Page 35 of Full Mountie

And then it all went sideways pretty spectacularly.

Yeah, well I’m a decade older and at least a modicum wiser now.

And when she gives me a wink, I’m reminded that she’s more than capable of drawing her own boundaries. “It feels right for you, too?”

She nods definitively. “Yep. Now put the pasta on.”

Okay, then.

I measure out a larger portion of spaghetti for myself and a smaller one for her, double-checking before I slide the noodles into the boiling water. She gives me a hip bump as she nudges me out of the way so she can add some salt, then she sets a timer for eight minutes.

I find a corkscrew and open the wine, and while we wait for the sauce to heat up and the noodles to cook, we share a drink.

It all feels delightfully domestic. It’s been ages since I’ve done this with a lover. Friends, yes. Group munches. Gavin and Ellie a few times.

“Do you want Parmesan on yours?” She moves around me to the fridge. Her hand stays on my hip as she pulls the door open and grabs a chunk of cheese neatly wrapped in plastic and bearing a sticker from the cheese shop at Byward Market. “I dashed over at lunch and picked this up.”

“That sounds great.”

“There’s a rasp in that drawer there—” She points with the block of cheese. “Can you grab it?”

Once our dinner is plated up and we’ve done a quick tidy, we eat at the table. I tell her about the overnight shifts at 24 Sussex, which morphs into a bit of a history lesson about the time someone broke in and a previous prime minister’s wife had to defend herself with an Inuit carving.

“I think I heard about that,” Beth says, shaking her head. “How scary!”

“I think it probably happened when you were in high school.”

She winks. “Right, because you’re so much older than me.”

The eight years between us doesn’t feel like much now. “I was young at the time. I was…” I trail off, trying to figure out how old I’d been. “In university, I think.”

That twists into a conversation about school, but Beth isn’t very forthcoming. She went to college in Fredericton, near where she grew up, she shares that much, but quickly slides the conversation back to our respective moves to Ottawa.

“So you’re fully bilingual?” I’ve heard her speak French, and she slides back and forth with ease, but my own French is hard-fought, and it’s difficult to know sometimes.

She shrugs. “Yes, but…” I give her adon’t-brush-this-offlook and she laughs. “Yes. I am.” She takes a sip of wine. “It was really my mother’s doing. She enrolled me in the immersion stream of school from the beginning. In hindsight, I should thank her for that, although I’m not using it as she’d like me to.”

“What would she rather you be doing?” That doesn’t make any sense.

She waves her hand dismissively. “Ah. Well. My mom is a whole other conversation. She’s an artist, and sees the world through a very special, totally impractical lens.”

“Gotcha.”

“How about your family?”

“The complete opposite of that. My dad was a city cop in Guelph, my mom is a nurse. Now he’s retired and coaches hockey, and she goes to work to avoid him.” Ah, my parents. I shake my head.

She laughs. “Yep. That’s different. Do you go home often?”

“Nah. Once a year or so. We don’t have a lot in common.”

She curves one eyebrow up in obvious disbelief. “He’s a cop and he plays hockey.”

Shit, I walked right into that. I swirl my wine around in my glass. “Those aren’t enough to make up for the fact that his son is bisexual.”

Her face falls. “Oh. Oh, Lachlan. I’m sorry.”

I shrug. “Old news now. We just don’t talk about it.”

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