Three in One (And Then Some)

Summer 2026 Bucket List

[✓] Get a new tattoo

[✓] Try three different hot dog trucks

[ ] Go to a bar alone

[✓] Watch fireworks

[✓] Go skinny dipping

[ ] Introduce yourself with a fake name

[✓] Ride the ferry

[✓] See a movie you think you won’t like

[ ] Kiss a man

[✓] Go to an amusement park

[✓] Hike a mountain

[✓] Watch the sun set

[✓] Visit family

[✓] Drink so much you almost forget to check this one off

There are only three things left on my Summer 2026 Bucket List, and I’ve got one night left to check them all off. Tomorrow, I go back to school. I don’t know what I want to do with my life, so I’m taking general courses while I procrastinate making any big life decisions. It’s boring and I need some excitement before I go back to the monotony of it all. The few friends I have aren’t in college with me, which makes it even less enjoyable.

My best friend Ember, and don’t you dare call her Amber, suggested I make a bucket list. So I did, and Ember’s idea was kinda fire. It certainly lit a spark. This summer has admittedly been pretty memorable, all thanks to my stupid little bucket list. Or as I like to call it, my fuck it list, because I’m not a twelve-year-old girl. I’m a twenty-four-year-old man, actually.

Tonight, I have my final three items to check off, and I think I can accomplish all three in one go. I’m going to go to a gay bar alone, introduce myself to a man using a fake name, and kiss him. It can’t be that hard. I’ve done it before. It’s only been two-hundred-and-fourteen days since I’ve kissed a man. Not that I’m counting. I made that number up.

I’m counting. I didn’t make that number up.

Alone, I walk into the dimly lit but brightly coloured bar. Rainbow flags hang on banners across the dusty lighting fixtures. Madonna plays on an old, broken speaker, and it smells of weed smoke, a mix of colognes, and a hint of body odour. And maple syrup.

I’m wearing a white tank top and brown drawstring joggers with black converse. My blonde hair is quaffed to the side, glued in place with hairspray. I’ve been growing my beard out, and I used some beard oil to make it shine extra nice tonight. I don’t go out alone often. I can feel a cold breeze through my nervously sweating pits. It doesn’t help that it’s a million degrees outside, and a million and ten degrees in here.

Right near the entrance, late summer sun beams hot over an even hotter gentleman at the counter sipping on a beer from a thick, frosted glass. His jaw is lined with a thin layer of black facial hair, and his dark brown hair flows thick on his head like a busy chocolate river. His deep pink lips wrap tight around the glass, his moustache collecting some of the white foam. What I’d give for him to do that to any part of my body.

Okay, this is a sign. He’s right at the entrance; he made it easy for me. He’s the one I’ll kiss. All I have to do is sit next to him, lie about my name and strike up enough conversation that he’ll want to kiss me. Easy like Sunday morning.

“Are you going to sit and order or just keep standing there?” asks a man in an apron behind the counter.

“Sorry,” I say, quickly taking the seat next to God himself.

“I’m just teasing,” the server says. “You don’t have to sit in the first available seat.”

“I’m fine to sit here, thanks.” I look over at the man, and catch him making an eye at me. I’m not sure if he’s annoyed with me for sitting next to him when there’s plenty of empty tables and booths, or perhaps he’s grateful because I might just be a bit of a dime myself if he ignores the pooling sweat stains.

“Sorry,” I say, my eyes on his veiny, strong hands, which are holding a butter knife and fork with a fierce grip.

“All good, man,” he smiles. “Try the waffles, they’re the tits.”

The tits? “Well,” I say. “That saves me looking through the menu.”

Okay, we’re in. And he struck up the conversation first. He so wants to kiss me. Now I just need to think of a name that is random, but not too random, interesting yet not too niche, attractive but not too pretentious, and mysterious enough while avoiding an ethnicity I am not.

“I’m Rowan, by the way.”

“Shut the fuck up,” he says.

“Oh,” I gulp. I guess he doesn’t want a conversation. Or to kiss me. Damn. Guess I won’t get that checked off here. And can I really count that as introducing myself with a fake name if he told me to shut the fuck up?

“That’s my name, too!” he adds.

“Oh!” I say. Thank god! I thought he was annoyed with me. Wait. Not thank god. He has the same name as me. Except my name is not Rowan. Fuck. How am I gonna handle this?

“You can’t be Arabic too, no?” he asks. “You’re white as a ghost.”

“Oh, um,” I stutter.

“You’re Scottish?”

“Yes!” I agree, almost too soon. “Scottish. Well, I’m not from Scotland. But my, um, great-grandparents were.” Another lie.

“Oh, too bad, I’d have loved to hear about the land of Scots.”

Oh, too bad. I’d love to have struggled to make up a bunch of shit about a country I know nothing of. That was a close call, but I made it through. I can check that one off the list.

