When I left the center the Director took me into his office. We like the work you've been doing with the seals. In fact, I've heard we've come to depend on you. So I will stay longer, much longer. But I needed to come to the city this weekend. I needed to do this thing.

Straight to the party. In the front door. He's right there. He says Now there's a face I haven't seen in ages. I brush close to him, challenging his personal space, and he does not move. I'm moving in I say and drop my overnight gear in the hallway.

It's the same comfortable party that always happens. The usual game of Kings, the usual kitchen conversations, and the hours of catching up with old friends. Eventually I sink into the fold-up camping chair with a now mostly empty bottle of wine and drink away the party. It is early, but I search out my blanket and curl up to sleep in a corner on the floor.

(Dave comes to find me. He's not supposed to be in this country, never mind at this party. It is all very confusing. He leans over me and I tell him to go away. Dave leaves.)

And then he comes to me, pulls me up off the floor puts me into his bed. Have I really not seen him for six months? Is he really in front of me right now? I am dreaming.

He later comes in to sleep. Instead of the usual pillow between friends we so often have used he puts his arms around me and pulls me to him. Words, phrases, spill from his mouth. I've wanted this since forever. Me too. We've already crossed The Line and we haven't done anything. I tell him how long I thought about his hand on my waist last winter - a fleeting movement I so wanted to have meaning. And meaning it had.

What transpired has changed things. All day there was a strange shyness between us. Rain falling outside, the six of us overnighters sitting around in the A&W, six of us under pillows and blankets waiting for the hockey game to start at 7. And all this time, not a word or gesture from him to me of what happened. I know the way he reached for me in the morning. I know how he slept with my hands in his.

I know that I'm going back to the Island for a good long while but I will see him on Hallowe'en at a similar party in their Burnaby Special house (if I get that time off...). Things will repeat; I will be similarly unsatisfied. I have two weeks to figure this thing out, to make it all swing right into place.