Out On a Limb
: Chapter 16

I stayed up half the night reading old issues of The Annihilator and paid for it this morning when my eyes had to fight to open at the sound of my alarm. I don’t have work today, but I should spend a few hours this morning unpacking and settling in before Bo arrives home. It’s one thing to have boxes or plants piled up in my bedroom, but I don’t want them in the kitchen or living room, taking up too much space and getting in his way.

And just as I load my last mug from the final kitchen box into the dishwasher, the front door beeps and hums as it unlocks, announcing Bo’s return.

“Hello,” he calls out, shutting the door behind him.

“Hey,” I reply, filling the dishwasher with detergent, grinning to myself. “I’m in the kitchen,” I add.

When I shut the dishwasher and turn around, Bo’s leaned against the archway, his coat folded over his arm and a canvas duffel bag in his grasp. “Hey, roomie,” he says, his smile wide and downright contagious.

“Welcome home,” I say, bowing into a stupid little curtsy that I immediately regret. “You have a great place.”

Bo’s eyes fall over my shoulder, admiring the plants I’ve hung in front of the kitchen window. “I like the plants,” he says. “Out there too.” He points to the living room with a thumb over his shoulder.

“Not too many?” I ask, grimacing.

He shrugs, as if to appear indifferent, but a quick twitch of his lips gives him away. “Not at all,” he forces out, his pitch wavering.

“Oh god… it’s too many.”

“It’s certainly more than I was expecting, but I like them. Promise.”

“I did try to warn you,” I say, grabbing a cup of ice. “Also, this was a great surprise.”

“A fridge?” he asks, switching his bag between hands.

I huff out a laugh. “No, dingus. The ice maker.”

“Did you just call me a dingus?”

“If the dingus-shoe fits.” What the fuck am I saying? I shouldn’t try to be funny or flirt on next to no sleep. Not that I’m attempting to flirt. That would be foolish of me… right? Right.

I look at his luggage, then back at his face, focusing on the dark circles under his eyes. “Sorry. Uh, I’ll let you get settled. Did you want some coffee, maybe? If I make some?”

He hums. “Yes, I’d love one. Thank you. Do you need the bathroom before I take a shower?”

“Nope, go ahead.”

Twenty minutes later, I finish making Bo a red eye, with the help of his very fancy espresso machine. And as if he smelled it, he promptly appears from the bathroom, wearing grey basketball shorts, a beige hoodie, and glasses. Black thin-framed glasses that his damp-darkened hair dips below on the right side.

I damn near swallow my tongue.

As if we needed to add glasses to this powder keg of hormones I used to call my body.

“Order up,” I say, presenting him with his coffee in a clear glass mug.

“You’re the best, thank you.” He takes a long sip, his head falling back as he moans. “Espresso too?”

“You looked tired,” I reply shyly while he hums his appreciation again.

“Seriously, you are the best.”

“What’s your plan for the day?” I ask, pulling some carrot sticks out of the fridge to snack on and dropping them into a bowl.

“I have today off since I was sort of working all weekend. What about you?”

I cover my mouth to avoid spewing bits of carrot at him as I speak. “The café is closed on Mondays. I was thinking about going for a walk to the beach before I hang out with Sarah later. Did you know you only live a ten-minute walk from one of the prettiest beaches with the most e-coli contaminated water in Southern Ontario?” I ask.

“The fish come out with an extra eye, but man, the view is beautiful,” Bo replies, turning around to leave the kitchen.

“Also, I have a confession,” I say, following him toward the living room, carrying a glass of water and a bowl of carrot sticks in the crook of my wrist. He lowers onto the armchair in the corner, gently moving a leaf of my fern away from his neck and tucking it behind the chair before he settles back into the seat. I take the couch. “I stole your mail.”

“Theft on day one? Way to come out swinging,” he says, smirking. “I respect it.”

“The Annihilator,” I say, flaring my hands for dramatic effect. “A surprisingly great read.”

Bo’s smirk turns into a full-fledged, lopsided grin, his eyes dancing around my face. “You actually read it?”

“I did, and then I fell down a rabbit hole and read about a dozen others before passing out last night. Had to download a reading app on my phone to do it. I committed.”

“They’re all in my room. You could’ve saved yourself the money.”

“Ah, well, I-I didn’t want to invade your space. More than I have already…” I say, wincing.

