Rye groaned as he stepped under the hot waterfall of Charlie’s shower, but his groan turned to a whimper when water ran down over the cut on his leg.
He’d never liked blood and just thinking about the cut made him woozy.
He luxuriated under the water for a while, then washed his hair with Charlie’s shampoo. It was jasmine, and made Rye think of dark, secret gardens strung with fairy lights a thousand miles away from Wyoming.
When he got out of the shower he found clothes on the other side of the bathroom door. He wrapped his dripping hair in the towel and pulled on navy blue sweatpants and a gray sweatshirt that said WYOMING in brown letters outlined in yellow and a man riding a horse underneath it in the same brown and yellow. It was hideous. The clothes clung to his damp skin. Both were so huge he felt like he was being swallowed.
He hung up the towel and crept out of the bathroom, the extra fabric of the sweatpants pooling at his ankles and his hair dampening the shoulders of the sweatshirt. Following a cattish sound, he found Charlie, Jane, and Marmot in a high-ceilinged living room with exposed wood beams and a wood floor covered with a deep gray rug. On the rug, Jane and Marmot were playing a kind of tug-of-war with Charlie, who was on his back with a sleeve in each of their mouths.
Jane had clearly played this game before, but Marmot was losing her shit, tugging at Charlie’s sleeve, then getting her claws caught in the flannel and flipping over onto her back to free them. Charlie laughed and teased her with his fingers, and Marmot jumped onto his chest and began making biscuits on his sternum.
“You won her over,” Rye said.
Marmot acted tough but she was a little softy at heart.
Charlie tipped his head and looked at Rye upside down. He smiled an upside-down smile, lines appearing around his eyes. Jane looked up at him just like her human.
“That’s the biggest damn cat I’ve ever seen.”
Rye padded into the room and sat cross-legged on the rug next to Jane. She was black with gray markings and had little tufts of fur on the tips of her ears. Her tail was practically the size of Marmot’s whole body.
“She’s a Maine coon,” Charlie said, sitting up.
His movement displaced Marmot who protested by jumping onto his shoulder. Charlie’s face lit up like a big kid’s.
“Hi,” he cooed to Marmot. Marmot flicked her tail in his face.
“Can I pet her?” Rye asked.
“Sure.”
Jane lay on the rug, eyes half-closed, massive tail twitching lazily.
Rye sank his hand into her thick coat and scratched. Jane purred, a deep motorboat rumble. He scratched between her tufted ears and her eyes drifted shut. She was the softest thing he’d ever touched. He buried his face in her luscious fur and breathed in the scent of wood shavings and something lightly floral, like fabric softener. The combination reminded him of being outside in the Seattle spring when he walked through the woods and on the beach.
“You ready to take care of that leg?”
Rye muffled his groan in Jane’s fur and dragged himself up.
Charlie stood also, plucking Marmot off his shoulder with one hand and depositing her on the rug. She stretched luxuriantly and then walked up on top of Jane to lie down on her back. Jane opened one eye, then closed it again in welcome.
The cats curled into a ball of gray and black and orange and white. It was impossibly cute.
Charlie pulled his phone out and snapped a picture.
Then he led Rye back into the bathroom and had him sit on the edge of the bathtub. The air was still humid from the shower and smelled of the jasmine shampoo.
“Guess you like it here, huh?” Rye said, suddenly wanting to delay this as long as possible. “Wyoming, I mean?” He pointed at the sweatshirt he was wearing.
“It’s the cowboys,” Charlie said.
Rye blinked. Okay, so Charlie Matheson was into cowboys. That was...really hot.
“The football team. The Cowboys. U of W.”
“Oh.” Well that was disappointing. “Did you go there?”
Charlie’s face did something complicated and illegible.
“No.”
“Oh.”
Charlie sat on the floor at Rye’s feet and tugged the sweatpants up to his knee.
“I should’ve told you not to let the fabric touch the cut,” Charlie murmured.
Rye fixed his eyes on Charlie’s red-gold hair, determined not to look at the exposed cut for one second.
“Okay, you have some slivers of wood in here. I need to clean them out.”
“Mmfh,” Rye said. He caught a glimpse of tweezers and squeezed his eyes shut tight. He smelled alcohol and then felt a flash of pain. He made himself freeze but the sensation of the cut being prodded was nauseating. He tried to breathe through his nose but that just made the alcohol smell stronger.