“Can you recommend me a drink too, then, Rowan?” I ask Rowan.

“Sure, Rowan,” Rowan says to me, Rowan. “I’m just a beer guy though. Do you like beer?”

“I do tonight.”

The server comes over to us, and Rowan asks him for another round of his order for me. He tells him we’re both named Rowan. I thank God he isn’t one of the staff who has served Ember and I before.

“Thank you,” I say to Rowan after he places my order. “I’ve never come to a place like this by myself.”

“Me neither,” he says with a mouthful of syrupy waffles.

“Why not?”

“Not really my scene,” he says. “But I needed to kill time, and I saw beer and waffles. Doesn’t take much more to get me in.”

“Noted,” I say in an an attemptedly flirty tone.

“What’s your deal?”

“Oh, sorry.”

“Sorry? I meant why don’t you come here? Seems like your kind of vibe,” he says. “No offence,” he adds.

“None taken?” I chuckle. “I’ve come here. Just not alone. I don’t do a lot of things by myself, so I’ve been challenging myself a bit this summer. I made a bucket list, which, is kind of lame, I know.”

“Good for you, Rowan! That’s not lame at all,” he says. “And I love going out alone. Sometimes I just people-watch, or simply enjoy my own company. Other times, I meet interesting, new people, and sometimes they even have the same name as me,” he winks.

Oh, I’m so checking the kiss off my list. I almost feel bad for lying to him about my name, now.

My waffles and beer arrive just in time. Rowan clinks his glass with mine, and I watch his lips on the glass again as I tilt my own glass to mine.

“Holy fuck,” I say with a mouthful of delicious waffle goodness. “These are incredible.”

“I told you,” he laughs proudly, as if he made them himself. “So, what all have you checked off your list?”

“Well, how much time do you have?” I joke.

“About fifteen minutes, actually.”

Oh shit. I need to get this kiss within the next fifteen minutes. So I quickly rifle through what I’ve accomplished thus far.

I show him my little Charlie Brown tattoo, an ode to the time in high school when I played the role.

“Japadog reigns supreme as the best hot dog truck in Vancouver,” I say.

I tell him about how Ember and I went skinny dipping together last weekend during the heatwave. We got so drunk that night, I almost forgot to cross both those items off my list.

“I forgot entirely that we had skinny-dipped until I needed an explanation as to how she had seen my penis.”

“Oh my god,” he laughs so loud, a few heads turn in our direction. “That is so fucking funny, dude!”

I tell him about the trip I took to Victoria, and how it was my first time going, and only my third time on the ferry. I mention that I hiked the Grouse Grind with Ember, and she threw up when we got to the top. We also went to the beach to watch the annual fireworks, and got there early enough to get a good spot and catch the sunset. I visited family back home in the Okanagan and we went to the summer fair and amusement park with my niece and nephew. I saw Masters of the Universe in theatres by myself, solely for Nicholas Galitzine’s arms.

“I didn’t know a lick about the franchise, and figured I wouldn’t like the movie at all,” I say. “But I came out a fan of more than just Thickolas Galitzine.”

“Thickolas!” he guffaws. “Oh my god, you kill me, Rowan.”

If only he knew he was about to check my last box.

“Was going to the bar alone one of your items?”

“Yes,” I say, drawing a check mark in the air with my fingers.

“Nice work,” he says, standing up from his chair. “Well, I’ve gotta get going, but it was great chatting with you, fellow Rowan.”

“Ah, fuck,” I say under my breath.

“What?”

“Don’t go,” I say. “I have one more thing I need to check off my list.”

“I’m sorry dude, I gotta grab my girlfriend from her nail appointment down the street,” he says, pushing in his chair.

Ah, fuck. Girlfriend?

“But what’s your last item?” he asks, body facing towards the exit.

“It doesn’t matter now.”

“No,” he says, stepping back towards me. “I gotta know!”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“No, I’m going to worry about it. I won’t stop wondering what it was, and then I’ll tell my girlfriend I met this cool gay dude and he told me all about his bucket list and how he had one item left but didn’t tell me what it was. And then she will be wondering what it was too, and then we will both lose sleep over it and it’ll effect our performance at work and we will probably lose our jobs, which will inevitably force us to start spending all our time together and make us resent each other leading to us breaking up, all because you didn’t tell me the final item on your bucket list,” he gasps for breath. “Do you really want to be responsible for that, Rowan?”

“My god,” I say. “I guess not.”

“So, what is it?”

“It really doesn’t matter now,” I say again. “But, it’s… to kiss a guy.”

“Oh!” he says.

“Yeah, see? Exactly. You should go get your girlfriend, she’ll probably be mad if you’re late.”

