Midnight Sun

Midnight Sun ♥ G.S. Wiley

EFORE

he came to Nunavut, people told Jeremy there were

two seasons in the North: winter and black fly. While that
wasn’t strictly true, he still had to swat dozens of buzzing,
irritating insects away from his face as he sprinted the few
meters between his truck and the front door of the clinic.

As he stood in the doorway, brushing bugs from his hair

and shoulders, Annette smirked at him from behind her
reception desk. Regaining his composure, Jeremy casually
sidled up to the desk with a smile on his face.

“Good morning, Annette.”

“Hi, Jeremy.”

“Who are we expecting today?”

Annette glanced at her computer screen. “Ellie Samson

is bringing in her old mother from Resolute Bay this
morning.”

“That’s a long way to come for a doctor’s appointment.”

Annette glanced at him over her pink-rimmed glasses.

She was a young, good-natured woman, fluent in both
English and Inuktitut. The elderly people who came into the
medical practice loved her; she was frequently asked to sit in

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with Jeremy and his patients and translate his diagnoses for
them. “And you’re seeing Inusiq and her new baby at nine-
thirty.” Annette reached across her desk and deposited an
ivory embossed envelope on the counter.

“What’s this?” Jeremy picked up the envelope. The

words “Dr. Jeremy Ross and Guest” were written in neat,
artistic calligraphy across the front.

“It’s a wedding invitation,” Annette explained. “I know

you already told me you’ll come, but they just arrived from
Thunder Bay.”

“Thunder Bay, eh?” Jeremy smiled. “No expense

spared.”

“Bill’s cousin made them,” Annette said. “It was his

mother’s idea. Don’t ask.”

“Ah.” She didn’t need to say any more. Annette and

Jeremy ate lunch together every day; he was well-acquainted
with her soon-to-be mother-in-law.

Jeremy went back into his office. The clinic was small,

with just enough space for three small examination rooms, a
tiny office, and a smaller break room. Jeremy was the only
full-time doctor on staff; there was a part-time nurse, Rita
Davidson, who came in three days a week, and a relief
physician who’d make the trip in from Baker Lake when
Jeremy needed a vacation. Apart from that, he and Annette
were on their own.

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He sat at his desk and opened the invitation. It was on

a piece of ivory-colored card stock, and apart from the
writing on the envelope, it had all, evidently, been done on
Bill’s cousin’s computer in Thunder Bay. In English and
Inuktitut, Jeremy was invited to attend the wedding of
Annette Okpik and Bill Brossard in the parish hall of the old
St. Jude’s Cathedral in Iqaluit, on Saturday, June 20.

For many years, Iqaluit had been home to the cathedral,

a distinctive, igloo-shaped church eventually destroyed by
arson. Since the fire, the parish had been raising money to
rebuild the cathedral. Until then, Annette and Bill, like most
couples, had to get married in the rather pedestrian-looking
parish hall, where the weekly services were held.

The wedding

was just over a week away, and as Annette

said, Jeremy had already given in his RSVP—minus guest—
and had bought the requested set of Ginsu knives from their
wedding registry. Still, he stuck the invitation to his bulletin
board with a tack and pulled Ellie Samson’s mother’s
records from the shelf behind him.

About a third of Iqaluit’s population was from the

South, including Jeremy. He, in fact, was from about as far
south as it was possible to get and still be Canadian. He had
grown up on the southernmost tip of Vancouver Island, and
after stints at University of British Columbia and Simon
Fraser University and a few years in private practice in
Nanaimo, he’d answered the call north.

Some people assumed he’d come to Iqaluit to get away

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from something or maybe someone. Annette spent the first
few weeks of their working relationship trying to ferret out
the dirt, but she was destined to be disappointed. There was
no dirt, no messy divorce or pending paternity suit or
scandalous, fascinating reason behind Jeremy’s decision to
come north. He’d just felt like he needed a change, and,
barring making an application to Doctors Without Borders or
the Red Cross, both of which he’d considered, moving to
Nunavut was about a big a change as you could make.