He scowls playfully. “You’re not invading anything.” He takes a long sip of his coffee, and I replace great satisfaction in watching him sway from side to side as he drinks it—as if he’s never tasted anything so delicious. “But I suppose if you didn’t venture into my room yet, I should warn you that I’m a bit of a—”

“Massive nerd?” I interrupt.

“Okay, ouch,” he laughs out.

“Sarah snooped around your room. Caleb and I followed. I tried to get them out, but they were like kids in a toy store. I’m sorry.”

“I left my door open on purpose, Win. I knew you’d probably go in there. I hid all the shit I didn’t want you to see.”

“Such as?” I ask, my nosiness beating out any shred of politeness for time.

“Okay, fine, I only hid one thing.”

“Curious…”

“I’m allowed one secret,” he says, smiling into his mug.

Interesting. Whatever it is, it must be juicier than the rope, since he didn’t bother to hide that. Don’t say anything about rope, Win. Change the subject before you do. “You know, at first, I was surprised about your nerdom, but then once I started putting the pieces together? It all sort of made sense,” I say, crossing my legs under me, leaning against the back of the couch.

“I have to know what that means.”

“Well, you love math. You’re far too pretty to be as humble as you are, which means you were either not as hot as a teenager, or you just weren’t in with the cool crowd. I’m guessing you were like Caleb—a late bloomer with a bunch of geeky interests that kept the ladies from knocking down your door.”

“Well, it worked for him,” Bo says, one eyebrow raised as he takes a long, thoughtful sip. “Sarah’s great.”

“Well, am I right?”

“Annoyingly, yes. I was a band geek and a nerd in high school. A winning combination.” He shakes his head, smiling at his lap. “I have to admit, I thought it’d be a bit longer before you read me like a book. I believed I had an air of mystery about me.”

“You did. Until I saw the dork cave.”

“Dork cave… okay…” He chews his cheek, mischievousness in his eyes. “So you’re saying that if, on Halloween, we had come back here instead of Sarah’s guest room, and you’d seen the very few collectibles I own, things may have ended differently?”

“I didn’t say that.” I lean back, confidently crossing my arms.

“So what does that make you? A nerd-chaser?”

“Just horny, I guess.”

He laughs, his throat bobbing. “Well, I’m glad our plan of getting to know each other is already working.”

“I remain a mystery, however.” I wiggle my brows.

“We’ll work on that,” he says, his eyes flicking down to my sweater. “Starting with—did you seriously go to Harvard?”

I thrifted this sweater so long ago I forgot what it even said across the front. “No, heh, not Harvard. I went to Lakehead for Outdoor Recreation, Parks, and Tourism, with a concentration in nature-based therapeutic recreation. I have a bachelor’s degree in how to take people canoeing for their mental health, essentially.”

“Don’t do that,” Bo says sternly.

“What?” I blink at double speed.

“Dismiss yourself like that. That sounds really fucking cool and important to me. Don’t trivialise what you accomplished.”

“Oh, uh, well… thanks.”

“What did you want to do after your degree?”

“The dream was to open a summer camp for kids with disabilities. A place built to show them how to adapt the equipment, give them the time and patience to learn that they hadn’t gotten anywhere else. But obviously, that didn’t happen.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why didn’t that happen? It seems to make so much sense.”

“Oh,” I stutter, reaching for my water to take a sip. “I guess, uh, life just happened instead.”

Bo waits for me to go on, gently holding eye contact. I start to feel a tightness in my chest, spreading up my throat. But this is what we’re here to do, right? Get to know each other? I’ll give him the condensed version. He doesn’t need to know everything.

“There was this guy… Jack.”

“Hate him already,” Bo says, one corner of his mouth raising.

“Yeah, well, good instincts.” I laugh nervously. “We met in my second-year biology course. He was doing an undergrad in kinesiology. We seemed to have a lot in common, shared a lot of the same friend group, the usual stuff. Eventually, after a few too many beers around a campfire one night, we sort of fell into dating. We finished school together, but he decided to go for his master’s degree.”

I shuffle in my seat, looking everywhere except at Bo’s face. “He asked me to move in with him, and I said yes. Our relationship up until then was mostly fine. But there were definitely some red flags I was choosing to ignore. Anyway… he was going to be a student full time again, and someone had to pay the rent. So I got an office job to get us by and sort of wasted those two years after graduation paying his way. Stupidly, I thought we were a team and that it’d be my turn to go after what I wanted next but… well, you know. When things ended, I moved back here, pretty desperate to get away from it all. I had to start fresh and couldn’t really afford to dream bigger than the café and lifeguarding in the summers. Then time sort of moved on… but I didn’t, I guess.”

