker in those tiny, clingy short shorts that showed off his shapely legs—so clearly a six-a.m. jog wasn’t a hard and fast rule.

“Go jogging later.”

Parker smacked his lips together. “M’kay.”

And just like that, he was fast asleep.

Jesse took a minute to stare at him again.

In a perfect world, he’d cross to the bed, lie down behind Parker, and hug him close while he, too, went back to sleep.

They’d awake a couple of hours from now, turn sleepily into each other, and greet the morning with lazy blow jobs that would fuel the rest of their day.

Jesse couldn’t say why he didn’t follow his instinct to cuddle Parker, only that an insistent tug dragged him back into the kitchen. To the sketch of him and Parker on The Windblown .

And he noticed a detail he hadn’t spotted before—they were holding hands.

Jesse couldn’t remember a time when he and Parker had ever held hands as teenagers.

Which meant Mikey had been much more observant than Jesse had ever given him credit for.

Air from the mysterious draft rolled into the kitchen again, making the sketch flutter in Jesse’s hands. He passed a thumb over their joined hands, then set the sketch down again.

Because the real Parker Willis was in his bed. Jesse didn’t need to be yearning for him when he was right here.

Marching to the bedroom, he slipped into bed next to Parker and pulled him close, his heart sighing at Parker’s grunt of contentment, and finally got some sleep.