Iqaluit was a young town, with the majority of residents

under the age of twenty-five. Jeremy’s patients reflected that
demographic. After his appointment with Ellie Samson’s old
mother from Resolute Bay and a routine checkup of Inusiq’s
bright and happy baby boy, he spent the rest of the day
dealing with children’s coughs and flus, skateboard-scraped
knees, and teenage girls who wanted prescriptions for birth
control without their parents knowing about it. When he
finished with his last patient of the day, Jeremy hung up his
stethoscope. As he returned the file folders to the metal
basket in the hall for Annette to shelve when she had the
chance, he heard laughter from the waiting room and
emerged to see Constable Darren Yellowbird standing at the
reception desk.

“Hey there, Doc.” The constable smiled when he saw

Jeremy. He was in his RCMP uniform; grey shirt, highly
shined shoes, and black pants with the signature yellow
stripe down the sides. “I was just asking what Annette’s
planning for her bachelorette party.”

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“Going to put a team on high alert, eh?” Jeremy asked,

smiling back. Darren was a Southerner too; a Saskatchewan
-born Métis who’d served in rural Manitoba and the
Maritimes before coming north.

“Hilarious, both of you.” Annette looked at them, a

pretense of coldness in her expression. “My sister is having
the bridesmaids over for a manicure party.”

“Sounds great.” Darren leaned suggestively over the

reception desk. “Need a sexy cop to show up and… maintain
order?” He turned to raise an eyebrow at Jeremy. “Who
knows, we could even get a hot doctor in there too. How do
you feel about a double act, Doc?”

“Anything that brings in a little extra cash,” Jeremy

replied gamely. He was only half-joking. He made good
money, better than he made in Nanaimo, but prices were
steep in the North, and paying fourteen dollars for a twelve-
pack of Pepsi got old pretty fast.

“There you go, then, Annie.” Darren winked at Annette.

“You know where to find us if you want to liven things up a
bit.” He turned away from the desk. “You just finishing up,
Doc?” Jeremy nodded. “Feel like a coffee? I’m off duty.”

“Sure.” Jeremy said his good-nights to Annette and

followed Darren out to the parking lot in front of the clinic
where the police cruiser sat next to his black Ford pickup
truck.

When Jeremy first came to Nunavut, one of the biggest

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culture shocks he’d faced was the lack of Tim Hortons coffee
shops. There were a couple of independent cafés, but
Jeremy knew that whoever eventually brought a Tim Hortons
franchise north wouldn’t need to worry about paying
fourteen dollars for a pack of Pepsi. They could retire
millionaires in, Jeremy guessed, approximately the space of
a week.

He and Darren went to one of the local places. He

waited at a beige Formica-topped table while Darren got the
coffee and a couple of donuts and brought them back with a
handful of thin paper napkins.

“I forgot to ask Annette if her and Bill are taking off for

some exotic honeymoon after their wedding,” Darren said,
sitting down across from Jeremy.

“They’re saving their money to buy a house,” Jeremy

replied. Annette had shown him pictures of the house they
wanted: a new, bright blue construction near the beach.

“Good.” Darren nodded. “I didn’t want to have to

volunteer to be your substitute receptionist while she was
gone.”

Jeremy met Darren through his job. While Jeremy was

primarily a family doctor who preferred working in a clinic,
the shortage of doctors in Nunavut meant he sometimes
ended up at the Qikiqtani General Hospital. The nature of
Darren’s work took him there from time to time as well, and
they’d struck up a friendship over cafeteria coffee and

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donuts. Their jobs and their choice of snack foods were
pretty much the only things they had in common, but
Jeremy had found that was enough basis for a friendship.

It was a fairly superficial friendship; Jeremy knew that.

They mostly talked about sports and reality television, both
of which interested Darren far more than they interested
Jeremy, but Darren was a good man to spend time with, and
when they finished their coffee and he dropped Darren off at
his parked cruiser, Jeremy found himself wondering how he
was going to spend the rest of the evening.

He ended up going for a walk along the dirt road to the

beach. Cigarette butts and assorted garbage littered the
sand, and the waters of Frobisher Bay, ice-cold even at this
time of year, lapped against the shore.