“He sounds like a jerk, Win. I’m sorry.”

“Long time ago now,” I say, shrugging.

There’s a lingering silence. I resist the urge to look back toward him as much as I can, feeling his eyes burning into me. After what feels like far too long, I decide to give in, mostly to set him at ease with a smile. But when I do eventually turn toward him, I don’t smile. I can’t.

Not when Bo’s looking at me like he heard far more than I was willing to say. Like he’s seeing every invisible scar I’ve tried to cover up.

“He wasn’t nice to you.” He states it like fact. Simple. Sad. True.

I shake my head no. Just subtle enough that a part of me can pretend I didn’t answer him at all.

Bo’s jaw works, his eyes falling briefly before he shakes his head. “I’m sorry.”

I inhale a shaky breath, biting the inside of my cheek. “Like I said, it was a long time ago.”

He nods, then scratches the side of his nose with a bent knuckle.

Change the subject, everything inside of me shouts.

“Did, uh, did you go to university?”

Bo licks his lips, nodding, his usual lightness missing. “Yeah, Waterloo for Accounting and Financial Management.”

“Sounds like a party,” I tease. He rolls his eyes playfully, though his smile is still absent. It seems his thoughts are held elsewhere. I wonder… if maybe… they’re held on her. “Did you have a Jack too?” I ask.

Bo breathes into his hand as he wipes his mouth. “How much has Caleb told you?” he asks, eyeing me like he’s got my number.

I tsk, hissing in through my teeth. “Busted,” I say quietly through a nervous, soundless laugh. “Caleb hasn’t said much, though.” Nothing helpful, at least. “I don’t think he and Cora are particularly close.”

“Listen, things were complicated with Cora. I don’t want to imply that—”

“You should probably know that Sarah and I refer to her as the spawn of Satan,” I interrupt. “Frequently and in front of Caleb. She’s been nothing but nasty to Sarah. So if you’re trying to be diplomatic for my sake, don’t bother.”

“You shouldn’t call her that,” Bo says gently, leaning forward in his seat, his hands clasped between his knees, wringing. “I mean… sorry. You can call her whatever you want. I just…” His voice trails off.

I feel a twinge of guilt and unease pull my lips askew. “Sorry,” I offer simply. So he’s not over his ex, then. The sudden pang of sadness thrumming around my chest is unexpected. It’s not jealousy, I don’t think. Or at least, not entirely. It’s more complicated than that. It’s wondering if during one of the more meaningful sexual experiences of my life, certainly the most pleasurable, my partner was thinking of someone else. Wishing for someone else. If I was just… there. Available. Overly willing, throwing myself at him until he gave in. It’s the crushing weight of questioning whether he wishes I was her. Them having a baby. Them sharing a home. It makes me feel like a trespasser. Inferior.

“I shouldn’t have called her that. We shouldn’t call her that. You’re right.”

I can tell Bo’s choosing his words carefully as he sets his emptied mug down on the coffee table. “It shouldn’t upset me. It wasn’t exactly a good relationship. She, uh, Cora… things between us were not great.”

Things are already awkward; I may as well get some answers. “Caleb did mention that you two were engaged.” The moment I say it, Bo’s hands are all over his face—anxiously rubbing at his chin and cheeks and forehead.

“Yeah,” he says, his nose scrunching up. “Technically, yes.”

“Technically?” I ask when he looks up at me.

“Okay. We’re doing this,” he says, under his breath. “Day one, pulling out the big guns.” He laughs half-heartedly.

“I’m sorry,” I say, shaking myself. “We don’t have to…”

“Did you want to take that walk to the beach? Together? I always replace it easier to walk and talk about heavier shit, you know?”

I do know. That’s what I went to school for, at some level.

“Yeah, sure.” I nod and stand from the couch. “Give me a few minutes to change.”

A little while later, we’re both dressed in warmer layers and halfway to the water. We’ve walked mostly in silence so far, making fleeting comments about cute dogs as they pass us by or how lovely the weather feels after an otherwise moody winter.

