Page 67 of Yard Sale

“You will,” I told him. I felt the tension between us rise. “I fought it for a long time too. Eventually, I got tired of embarrassing myself by falling on my face.”

“People stare though,” he murmured.

“Yep. And they do weird-as-fuck things like offer to pray for you in public or grab your arm and try to haul you across the street without asking. Or they have really fucking offensive questions like, how do you know when to stop wiping your ass? Or annoying ones like, how do you read comments on Instagram?”

Oliver scoffed. “What kind of fucking boomer reads Instagram comments?”

I burst into laughter. I wasn’t old, but I felt old right then. “I’m just saying that there are parts of this that suck. It makes dating hard, and sometimes I really do need help with stuff, and I fucking hate it because I have never been able to trust people. And if I’d known your parents wanted me to prepare a goddamn TED Talk, I might have had time to plan what to say.”

“I like this better,” Oliver said. “My parents are so fucked-up. It’s like they want you to make me feel better so they can keep being weird about you. Grandpa found out, and he just said, ‘Don’t be like your uncle, eh? Swinging that stick around.’”

My stomach twisted, but I knew if it wasn’t the blind thing, he would have found something else to use against me. I would never know peace from that man. “You do what you need to do, Oliver. I also have a really nice brownstone in Boston, so if you ever need a break, you can come stay with me. There’s plenty of room.”

“Pool?” he asked.

I laughed. “No. I’m not pool-in-a-brownstone rich. But I’m vacation-house-with-a-pool-money rich. So maybe next summer, we can do something better than this?”

“Or come to my place while you’re still here,” Aravind said, startling me a bit as he set his hand on my shoulder. I hadn’t heard him come out. “It’s ten minutes down the road, and it has a pool that overlooks the ocean.”

“That sounds a lot nicer than a shitty fire pit,” Oliver said. I heard him stand up and groan with a stretch. “Do you care if I go listen to music?”

“Nope,” I said. “But before I go, make sure you get my number.”

“Yeah. Uh. Thanks, Uncle Tiago.”

It was weird to hear anyone call me that. My brothers had kept their kids so separate from me, it felt more like some formal title on paper and not a real thing. I smiled in his direction and waited for his footsteps to disappear, and the moment they did, Aravind slid himself onto my lap.

His weight was more than comforting, and so was the kiss he gave me. “Okay?”

I shrugged. “How much of that did you hear?”

“You’re not pool-in-a-brownstone rich,” he said. “And something about a TED Talk.”

I took a breath and let it out slowly as my arms tightened around him. “He has RP. The gene probably comes from my mom’s side.”

“Oh shit,” Aravind whispered, burying his nose in my hair. “Is he okay?”

“No, I don’t think so. But I wasn’t okay when I was his age either. There were a lot of years where I didn’t think I’d fully lose my sight though, so by the time it crept up on me like this, I was old enough to cope.”

Aravind traced absent lines along the back of my neck, and I groaned, leaning into him. “Is that why your brother wanted you here?”

I scoffed. “Apparently. They wanted me to do the hard part so they could keep being ableist assholes.”

He sighed. “Do you want to leave before they get here?”

That answer was almost too easy. “Yes. Yes, I do. But I want to give Oliver my number first. I have a feeling he’s going to need it.”

Lifting my hand, Aravind pressed a kiss to my wrist. “Okay. Let’s do that, then we can go back to my place, strip down, and get some sun on your pasty nips.”

I laughed and snagged him by the shoulders, yanking him into a kiss. It felt real. It felt so fucking real. And in that moment, I decided it wasn’t worth it to remind myself that in less than two weeks, all of this would be over.

CHAPTER 16

ARAVIND

Tiago got so many calls from his family in a row that he shut his phone off, and we spent almost two hours sunning on the deck with a little cooler between us and occasional dips in the pool. It was indulgent, watching him. He wasn’t as ghostly pale as most Canadians. He had that sort of Mediterranean bronze going on, which suited him.

I couldn’t help but wonder if he knew who his biological father was. If he’d ever been given the opportunity to know where he came from. To connect with that side he’d lost.