Another of the myths his southern friends had shared

with him was that the North alternated between total
darkness in the winter and twenty-four hours of sunlight
during the summer months. Like the black fly story, it
wasn’t strictly true. Now, in the middle of June, the sun
didn’t set in Nunavut, nor did it blaze in full high-noon glory
all day and night. It was more like a night-long twilight, an
hours-long sunset that segued into a sunrise without ever
disappearing completely. In the winter, it was the opposite:
darkness that became a thin, uncertain dawn but never
went any further, even in the middle of the day. Jeremy
liked the extremes. They were still novel to him, and he
enjoyed them even though it meant the clinic was flooded

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with insomniacs in the perpetually light summer and victims
of Seasonal affective disorder in the dark winter.

Tonight Jeremy made his way home in the permanent

dusk, stopping every now and then for a friendly chat with
neighbors who were also patients. That was another marked
difference from Jeremy’s life in British Columbia. He
couldn’t remember ever speaking to his neighbors there, still
less knowing that Dave and Donna’s daughter Sabrina was
studying biochemistry at McGill University in Montreal, or
that Rachel Sataa, a young woman who worked for the
federal government, was teaching her parents Inuktitut in
her free time because they hadn’t been allowed to learn it
when they were children.

Jeremy had a small house, a little two-bedroom

bungalow in need of a paint job if he ever got around to it.
Like most houses in the area, it had been prefabricated in
the South and shipped up north on boats when the bay was
navigable. It had come with the job, and while it wasn’t a
mansion or even the three-level split he’d had in Nanaimo,
he was lucky to have anything at all. Housing was in short
supply; even the independent-minded Annette was still
sharing an apartment condo with her mother and sister until
she and Bill could get their hands on their new home.

Jeremy’s second bedroom was more of an office-cum-

storage closet, and when he got home he picked his way
through the boxes of miscellanea, still packed months after
he’d moved in and likely to remain that way until he moved

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out again. He sat in front of his computer, an aging PC, and
opened his e-mail. There was a note from his mother,
writing from some cruise ship computer lounge in the
Caribbean to tell him what a fantastic time she was having
with her latest boy-toy. There was also a note from Rashid,
full of anecdotes about his busy pediatric practice in Toronto
and asking Jeremy how “life was going up there at the North
Pole.” Jeremy thought about replying right away, of putting
in a couple of light-hearted stories of his own and asking
gamely after Rashid’s wife and son, conspicuously unmen-
tioned in the e-mail. Instead, Jeremy logged off the com-
puter and went across the hall into his bedroom, put a sheet
of cardboard up to the window to block out the light, and
pulled the curtains closed.

Jeremy hadn’t come to Nunavut to escape, but that

didn’t mean his life was entirely devoid of painful memories.
Rashid Bagheri was one of his more painful recollections,
even now. They’d met as medical residents in Vancouver,
and they lived together for more than four years, first as
roommates and then as more. If it had been up to Jeremy,
they would still be together, likely in Vancouver or Toronto
since he couldn’t picture Rashid within a hundred miles of
Iqaluit. But it hadn’t been up to Jeremy. It hadn’t, he
thought, even been up to Rashid, really. He’d always been a
mama’s boy, and, not satisfied with having a gay doctor for a
son, his mother had piled on unrelenting pressure for Rashid
to marry and provide her with grandchildren. He’d given in,
eventually, saying to Jeremy “I don’t have any choice” when

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his mother brought yet another daughter of a friend of hers
around for an unexpected visit.

“Of course you have a choice,” Jeremy had countered.

“You can tell her to fuck off and mind her own business.” It
was what Jeremy himself would have done, if his mother had
ever shown any interest in his love life, or indeed, in
anyone’s love life other than her own. At least, that was
what he thought he would do. He’d never been tested.

“She’s my mother,” Rashid replied, looking miserable.

