Chapter 6: The Birthday Gift
The night air was cool, but Paul burned with a fever of pure, undiluted joy. He stumbled from Mildred’s porch, the salt breeze tangling in his hair, and made his way back toward the church. A giggle burst from his lips, loud and unfettered in the quiet dark. Then another. He clapped a hand over his mouth, but the elation leaked out as tears, hot and salty, tracking through the dust on his cheeks. He was smiling like an idiot. He couldn’t stop.
He got to spend time with his daughter. His daughter. And his old flame. And things went fine. More than fine. It was a miracle, a mundane, staggering miracle. The secret he’d carried like a stone in his throat for decades was gone, dissolved in shared tears and clumsy Parcheesi moves. It was always going to be okay. The relief was a physical unknotting in his gut.
His mind spun with happy burdens. Sarah’s birthday was coming up soon—what to get her? Something thoughtful, something that spoke of forty years of missed gifts. And Mildred’s medication needed to be picked up from the pharmacy on the mainland. A chore. A glorious, normal chore. And they’d meet again tomorrow night for more talking, for the fragile, ongoing work of being a family.
He felt his vampiric youth not as a curse, but as a sheer, kinetic force. He was bubbly. Light. Giggly. He wanted to sprint across the dunes, to shout at the indifferent stars. He rushed past the dark church, its spire a familiar silhouette, and aimed for the half-finished rectory. Happy. He was happy to be alive. To be okay.
The rectory wasn’t finished yet, but it was nearing completion. The skeleton had flesh: walls stood, windows were set, a roof kept out the rain. He thought of Riley’s hands on the saw, his focus as he leveled a frame, the sweat-darkened hair at his temples. Riley was the catalyst to so much. The rebuilding was literal, yes, but the walls going up around Paul’s heart had Riley’s fingerprints all over them too.
Riley.
The young choir boy he’d raised, in a way. The one with the clear, serious voice. That boy had lived a hard life, had been forged in guilt and prison concrete, and had come back more hardened, and kinder, and more resilient than Paul could have ever conceived.
And so handsome.
The thought was a bolt of pure, undignified heat. Riley, the man, was just five years apart from him now. A peer. An equal. Riley, the man who made him food when he forgot to eat, who handed him a water bottle without being asked, who wielded a hammer with a patient, teaching rhythm. Riley, the man who literally and figuratively was helping him build a new home.
Riley, the man Paul realized he was falling deeply in love with.
He pushed the unfinished door open. The single work lamp was on, casting a pool of stark white light in the center of the main room. Riley was there, kneeling amid curls of fresh wood shavings, running a calloused thumb along the edge of a long plank of maple. He looked up, the light cutting the planes of his face into sharp relief.
“You’re back late,” Riley said, his voice a low rumble in the quiet space. The scent of sawdust and Riley’s soap cut through the damp wood smell.
“I stayed,” Paul breathed, still buzzing. He leaned against the doorframe, feeling unsteady. “We talked. We played board games.”
Riley’s eyebrows lifted. “Board games.” He said it like it was a sacrament.
“Parcheesi. It was… it was everything.” Paul’s words tumbled out in a rush. He told him about the confession, the tears, Sarah’s shock and eventual weary acceptance, the shared laughter. He paced the unfinished floor as he spoke, his gestures wide. “And she’s seeing someone! Annie Clements. Can you believe it? And I have to get her a birthday present, and Millie’s pills are due, and the ferry schedule on Thursday is—”
“Paul.” Riley’s voice was a gentle anchor. He stood, wiping his hands on his jeans. “Breathe.”
Paul stopped, chest heaving. He met Riley’s gaze across the plywood floor. The space between them felt charged, thinner than it had ever been.
“Come here,” Riley said, not moving.
Paul went. He stood before him, close enough to see the different shades of brown in his irises, the faint scar on his chin from a long-ago fight. The air hummed.
“I’m glad,” Riley said quietly. “For you. For them.” He reached out, slow, and brushed a stray wood shaving from the front of Paul’s shirt. His knuckles grazed the cloth over Paul’s sternum. The touch burned.
They talked then, but the words were secondary. They spoke of sanding techniques and door hinges, but the subtext was a thick, palpable thing. Paul was achingly aware of every minute shift in Riley’s posture, the way he leaned in slightly to listen, the soft sound of his breathing. The work lamp buzzed like an insect. The shadows behind Riley seemed to breathe.
The realization of their proximity came in a slow, warm wave. They had drifted closer. Paul’s hip was almost touching a sawhorse. Riley’s shoulder was a hand’s breadth from his own. Paul could smell the clean sweat on his skin, see the pulse beating gently in the hollow of his throat.
Paul wanted to kiss him. The desire was a sudden, drowning tide. He wanted to press his mouth to Riley’s, to feel the scrape of his stubble, to taste the coffee and the salt air on him. It was a physical ache, a pull deep in his belly that was both unfamiliar and as old as time.
His work as a priest could never allow him that. The vow, the collar, the expectation—it was a cage he had both chosen and been born into. Even now, collarless, it was woven into his DNA. So he maintained that last barrier of respect. He clenched his hands at his sides. He took a tiny, almost imperceptible step back.
The air between them tightened with the unsaid thing.
Riley’s eyes darkened. He looked down, scuffing his boot on the concrete floor. The silence stretched, taut and fragile.
Then Riley blurted it out, unceremonious, jagged, his eyes fixed on a knot in the wood grain. “They’re showing that stupid surfing documentary at the Ross Bay Cinema. The one about the guy who talks to sea turtles. It looks objectively terrible.” He paused, swallowed. “I want to see it. On Thursday. After we get the meds and the gift. On the mainland. With you.”