When we arrive at the beach, it’s empty. The sand is nearer to mud in colour, wet and partially covered with half-frozen puddles in its valleys. The rocky shore is hidden under snow that’s already begun melting under today’s golden sun. The lake’s ice is thin enough to see through and cracking all over. The sky is a hazy blue with soft, wispy clouds, as if a painter dried their brush against the horizon.

A perfect late-winter day.

A hopeful, spring-is-closer-than-you-think type of day.

I feel it all thawing my weary bones. The sunshine, the birds singing, the breeze that isn’t frigid enough to hurt my skin. A sign of all the good to come when winter ends. When I can spend my days outside, feeling more like myself.

It isn’t until we stop at the shoreline that Bo seems to begin collecting his thoughts once again. This time, I wait patiently for him to offer me whatever he wants. I shouldn’t have pried, considering there’s a lot I’m not quite ready to tell him about my last relationship, so I won’t again.

I collect a few stones from the shore and silently offer them to him with an open palm. He takes one, smiles politely, and tosses it. We both watch as it skates across a patch of ice before sliding into the water. I throw one too. It lands directly in a patch of the lake with no ice at all. I watch the ripples form and fade to nothing.

“I got diagnosed a few months after Cora and I called things off for the third time,” Bo says, his voice wayward but strong. “She, uh, she and I were on different wavelengths for most of the relationship. We kept, I kept, trying to fight the inevitable that we just didn’t work. We started dating at twenty-three, and it was simpler when we were just two people focused on our careers who were working in the same field and trying to get ahead. But eventually, we were left constantly trying to figure out how we slotted into each other’s lives outside of work, reconciling that we weren’t a very good fit.” He licks his lips, looking at the water with a furrowed brow and stoic concentration.

“God, it’s pretty fucking pathetic to say out loud… but I think, maybe, she just never loved me as much as I loved her?” He says it like a question, looking down at me as if I might have the answer. I don’t. Can’t.

I think I’ve maybe already said too much, actually. Reducing Cora to this caricature villain instead of someone Bo shared years of his life with. Despite how she’s treated Sarah or me, I don’t know Cora all that well. Clearly, Bo does. And clearly, he loved her.

“Admittedly, there were a lot of reasons I shouldn’t have called her the day I found out I was sick, but… I did. I was really fucking scared and… lonely. I’d never felt so alone.” He laughs without humour, a hand splayed along his jaw as he grinds his back teeth.

I pick up a few more stones and offer one to him. He gives me a curt nod before he takes one and tosses it so far that I have to squint to see it land.

“I had friends I could’ve called, I guess. But I wasn’t sure if any of them would know how to help. I needed company. I needed tough love, which Cora always had in spades.” I hand him another stone, and he tosses it. This time it’s a shallower, weaker throw. He shoves his hands deep into his pockets, widening his stance slightly as his chest falls on a long breath.

“I wanted to call my dad, but I was worried about burdening him. He lost his wife decades before my diagnosis, and he’d still never really moved on. I didn’t have it in me to tell him that he could be losing his only son too. Cora was there when I didn’t know who else to call, and I’m always going to be grateful she showed up for me.”

“I’m glad she was there for you too,” I say softly. And I mean it. Though it creates an ache in my chest. Perhaps it’s guilt. Could be jealousy. Or, more accurately, both.

“A month into treatment, Cora sort of announced to me that we’d be getting married. I know it makes me sound like an idiot, but I kinda just went along with it. Everything in my life felt unstable and untethered, and suddenly, there was this woman I love telling me she was choosing to stick it out with me. I wanted that stability.”

I feel a thrum of energy pass through me from head to toe. It hits my chest with a gentle but noticeable blow. Love. In the present tense. Bo loves Cora.

“But when the chemo wasn’t working and the cancer was progressing, amputation became the only option. And… the odds were looking bleak regardless.” We naturally fall back into walking at a relaxed pace toward the pier with a small lighthouse and empty docks where locals keep their boats during warmer months.

“At that point, I think it got to be too much for her. She stopped coming to appointments. Stopped coming over entirely. Eventually, she stopped answering my calls too. I got the message that she needed to step away from it all, and we haven’t talked since. Not a lot of closure, I know. But… part of me feels like that’s for the best, honestly. She was there for me when I needed her, and I think she did me a favour… in the long run.”