“I’m all she’s got.” He was all Jeremy had as well, but that
didn’t seem to factor into it. Rashid moved out before the
end of the semester, and three months later Jeremy was
invited to his first and so far only Persian wedding. He’d
stared blankly at the table of symbolic fruit, herbs, and coins
while Rashid sat beneath a silk shawl and pledged his life to
a dental hygienist named Nasreen in the same flat,
monotonous voice he’d used to review chemistry equations
and pharmacological mnemonics. Despite the festive atmos-
phere and the reams upon reams of food, it had been the
most depressing wedding Jeremy had ever attended. It was
five years ago, but the memory of Rashid’s cowardice and his
own soul-crushing disappointment was enough to get
Jeremy out of bed hours before his alarm clock went off, and
he headed out into the early-morning sun.

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Rashid’s had been the worst wedding Jeremy had ever

attended, then he knew right away Annette’s was going to be
one of the best. The afternoon of June 20, Jeremy showed
up at the wedding site and found the bride and her family
calmly sitting in the church hall, Annette almost
unrecognizable in an ice-white wedding dress and makeup.

“Wow,” he said, smiling as he went over to them. “You

look great.”

“After two and a half hours of hair and makeup, anyone

can look good,” Annette complained, her hand reaching for
her hair. Her sister Bernadette, sitting beside her in an
emerald-green maid-of-honor dress, slapped her wrist
sharply.

“We’re so glad you could make it, Doctor. You’re such a

good friend to Annette.” Annette’s mother Buniq, a
perpetually beaming, slightly myopic woman who’d told
Jeremy many long, engrossing, and sometimes disturbing
stories of her childhood spent in a tuberculosis sanitarium
in Ontario, reached up to embrace him. Surprised, Jeremy
hugged her and then awkwardly took a step back, nearly
knocking over a plastic planter of silk peonies in the process.

“Hey, Doc.” A voice boomed behind him, alleviating

Jeremy’s embarrassment. “You’re not thinking of snagging
the first dance with this foxy lady, are you?” Darren
Yellowbird, obviously more used to this kind of thing, leaned
down into Buniq’s waiting arms. “Congratulations, darling.
Way to go, Annie.” He smiled at Annette, who had her usual

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expression of long-suffering tolerance. “Where’s the lucky
groom?”

“He’ll be here,” Bernadette answered quickly. “His

brother just phoned me. They slept in.”

Darren laughed. “Well, if you need a stand-in, I’m sure

me or the doc would be happy to oblige.” He clapped Jeremy
on the shoulder, hard enough to nearly knock him into the
peonies again. Laughing, Darren threw an arm around
Jeremy’s shoulders and steered him towards the rows of
folding chairs at the end of the hall.

As they waited for the wedding to begin, Darren told him

about some football game he’d watched the night before.
“It’s criminal,” he said, sighing over the fate of his favorite
team. Jeremy could never remember if it was the Saskatch-
ewan Roughriders or the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, and since
making a mistake about that was tantamount to admitting
he rarely listened to anything Darren said, he just nodded
silently. “You ever think about it?” Darren asked suddenly.

Jeremy looked at him. “What, football?” Maybe, he

thought, he hadn’t disguised his disinterest that well after
all.

“Getting married.”

Jeremy looked away, fixing his gaze on the altar at one

end of the hall. Iqaluit was a welcoming community, but in
many ways it was also a very small town. “No,” he said
finally, without elaborating. Superficial or not, Darren was

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one of his few actual friends in Iqaluit. He didn’t need to
jeopardize that. “What about you?”

Darren shook his head. “No woman in her right mind

would want to be a cop’s wife.” He glanced over his
shoulder. They’d taken seats near the middle of the congre-
gation on what they’d presumed was the “bride’s side.”
“Course, I’m not sure Bernadette’s entirely in her right
mind….”

Jeremy smiled as the parish hall doors opened, and a

slightly-disheveled and somewhat-panicky-looking bride-
groom and best man burst in, bow ties askew. Annette
stood up, her stiff skirts falling into place around her. As
Bill meandered with as much dignity as possible up the aisle
to the altar, Jeremy felt a muffled buzz in his pocket. He
glanced down, but the number displayed on his cell phone
wasn’t that of his nurse Rita or of the emergency room at the
Qikiqtani General Hospital. Deciding that anyone else could
wait, he ignored the phone and stood to watch the bride
come down the aisle, her mother on one side and her sister
on the other.

