Nico leaned forward. “Please tell me you didn’t ask him to come to Vancouverfor your child.”
“Of course not,” Jordy protested. Although—
He’d been clear about why he wanted Rowan to come, hadn’t he?
“Please tell me,” Nico continued, “that you did not ask him to abandon his ‘dream job’ and move to Vancouver without telling him, in these exact words, that you love him.”
Jordy licked his lips. “Look, it’s—he isn’t interested, okay? I wasn’t going to just… humiliate myself.”
Ryan finished his bubble tea. “You, my friend, have not seen enough eighties romcoms.”
“Why would I watch eighties romcoms?”
Nico patted Ryan’s shoulder consolingly. “Never mind,” he said to Jordy. “He means you should humiliate yourself for love.”
“Love is humiliating.” Ryan shrugged. “At least if you’re doing it right.”
At first Jordy wanted to argue. That sounded wrong. Then he thought about how he felt right now, the gutted sting of rejection, feeling like he’d spilled his guts and bared his heart and been found wanting—it wasn’t like it would feel worse if he’d addedplease, I am in love with you.
And on the off chance that that somehow convinced Rowan to give a real relationship a shot, Jordy could not have given less of a shit about the groveling.
Ugh.
“Well,” Ryan said when Jordy didn’t say anything else, “all is not lost. We play in Toronto in January, so you can humiliate yourself then.”
“At some point the self-humiliation becomes stalking and not taking no for an answer,” Jordy pointed out.
Ryan wrinkled his nose. “Yeah, maybe. Do we need to switch to sake?”
Jordy sighed. “No. I need to chug a bottle of Nyquil again tonight.”
“Just dessert, then,” Ryan decided, and flagged down a server.
LATE NOVEMBERturned gray and grisly, as if Toronto missed having Jordy in it and was determined to make everyone who lived there miserable too. Rowan got an interesting new project at work when a local philanthropist passed away and left the university library her collection of first-edition classic British literature. He threw himself into cataloguing and preserving and resisting the urge to slap English professors’ grubby fingers with a ruler.
Kaira continued to tolerate Anna’s presence when Rowan wasn’t home, but as soon as he walked in the door from work, she clung to his legs and begged him for a story or to make her a snack or to watchBluey.
It turned out living with a six-year-old with situational depression was exhausting and the depression was contagious. Kaira alternated between clinginess and angry outbursts with bouts of tears.
The situation only got worse the closer they got to Christmas and Kaira’s departure date, because Kaira now realized that the flight west would mark not only her reunification with her beloved father but Rowan’s departure from her daily life.
Rowan did his best to distract her—and himself—from missing Jordy. He kept their weekends busy with trips to museums and parks so they didn’t give in to the temptation to spend two days lazing on the couch.
The last week of November, the sky opened up early on a Saturday morning and dumped twenty centimeters of snow. The charm of snow—which had been rare during Rowan’s childhood—had somewhat worn away after a couple of winters in Toronto, where snowfalls quickly turned to dirty slush on downtownstreets. But watching Kaira greet the morning with wide-eyed awe and press her face to the patio doors brought his own sense of wonder back.
He managed to wrangle Kaira away from the window and into the kitchen long enough to get them both fed, and then it was up to her room to put on clothes.
Kaira ran through the yard without a clear direction, yelling and jumping. Rowan recorded her mad dash through the yard and screams of “Look, Rowan, snow!” and “You can see my footprints!” But he pocketed his phone when she waved him over and declared that they had to build a snowman.
Luck was on their side, and the snow was perfect for snowball making. There wasn’t enough for anything ambitious, but they made a respectable Olaf-sized creation. They found some stones to make a face and sacrificed Kaira’s scarf with the understanding that they had to go inside soon anyway. Then Rowan took several pictures to “send to Daddy.”
Afterward, they drank hot cocoa and watched Christmas movies and snuggled on the couch. Rowan took more pictures to share with Jordy. He might still be heartbroken, but he couldn’t deny the man pictures of the kid he missed so badly.
Days later he wondered if it wouldn’t be the last good day together.
Kaira all but refused to do anything with Anna when Rowan was home, and bedtime and morning routines were getting longer. Two days after the snow, Kaira wet the bed. She woke up hysterical the next morning.
It wasn’t the last time.
