Page 19 of A Small Town Spring

I take a large sip of champagne.The bubbles burn the back of my throat.“Yet again, I get no credit for discovering Rosedale,” I say, a shade harshly.

“Oh, Kingston,” Beck sways out of his chair, tilting his head onto my shoulder.“You’re the grandfather of all of us happy Rosedalians.”

I sputter and push the youngling’s head away.A minute ago I felt like the uncle; now I’ve been labeled a grandfather?“Thanks for that.”

“What I mean is, we wouldn’t be here if not for you,” Beck says, laughing.“Maybe I would never have met Donovan, and fallen in love with him, and decided to open a cookie shop, and then we wouldn’t be here eating Easter egg sugar cookies on a glorious April day.”

“So really,” Toby says, amber eyes twinkling, “we owe this gathering entirely to you, Kingston James.”He raises his mimosa to me.“And we’re in your debt.”

“Exactly,” Beck says, raising his glass as well.“To Kingston!”

“I don’t know why we’re toasting, but I’m always in favor of giving Kingston his flowers,” Jack says from the next table over.“To Kingston!”

Now my face feels hot from the attention, and I narrow my eyes at Beck, then Toby, who looks pleased with himself.“Whatever,” I grumble, uncharacteristically embarrassed.But I let the party toast me, then get back to their brunch.I may not have a partner, but it feels nice to be an appreciated member of the community, even if this toast feels goofily performative.Come to think of it, my dad would probably be pretty proud of me for influencing so many lives for the better.

And it sounds like Toby plans to stay in Rosedale for good, which means I’ll have to learn to live with that.Someday, this hard knot of longing in my chest won’t hurt as much.Maybe it’ll eventually fade away entirely.

I catch his eyes with mine as he bites into another cookie, crumbs clinging to his soft pink lips, before he brushes them away.He winks at me, and my entire body feels like it’s on fire.

Or maybe not.

Summer

Toby

Nine

I always thoughtI’d have my life figured out by now.

Hilarious, right?

I’m about to turn thirty-three.And yes, from the outside I seem to have the bare minimum of functionality—I have a place to live, I have a car.I have a lovely cat and a calling.I have a girlfriend, and I have money coming in, in fits and starts, but still.I can pay my bills, when I remember to pay them.

And yet I look around and wonder what the hell I think I’m doing because in so many ways it feels like I’m treading water and there’s no dock, no beach, not even a life preserver in sight.

So often it feels as if I make decisions because of what I don’t want.I don’t want to be like my dad.I don’t want to be famous.I don’t want to get a nine-to-five job.I don’t want to be alone.

But lately, no matter the fact my girlfriend and I have been together for ten years, I feel oddly alone.

I thought my mom might understand.She’s on the other side of the world at the moment, an anthropologist researching her latest book in Australia.She’s been divorced from my dad for two decades and has been single ever since.But when I bring up my general state of confusion with her in our every-other-week phone call, she suggests I go to therapy.When I talk to my London-based therapist about it in a video call, he asks me if I’m so afraid of living my life in the negative, maybe I should try defining what I want, in the positive.

What do I want?

It scares me that the first thing that occurs to me isn’t money, or success, or watching Ivy get big with our hypothetical child—something we used to talk about and haven’t mentioned in at least a year.It’s not even words—only a face.

Kingston James’s face.

I have a secret.

I’m supposed to be working on Kingston’s commission.He wanted a tidy picture of his country cottage to hang on his wall, and I started painting it—I truly did.But then I was looking through the prints of the photos I took at his house, and I kept returning to the one I took of his face, his umber skin naturally lit by the spring sunshine coming through his living room window.He was so beautiful that day.Whenever I look at that picture, that’s what I see—a beautiful soul, grieving the loss of his father, striving to make it seem as if he doesn’t hurt.

So I started painting something else.A portrait.Of Kingston.And I haven’t been able to stop.

But wanting to paint Kingston James isn’t the same as wanting him.Is it?

And the fact that Ivy hasn’t touched me in months just means she’s been preoccupied by getting ready for her show.

But the real red flag is that I hadn’t even noticed she’d stopped touching me.Not until my therapist brings it up.

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