The ceremony was short, which in itself was enough to

qualify it as a good wedding in Jeremy’s mind. Afterward
they went to a local hotel for a buffet dinner and
entertainment.

This was in the form of throat singing, an old Inuit art

that never ceased to amaze Jeremy. Bernadette and another
young woman, a cousin of Annette’s from Rankin Inlet, stood

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face to face creating an ethereal, otherworldly rhythm with
their voices. Jeremy sat at a plastic-covered table between
Darren and Bill’s already-drunken best man until the women
finished and were replaced by two teenage boys with skin
drums. As they began their performance, Jeremy felt his
phone vibrate again, and he discreetly stepped out into the
hotel lobby.

He flipped open the phone. “Hello?”

“Jeremy?” The voice was familiar, but he couldn’t

immediately place it.

“Yes,” he answered cautiously. He heard a heavy sigh

on the other end of the line.

“Thank God. I’ve been all over this damn place looking

for you. I had a cab driver bring me to your place; don’t tell
me how he knew where you lived ’cause I don’t want to
know.” Jeremy knew. The cab drivers in Iqaluit knew
everything. It wasn’t that big of a town. “But you weren’t
there. Your neighbor thought you were at a wedding, but—”

“I’m sorry,” Jeremy interrupted. The more the man

talked, the more familiar his voice became, but Jeremy knew
it couldn’t be him. “Who is this?”

The voice paused for only a second. “It’s Rashid,

Jeremy.” He sounded embarrassed to admit it. “And I’m
standing out here in the middle of fucking nowhere in front
of some divy hotel with really shitty cell reception.”

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Jeremy’s throat suddenly felt dry even as his hand grew

sweaty on the telephone. “Stay there,” he finally managed to
say. “I’ll be right out.”

It was after seven o’clock in the evening, but the sun

was still blazing brightly when Jeremy stepped outside. Sure
enough, halfway down the gravel road was Rashid, in
designer jeans and a red Ralph Lauren shirt with a cigarette
in his hand and big dark sunglasses over his eyes.

Jeremy hadn’t expected to see Rashid again after his

wedding. Rashid had made his choice, or his mother had
anyway, and they hadn’t chosen Jeremy. He certainly had
never expected to see him in Iqaluit, and from the look of
culture-shocked anguish on Rashid’s face, he hadn’t
expected it either.

Rashid hadn’t changed much in five years. He was still

gorgeous, well-built, and beautiful with black hair he spent
at least half an hour a day styling. Marriage and fatherhood
obviously hadn’t cut into that, Jeremy thought a little
bitterly. Then Rashid looked up and smiled at him, and the
bitterness evaporated.

“Jeremy. Hi.” He met Jeremy halfway. When it looked

like he was planning on coming in for a hug, Jeremy diverted
him by holding up a hand, which, after a moment’s
hesitation, Rashid shook.

“What are you doing here?”

“I was going to a pediatrics conference in Montreal.”

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Rashid’s eyes were invisible behind the sunglasses, but his
expression was rueful.

Jeremy raised an eyebrow. “You’re a little lost.”

“I was sitting in the departure lounge at Pearson airport,

and a flight to Iqaluit came up on Canadian North.”

“So you thought you’d get on board?”

“It seemed like a sign.” Rashid sighed and ran one hand

through his perfect hair. With the other, he took a final drag
on his cigarette and dropped the butt into the gravel where a
dozen others already lay.

“A smoking doctor’s the worst kind of smoker,” Jeremy

commented blandly. It was an argument they’d frequently
had when they lived together.

“And a gay smoker’s the worst kind of Muslim,” Rashid

countered, looking at him. “But that’s what I am. I stared at
that fucking departure gate for an hour before I walked over
there and asked if there were any seats free.” Jeremy
guessed there had been. He didn’t say anything, and Rashid
looked off into the distance, towards Frobisher Bay. “I
haven’t stopped thinking about you. I can’t stop thinking
about you. And I know it’s been five years, and you’re
probably going to tell me to fuck off, and I wouldn’t blame
you if you did, but I had to come up here and see you.”

Jeremy didn’t tell him to “fuck off,” but he did say,

“What about Nasreen? And your son?”

