Seeing him now, this young beautiful man with the brutal manner of the underconfident, edges buffered by the charm of the well-rehearsed, Gale wondered why he had ever let him go.

Truth was he never did.

Never could have. 

Randy had left him.

Well, why wouldn’t he.

He watched him now, wide toothy smile at play, fingers curled around the teal glass teacup of sparkling water he had poured himself off the welcome tray, the sleeves of his charcoal sweater drawn down to the knuckles of his thumb. He watched him from a studied distance, stood as he was propped up against the oak effect door frame of the room he had entered some two or three minutes previously; watched him share a memory and a moment with someone who wasn’t him. And, with all the weight of the bitterly regretful, and with frequently good cause, he sadly smiled.

And then, with a knowing nudge to his elbow, the shoulders of the object of his fixation began to turn towards him, and the kind blue eyes of this once upon a time nearly man, now no longer a pale Canadian-wintered youngster but a summer-sunned New Englander, glanced up to meet his own. And he found himself smiling without any feelings of self-loathing, shame and regret in his gut for once; found himself smiling without any feelings of self at all in that one perfect moment that was just theirs. Found himself just smiling. Found himself then stepping forward a pace or two, picking up a teal glass teacup of his own off the tray and walking towards him, eyes to the floor till they came nearly together, a nervous smile now, a familiar tide turn in his core. The introspection of only his own sad self widening now to eclipse and draw in this other somebody, lighter now already within his bricked up walls. Lit simply but lit. Lit by love.

                                               ***

It had been so much easier back at the start.

                                               ***