Peter edged a little closer. He should’ve spoken to him in the ravine regardless of the outcome. He should’ve spoken to him back in the police station or over dinner or any number of other times regardless of what Timberdark was. Because to love someone was to live with the possibility that things might not work out and do them anyway.

Peter took another step forward and Cooper’s fingertips twitched. It was as if some part of him, the part keeping watch while the rest of him slept, was alert to the intrusion. Cooper’s shoulders expanded with a sudden inhalation of breath, scoping the proximity of another, then contracted again. Peter stepped closer and Cooper unclenched his jaw, releasing threads of drool across his chin. He leered, his head heavy on his neck like a sunflower unable to support its own weight any more, and sweat broke out on the spine of his T-shirt. Peter’s throat tightened. He couldn’t touch him. Cooper wasn’t his to touch any more, in this state or any other state. His breathing accelerated. Then came the panting. Panting, panting, panting, panting and his head lolled deeper towards his chest in Peter’s direction. And yet his gaze never once left the same set of shelves where he always stood.

The shelves were lined with cans of tinned salmon. The label was brightly painted with rapids of white water toppling over rocks where leaping salmon flew. Most of the salmon had been caught and were already bundled up at the bottom of the label in a little red canoe. But not all. One salmon breached the product’s name: Big Red River’s All Fresh Salmon. Its silver body crested the mountains made pink by dusk. And it crossed Peter’s mind now that this picture did so much more than give Cooper a window back to the mountains in a town without that view to look upon. That one little salmon was free.

Peter leaned in, careful not to make a sound, and slowly started to turn the tin cans around so the back of the labels faced out, until all that was left on view were the barcodes and ingredients. Then he waited. He waited for what seemed like an age, standing just far enough away from Cooper to give him room, but close enough that the sweet tang of log smoke and musk on his skin could cross the distance between them where it hovered like a kiss not yet taken.