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“We’ve been separated for six months. I see Ali every

weekend I’m not working.”

Jeremy blinked. “What does your mother think about

that?”

“She thinks I’m the worst human being ever to walk the

face of the planet. And that was before I told her I’m in love
with you.” Rashid’s expression didn’t change, but Jeremy
felt like he’d been kicked in the gut. They were the words
he’d been waiting five years to hear, but suddenly Jeremy
wished Rashid hadn’t said them. He wished Rashid hadn’t
come here, that he’d stayed in Toronto, married, firmly in
Jeremy’s past. “On the plus side,” Rashid smiled suddenly,
“my practice is doing really well.”

Jeremy laughed. He couldn’t help himself.

“Hey, Doc.” Jeremy turned at the voice behind him.

Darren leaned casually against the side of the hotel.
“They’re about to cut the cake. Didn’t think you’d want to
miss that.”

“No. Thanks, Darren, I’ll be right there.” Darren looked

at Rashid with curiosity, but no more than any Iqaluit
resident had for an outsider. He disappeared back inside,
and Jeremy said, “We’re in the middle of a wedding. My
receptionist is getting married,” he added.

Rashid nodded. “Right. Sorry. I should have known

you’d be busy.”

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Jeremy wanted to ask Rashid where he was staying,

how long he planned to be here, why he’d really come.
Instead, he turned and went into the hotel, leaving Rashid
standing on the street.

Inside, Annette and Bill were just getting ready to cut

the cake. This was a three-tiered monstrosity, decorated
with sugar flowers and icing curlicues. On top was a little
resin figure of a bride and groom, smiling and holding
hands, with the words “Just Married” written in pink at their
feet. As Bill mugged for the many flashing cameras, Annette
picked up a big white knife decorated with a pink ribbon and
positioned herself at the cake.

While the other guests snapped photos, Darren leaned

over and said, remarkably discreetly for him, “Is that guy out
there a friend of yours?”

“Something like that.” Jeremy hoped he wouldn’t ask

any further questions. Of course, it was a futile hope.

“Boyfriend?”

Jeremy’s eyes snapped up. Darren smiled, his eyes on

the newlyweds at the front of the room. “Come on, Doc. I’m
a world-class cop, remember? One of Iqaluit’s finest? You
think I wasn’t going to figure it out?”

“I don’t make it common knowledge.” For good reason.

Darren shrugged. “Fair enough. Everyone’s entitled to

their privacy. But I know Annette would be pissed off if she

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found out you didn’t invite him back for cake and drinks.
It’s even an open bar.”

“It’s not like that,” Jeremy replied, although what it was

like, he couldn’t say. He didn’t know.

“We may be a small town, Doc,” Darren said, “but we’re

not all backwoods hicks.”

There was a cheer, and Jeremy looked over in time to

see a giggling Annette shove a handful of cake into her new
husband’s mouth.

Jeremy ate his piece of cake and drank an open-bar

beer. He watched as Annette and Bill shared their first
dance to an old Savage Garden song Jeremy hadn’t heard in
years. Then the dance floor was opened and overdressed,
overexcited kids ran through the ballroom shrieking while
their parents danced. As Jeremy watched, Darren swept
Bernadette away from the head table and led her, laughing,
onto the floor, nearly tripping over a couple of rolling
children as they went.

Jeremy stood up. He wondered, for a moment, whether

he ought to say good-bye to Annette, but he was going to see
her on Monday anyway and she was busy talking to an
elderly couple, laughing and showing off her new wedding
band. Jeremy slipped out and found his truck, parked
where he’d left it at the back of the hotel.

It was still light when Jeremy got home, and still light

while he sat on his bed, fully dressed except for his shoes,

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staring at the opposite wall like it held the answers to
everything. By the time Jeremy figured out there were no
answers, the sun had gone down as far as it would go, and
Jeremy left the house in the midnight twilight to find Rashid.

It didn’t take long. Iqaluit wasn’t that big, but just as

Jeremy thought he might end up driving to the airport where
Rashid was likely waiting for the next flight out, he spotted
him on the beach, sitting on a driftwood log and smoking.

