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“Dad might have until… I didn’t. Good thing too. He might have felt like he had to come and watch me fuck up my?—”
He doesn’t have to say mybig chancefor me to hear it, or this.
“Fucking glad Dad didn’t see it either.”
“He’d already…”
“Gone? Yeah. He got to see me start at the academy, and then…” He shakes his head, maybe trying to shake off the past, and here’s another crack to peer through—he only ever looks this bruised when he mentions soccer. That doesn’t stop him from being open about failure, which is a reminder of when he stood outside a chapel and told a bride and groom they’d survive what felt like a disaster. That they could change plans and look back one day without flinching.
He does the same now, even if he doesn’t know it.
He meets my eyes, his gaze much steadier than the hand he slicks back his hair with. “I’ve only got one regret.”
“Yeah?”
He shrugs. “Well, maybe I’ve got two. Here’s the first.” He meets my gaze, water droplets clinging not only to his new beard but also to his eyelashes, like tears for a past he can’t rewrite. “I wish to fuck I’d let Dad get a few more balls past me in that garden. If I got a do-over, I’d let him put every single shot in the back of the net.”
See how he doesn’t ask for a second chance at fame or sporting glory?
“I wish I could go back. I can’t. But I can remember.”
This is what I’m talking about—what I’ll burn the candle at both ends to capture later. I don’t care how long it takes me.
I’ll draw this memory for him.This resilience.
He makes some more memories for me by leading me back into the water, and it’s wild how it feels so much warmer after being out of it for a few minutes. I’m warmer still when the river dumps us into another pool, where I see what he must have noticed in Olek’s drawing to identify that this was the exact spot where he learned to swim. I point over the edge of this pool. “Those are…”
“Glynn Harber’s chimneys? Yeah. The school is just a little further downhill. Back in the day, they must have brought the kids up here for swimming lessons. This pool is perfect for it.” He’s right. The water is calm here. Almost still. The river rushing past is behind a natural wall of boulders.
I look back at him to find him watching.
Me.
His question is low and careful. “This what you needed to see, Rae?”
No.
He is.
I nod rather than say that he’s my muse now—my reason to itch for pencil and paper or for my phone and stylus. He’s the hero whose journey I’ll hold a mirror up to, and ask the world, what’s the fucking difference? English or Polish. Native or new arrival. In the past or the present.
That’s what floats along with us as the last of the sun fades and Hayden tells me more about growing up here. About his dad’s twin passions, and how Hayden learned about both without even knowing, and how he had all of his dad’s old contacts. “So when I got...”
“Dropped?” That’s what he said the very first day I met him, confessing to crashing and burning like Icarus in sunlight. “You already had another skill to fall back on and people who could help you?”
“I had Aleksander,” he confirms. His spots something behind me. “Turn around very slowly.”
I do, and I’ve never seen an owl from close up. This one watches us, wise and solemn. An otter also joins us, and I’ve never seen one of those in the flesh—or in the fur, either. This one joins our swim, curious and playful, before slipping away into increasing darkness.
Hayden looks up next. “Bats.”
They flit over the water, snatching insects, their flight another form of natural magic, another first that I add to a bank of images I know will spill out later with Hayden at the centre of my page.
But first, we climb that rock wall and tumble downhill one last time to end up where the river splits in two directions. It gushes to the left. The flow is more tranquil to the right, and that’s where Hayden tows me through familiar woodland that I get to see from a brand-new angle.
We float under a bridge decorated as if welcoming us home to Glynn Harber. Streamers flutter and fairy lights twist around handrails to light it against the twilight. That light is magical as well. So is the way it finds cracks between the planks of the bridge as we pass underneath it, and another crack splits wide open. This one is inside my chest, because Hayden’s suddenly gruff in another reminder of the first time I met him, back when he wasn’t sure if he had a place here. Now he’s uncertain all over again.
“Rowan stays with his boyfriend at the weekends. He won’t be at the stables if you wanna?—”
