Two Summers Later
FINN
VIOLET, I THINK, IS IN for quite the day.
Ready, Vi? I call up to her from the main floor of our place in Halifax. I can hear her upstairs, still getting dressed.
Coming!
Sometimes I still can’t believe our life together is real.
It was always real for me. Violet’s words that September night had been a balm, soothing whatever rejection I was feeling—hell, soothing every rejection I’d had before we’d ever even met.
It’s hard for me to explain what I was going through my mind the moment I saw her in Glasgow. I couldn’t believe she was there, that she’d come all that way to find me. And that it had meant something to her, too.
We’d spent some time sorting out what, exactly, had been fake about our summer of fake dating.
Turns out, it was pretty much nothing at all.
After that, everything seemed pretty sorted on my end—there was only ever Violet. Though we did have to decide where, exactly, we were going to figure the rest out. But we were going to figure it out together.
I don’t want to go back to Victoria, Violet had said, chewing on her bottom lip. But Scotland was a little too far from her family—and as much as I loved showing her around Glasgow, I felt like I was ready for a change, too.
She hadn’t missed Toronto. Didn’t connect to Vancouver. But Halifax?
I bloody love Halifax, I had told her, grinning.
Me too. And that was all she’d needed to say.
After a few weeks, while we waited for my visa, Violet flew back to B.C.
She told her family about me, for real this time. She promised her Nan and her parents that we’d come back to visit—and more often than she had while she was living in Toronto. Violet had big plans about starting her own food agency, about figuring out a life that gave her purpose and time for other things.
The physio stuff was easy. I thought about starting my own clinic, but honestly, I didn’t want the stress of it—I wanted time outside of work, too. I lined up a number of meetings at different clinics when I arrived, wanting to see what felt right.
My only fear was how Billie would react. Before I broke the news, I made sure to scope out the drag scene in my new home.
I signed you up for a show this summer, I told Billie. They’d frowned at the description.
This show’s in Canada, you muppet.
Aye.
Billie had looked at me, piecing everything together in an instant.
Is Violet going?
Aye.
Thank fuck, was all Billie said. You’re not meant to go anywhere without her.
I couldn’t have agreed more.
Violet finds me waiting for her at the bottom of the stairs.
She jumps from the last step into my arms, and I kiss her, for what feels like the thousandth time. But it’s never enough.
We’re driving to Christmas Island today, to spend a week basking in the sunshine with some of our favourite people.