Jeremy parked the truck and went over. Rashid had

pushed his sunglasses up onto his head, but he didn’t look
up until Jeremy sat beside him. Jeremy noticed red rings
around his eyes.

“Hi,” Jeremy began. It seemed as good a way as any.

“Hey.” Rashid fiddled with the cigarette in his fingers.

“I guess it’s true, it never gets dark up here.”

“Not at this time of year.” It was the summer solstice

tomorrow, Jeremy thought, the longest day of the year. After
that, they’d begin their slow descent into darkness that
would be nearly all-encompassing in six months’ time.

“Do you like it here?”

“Yes,” Jeremy said, but it seemed like an

understatement. “A lot,” he added.

“That’s good.” They sat quietly for a while, the silence

broken only by the occasional screech of a gull and the

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lapping of the water against the shore. There was a sudden
shout from far down the beach, and Jeremy looked over to
see one of Bill’s groomsmen, his pants rolled up around his
knees, splashing in the freezing water while his friends egged
him on.

“Look, Jeremy,” Rashid started and then stopped. “I

guess I don’t know what to say.”

Jeremy did. “Thanks for coming.”

“I should never have left you.”

“I know why you did.” He’d never agreed with it, but

he’d always known. “Your family is important.”

“But so are you.” Rashid looked at him. “I should have

done something about that sooner.” He sighed.

For a moment, it looked like he was going to toss the

cigarette butt into the sand, but instead Rashid pinched it
out and stuffed the butt into an empty Coke can. “I don’t
even know what I expect to come from this. I can’t leave my
practice and my son in Toronto, and I know you’d never
think about moving there.” Jeremy hadn’t previously
considered it, that was true, but he had never intended on
staying in Iqaluit forever either. “I didn’t even ask you if
you’re seeing someone new, and—”

“I’m not.” There had been others, one-night stands and

short relationships, but nothing that could remotely compare
to Rashid. “Listen.” He sighed, struggling to find the right

Midnight Sun ♥ G.S. Wiley

words. “There’s a story up here, about the raven.” One of
his young patients had told it to him while he was checking
her hair for nits. “He was sent to the South to bring light to
the Inuit people because they lived in perpetual darkness.
But light was heavy, so he could only carry enough for six
months. The other half of the year had to stay the way it
was, in the dark.” It had seemed profound and meaningful
in his head; out loud, it sounded ridiculous. The look on
Rashid’s face told him he had no idea what he was talking
about.

“The point is,” Jeremy tried, “that it wasn’t perfect, but

something was better than nothing at all.” A smile slowly
crept onto Rashid’s face. “And we’re here now, so what if we
don’t worry about what comes next?” There would be
darkness in the future, Jeremy knew that. There had to be.
Rashid would need to go through a divorce, possibly a messy
one. He was bound to be heartbroken over his mother’s
rejection, and, as Rashid himself had said, he and Jeremy
were separated by three thousand kilometers and a world of
responsibilities. But for now, there was sunlight, and he
was with Rashid again.

Rashid reached out and pressed his hand against

Jeremy’s. It wasn’t enough, and, after a perfunctory glance
at the youths far down the beach, Jeremy leaned over and
kissed him.

It was quick, but it was enough to bring back a flood of

memories. He held Rashid close, just for a moment, resting

Midnight Sun ♥ G.S. Wiley

his face in Rashid’s impeccable hair and breathing in the
familiar smell of mousse and cigarette smoke. When he’d let
go, he stood and helped Rashid to his feet. Grinning, Rashid
walked with him to the truck. Jeremy unlocked the truck,
brushed a swarm of black flies from around his face, and
climbed in beside him.

Midnight Sun ♥ G.S. Wiley

G.S.

ILEY

is a writer, reader, sometime painter, and semi-

avid scrapbooker who lives in Canada.

Visit G.S.’s web site: http://wileyromance.googlepages.com/.

Midnight Sun ♥ G.S. Wiley

Midnight Sun ©Copyright G.S. Wiley, 2009

Published by
Dreamspinner Press
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the
authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,
business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Cover Design by Mara McKennen

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Released in the United States of America
June, 2009