Page 87 of Summer Holiday Lifeline

Shoving phone and letter back into his pocket, he took stock of his surroundings. A Tim Hortons squatted in the centre of a parking lot on the corner. A stream of cars surrounded the little brick building, slowly filtering past the speaker to the drive-though window, similar to every Tim Hortons everywhere. The familiarity of it had a soothing effect on his mood. Grasping the smooth, comforting wood of his cane, he turned his steps towards it.

He was acutely aware of the LCBO as he passed. Like the Tim’s, the liquor stores in Ontario all had a recognizable aesthetic, but this was not one he found soothing. The mere sight of a liquor store had stopped being a siren call to him long ago. But the memories of sitting on the curb, waiting, hoping—those had been slower to fade.

It was a moment, in fact, before he realized that the dishevelled form slumped on the knee-wall along the drive between the two buildings wasn’t a figment of his imagination.

The figure leaned on the last post of the wrought iron fence atop the wall. The green army-issue, multi-pocketed jacket was grubby and threadbare, and covered an equally worn maroon sweater. A plaid collar stuck out at odd angles from the sweater’s crew neck. The holes in the knees of the cargo pants showed a grubby pair of jeans beneath.

Myles knew that distinct, heavily layered look for what it was. For an instant, it felt like looking in a mirror. The sidewalk beneath his feet tilted, his head spun, and he reached for the fence, only to miss, his cane clattering onto the sidewalk as he swayed.

A dirty hand shot out to catch him, and the figure, moving faster than it had at first appeared capable of, rose and eased him onto the wall in their place.

“Easy, bruh. You okay?” The voice from behind the scraggly beard was higher-pitched—maybe younger—than Myles expected.

“Yeah.” He nodded and lowered his head to press against a fist resting on his knee. “I’m good. Thanks.”

“No worries.” There was shuffling, and the wood-on-concrete scrape of his cane, then feet in holey Vans shuffled into Myles’s swimming vision. “You sick or something?”

Myles shook his head. “No. Just dizzy.” Not a surprise, considering he’d ended up wearing more of his breakfast than he’d eaten.

“Good deal.” The cane came to rest against the fence next to him, and the shoes shuffled a little farther away. “Take it easy, eh?”

He couldn’t see the shoes anymore, and Myles held up a hand. “Wait.” He used the fence and then his cane to get upright. Another wave of light-headedness overtook him.

Once again, the person grabbed his hand and hung on, grip strong, until Myles managed to sort out his dodgy hip from his good one and distribute his weight in a way that would keep him upright. “Sorry. It’s… been a morning.”

“No shit.” The comment dropped, heavy with sarcasm.

“Yeah.” Myles straightened. “I get it.”

“You have no idea.” Stormy grey eyes drilled into him. “No clue.”

“Actually.” Myles drew a deep breath and managed a faint grimace as he pulled out his wallet, once again leaning the cane against his leg to free up his other hand. The thing was such a necessary pain in his ass.

“I don’t need your charity.”

“Calm down. I want to show you something.” He poked around until he found a photograph. It depicted himself, Ozzy and Lucky, grinning—a bit manically, maybe—at the young woman who had taken the picture. It had been just after Christmas, and she’d been trying out a new instant camera she’d received, and Lucky had dragged them all over to pose for her. He held the photo out.

“Who’s that?”

“Me. And a couple of my friends. It was taken—” He stopped to think. “Six or seven years ago, I think.”

“You look like shit in it.”

Myles snorted and turned the picture to look at it himself. They all looked dirty, unkempt, clearly as homeless as they’d been at the time. “Yeah. We all did. I was probably drunk too. But we’re none of us those guys anymore.”

“So what? You carry it around to remind you?”

“Something like that.” He went to put it away, but his companion snatched it from him to look again. “For a while, I carried it to remind myself they’d made it out, so I could too. To not forget who I was. Who they’d managed to become.”

“You had each other.” All the challenge had vanished from their voice, and they sounded younger than ever.

“Who are you?” Myles asked gently.

“No one.”

Instead of taking the picture back, Myles wrapped his fingers over their hand and squeezed, beating back the wave of unpleasant revulsion at the dirt. That was the last reaction this young person needed from him right now. “Not true. You’re the one who just stopped me falling on my ass in the street. That’s not nothing.”

“It’s not much.”