“I don’t think she did you a favour by leaving you when you needed her most. That’s a pretty cowardly thing to do. She should’ve at least told you to your face that she couldn’t handle it. Let you have that… proper end.”

Bo shrugs. “She’d already ended things before, though. I was the one who tried to fix it every time—why we kept getting back together. Maybe she knew that was how it had to play out. She had to hurt me so I’d let her go. And I doubt many people would stick around when the worst-case scenario seemed inevitable.”

I would, I think. Then immediately berate myself for placing myself morally above Cora, even inside my own thoughts. Ultimately, I don’t know what I’d do in that situation. I doubt I’d have left him, though. I don’t really understand how anyone could do such a thing. Even imagining what that would have felt like has me near tears, has me wanting to reach out for his hand or tuck him against my chest and brush my hand over his hair. Protect him from it, shield him, as if I could change the past.

“When did you tell your dad?” I ask.

“About six hours before the surgery…” he says, then trills his lips, looking away from me sheepishly.

I groan. “Yikes.”

“Yeah… not my best work.”

“How did he take it?”

“Um, not great,” Bo says in a higher pitch than usual, some humour returning to his features. “He reverted to his native tongue to call me every name in the book, then got the first flight out. He stayed with me for three months after the surgery. I couldn’t have gone home without his help. I don’t know what I would’ve done, actually.”

“He sounds like a great dad,” I say as Bo reaches down and pockets something from the sandy shore. “And I knew he lived in France, but I didn’t realise he was French.”

“Yeah, my mom was from here, and Dad is from a small town outside of Paris. They met playing in the same orchestra in Toronto and got married ten days after meeting.”

“You’re kidding.” I snort.

“Nope, just ten days at nineteen years old. They didn’t have me until ten years later.”

“That’s… that’s wild,” I say.

“My dad says the moment he saw my mom, he just knew. He took one look at her and watched the rest of his life play out.” Bo stops, a sweet, longing look in his eye as he smiles softly at me. I imagine he’s probably thinking of Cora and what could have been.

“You must miss her,” I say, meaning his mother—but the possibility that it could have meant either Cora or his mother isn’t lost on me. Sometimes the people who haunt us are still alive. I understand that too.

“Yeah,” Bo agrees, turning back toward the path. “But I was really young when she passed.”

“I’m sorry,” I offer, matching his pace. “Do you remember much of her?”

“No,” he says plainly. “But Dad had a lot of stories and photos. He kept everything of hers—like her vinyl collection. Most of the records at the house were hers.” He stops, putting an arm out to block my next step.

I look toward the path ahead, expecting a skunk or something more nefarious to appear out of the bushes. But nothing does.

“Did you hear that?” he asks me urgently, his voice low. He spins, looking around us frantically.

“No?” I whisper-yell, leaning away from his floundering limbs. “What—”

“Shit, where is it?”

“What?” I ask, louder.

“I heard a goose.”

I stop abruptly, my shoes scraping against the stone-covered path. I stare up at him in disbelief, my lips parting into a grin that I have to stifle before it becomes a laugh. “We’re at a beach in Canada, Bo. You’re gonna hear geese,” I say, continuing to whisper for whatever absurd reason.

“They hate me.” Bo turns his head toward a sound over the water to our left, his shoulders up to his ears.

“They hate you…”

“They go for my leg every time. I don’t know if it’s because it’s shiny and they like that, or if geese are just little ableist fucks, but they’re always trying to attack me.”

I try to hold the laugh in. I really do. But I fail. Miserably. I burst. “Sorry, what?”

Bo bends to pick up a rock the size of his palm and waits to strike.

“You cannot use that,” I say, taking the rock from him and chucking it aside. Our fingers brush briefly, though by the way my heart thuds, you’d think the guy had pinned me to the nearest tree and ripped off my tights. Fucking hormones. “No geese murder today, my guy. I’m pretty sure it’s Canada’s most sacred law, and I’m not bringing the baby to visit you in prison.”

He hushes me, turning back toward the water and then in a full circle, like a bodyguard on watch.

I laugh at him, harder this time.

“Stop!” he whines, his own laughter breaking free. “It’s not funny!”

I shake my head, forging back toward Bo’s house. “C’mon,” I call, a few paces ahead of him. “I’ll protect you from any possible geese assailants.”

“I will throw you to them,” he says. “If it comes to it.”

“Only if you can catch me first.”