Quiet and imaginative, Derek O'Reilly spends a lot of time watching a movie in his head. His fiancé Nathan wonders why Derek hasn't taken any interest in their wedding planning, and Aunt Fran -- his spiritual guru -- would like to know when her guilt-tripping nephew became a kept boy. When she drops Derek's childhood journal on his lap, he's forced to remember the name he's been trying to forget since he was twelve years old. Nicolai Lund. Nick was Derek's neighbor ... and first love. Weeks before Derek's engagement party, a chance meeting with Nick catapults Derek into the past. But Nick isn't that seventeen-year-old rebel anymore. He's a man hardened by invisible scars. A man struggling with grief. As Derek reads through his childhood diary, he realizes what Nick was to him, still is today, and yet might be ... NOTE: This edition has been expanded and substantially edited.

Split

If you could return to any place in time, travel down the spine of your life, to a moment where your strength faltered, and change the story, where would you stop? Derek…without hesitation. Speak.


1987. The year Nick left for Vancouver with David Pinet.


Ah, that’s good, my little enchanter. That winter. Yes, that was the one.


I’d never let him leave, Aunt Fran. I’d make him change his mind. We spent almost twenty years apart after he left that year. They were the longest and most miserable years of my life.


Then go there. Go to that winter now and set your soul at ease.


But I was twelve years old. A mere boy. Nick was seventeen. Wild. Angry. And he had a lover, David. They took off together. How can a twelve-year-old boy stop that kind of reckless passion?


So what’s the point in going back to revisit one of the cruelest years of my life?


Chapter 87