“Was that what this was?” He gestures to his and my spots at the counter, meaning, our whole interaction.

“Um,” I stutter. “Yeah, I guess. Sort of. I liked talking with you. You’re very kind. But I thought you were—I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry,” he says. “I came into your space. It’s a fair assumption.”

“No, I am sorry. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. And I wasn’t trying to use you or anything. I really—”

He pulls my face into his dry, heavy hands and kisses my mouth hard. Not only is he pressing his lips to mine, but he slides his tongue into my mouth, tangling it with mine. My arms flail in the air as I nearly lose my balance off the stool, returning his passion. His body heat against mine feels like I’m embracing the sun herself. I can barely breathe through the thick heat of it all. He pulls his lips from mine and I can’t tell if the desperate gasp for breath is his, mine, or both of ours.

“Check it off your list, Charlie Brown,” he slaps me on the shoulder, and I nearly crumble into a million pieces.

“But you’re—” I mutter. “And your—”

“I am,” he says. “And she won’t mind.”

“I—” don’t know what to say. All the blood has rushed somewhere else that is entirely unhelpful right now. “Thank you.”

“You’re cool, Rowan. Happy to kiss a good dude for a good cause.” He heads for the door again.

Ah, fuck. “Wait!” I say. “There’s one more thing.”

“Sex is too far, Rowan,” he says with a deadpan grin.

“No, it’s not that,” I laugh. “I lied to you.”

“What?” He returns from the door again. “How so?”

“I’m sorry. I promise everything else I’ve said is authentic.”

“Okay, hurry up, you mysterious son of a bitch,” he huffs. “No more cliffhangers!”

“One of the other items I checked off tonight was to use a fake name.”

“Your name isn’t Rowan?”

“It’s not. I’m sorry,” I say, dropping my eyes. “It was meant to be harmless. How could I ever expect that you’d have the same name! And you were so excited.”

He stares at me with the melting grin of a disappointed dad. He’s angry. But then he starts laughing. Laughing hard. Turning heads again.

“That’s—fucking—hilarious—dude!” he gets out between laughs and gasps for air. “You must have been panicking inside!”

“I was,” I say, and now I’m laughing too.

The bell on the door jingles.

“Rowan!” a voice sings out.

Both our heads turn to the door.

“There you are!” she says. “My appointment finished like fifteen minutes ago!”

“Sorry, Nicky, I got caught up with my new friend here, um—”

“Shut the fuck up,” I say.

“Okay, your new friend here is rude,” she says.

“Shut the fuck up,” Rowan says.

“Okay, now you’re being rude too,” she says to him.

“You’re kidding,” he says to me, understanding.

“My name is Nick. My friends call me Nicky.”

“Oh!” she says. “Well isn’t that a coincidence!”

“If you only knew,” Rowan says to her. “First he told me his name was Rowan, but it turns out that was just an item on his bucket list, as was his final task, which was to kiss a dude, so I took one for the team and kissed him, and then he—”

“Wait, you kissed him?” she asks in a raised tone.

Fuck, I knew she wouldn’t be happy.

“And I missed it?!” she adds. “Do it again.”

Shut the fuck up. That’s not what I was expecting. My deer-in-headlight eyes move from Nicky to Rowan and back to Nicky, before Rowan’s strong hands are clutching my fragile face again. This time, as his familiar pavement-on-a-summer-day heat returns to me, he adds a grunt, and some heavy breath with deep vocalizations, and I can literally feel my heart sink into my gonads as my soul ascends from my body, floating above me to catch the scene my mortal meat sack is too dumbfounded to believe is true. It’s like seeing the rare green flash phenomenon as the sun sets over the endless ocean. Something you didn’t think you’d be lucky enough to experience once, let alone twice.

“That was hot,” Nicky says as her boyfriend pulls his tongue out of my mouth. “Are you sure you’re not at least bisexual, Rowan?”

“That was for you, Nicky, and you, Nicky. Not for me,” he says.

“Damnit,” she stomps her heel. “So, no threesome?”

I nearly faint off my stool.

“Nice try,” he tells her, heading towards the door. “Give him our Instagram, though. Not for sex purposes.”

“We have a couples account,” she says. “And I’m not taking the threesome off the table just yet.”

I give her my phone, and her freshly neon pink claws furiously type out their handle in the search bar.

“It was never on the table,” Rowan says. “Unless we get to have one with another woman first.”

“Is that a threat or a promise?” she says to him. “Here, this is us.” She hands me back my phone.

“Let’s hang sometime, with less kissing,” Rowan says.

“With extra kissing!” Nicky whispers to me.

“Goodbye, Nicky,” Rowan says. “Let’s go, Nicky!”

[✓ ] Go to a bar alone

[✓ ] Introduce yourself with a fake name

[✓ ] Kiss a man