“Whoa, whoa, hold on,” Charlie said, and Rye opened his eyes as he rocked backward off the lip of the tub.
Charlie caught him with a hand on his back at the same time as Rye caught himself.
“Come down here.”
He eased onto the tile floor, vision swimming.
“Does it hurt a lot?” Charlie asked gently.
Rye shook his head, taking shallow breaths through his mouth.
“It’s the alcohol. Don’t like the smell.”
The stink of it as his mother scrubbed every surface of the only apartment his father had been able to find at the last minute. He’d had a headache for days. Years later, on his hands and knees, he’d scrubbed with an identical bottle the mouse droppings and cockroach husks in another horrid apartment.
Charlie opened the bathroom door and flicked on the fan. Rye let his damp hair fall over his face, trying to smell jasmine instead.
“I’m gonna have to use it again to clean the cut. I’m sorry,” Charlie said. “But I have to make sure it’s not infected. Will you be okay?”
Rye wanted to say no. He wanted to bury his face in Charlie’s shoulder and feel arms come around him and hold him. He wanted to hide. But hiding never did any good.
“Yeah, ’s fine,” he mumbled. “Gimme your shampoo?”
Charlie passed him the bottle of shampoo from the shower and Rye unscrewed the top and held it under his nose. He leaned back against the bathtub and closed his eyes again.
“Okay,” Charlie murmured. “Just tell me if you need a break.”
As Charlie poked and prodded his cut, Rye’s mind drifted. He breathed in the scent of jasmine and imagined he was walking through Discovery Park in the late spring. He used to go all the time. There was a bend in the trail where the light broke through the mammoth trees and fell on passersby like glitter. There was a spot where the trees opened onto the outcropping that revealed the ocean. A place where you could trace the stratigraphy of thousands and thousands of years of rock, mud, rock, mud, sand, mud, rock.
Once, he’d seen a baby seal lying on the beach, fat and glorious and seeming to smile in the sunlight. He’d been with Maya then, and she’d packed a picnic of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and Oreos. She said just because you couldn’t cook didn’t mean you couldn’t have a picnic. They’d sat on the sand and tossed bits of the jelly side of the sandwiches on the ground to watch them be plucked up by gulls diving in reckless, graceful arcs.
That had been a good day.
“All right,” Charlie said, voice soft and low. “Last alcohol smell and then I’ll dress it.”
Rye hadn’t been to Discovery Park in years. It had been ages since he’d seen Maya.
“Okay.”
Maybe once it got warmer here he could be outside again. Maybe he could walk through the woods around the house. Or find a cheap chair and sit outside. After all, he didn’t live in the city anymore.
“Rye. Rye.” A hand landed on his shoulder. “Hey.”
Rye opened his eyes. Charlie was close and looked worried.
“Is it done?” He didn’t look at his leg.
“Yeah.”
He glanced down to see a white bandage taped around his shin.
“Is it okay?”
Charlie nodded. “I put antibiotic ointment on it. You need to keep it clean. I’ll change the dressing in a day or two.”
“Like salad,” he heard himself say nonsensically.
Charlie squeezed his shoulder, then stood and offered him a hand. He got a whiff of alcohol and reached up to take it. Charlie lifted his weight like it was nothing and eased the shampoo bottle out of his hand.
For a moment, they stood close together. Charlie’s eyelashes were a dark rust color. He had freckles on his forehead and on his cheeks above his beard. His eyes looked so fucking green. He had freckles on his eyelids.
Charlie gave him a small smile, his eyelashes fluttering.
Rye kissed him.
Charlie’s full lips were soft and his beard tickled Rye’s chin. Rye smelled wood shavings and clean sweat and a uniquely Charlie-smelling heat, but before Rye had a chance to taste him, Charlie pulled away and Rye lurched forward.
“What are you doing?”
Rye’s head was swimming. “I thought... I... I don’t know, shit. I’m sorry!”
His heart was pounding in his ears, threatening to take over his whole body. He backed toward the doorway.
“Rye, stop,” Charlie called after him, but Rye was already out the door, heading for the living room.
He’d fucked it up. He’d completely fucked things up. Bad call, bad call, bad call.
Jane and Marmot weren’t in the living room anymore. Rye called for Marmot but got no yip in response.
Charlie caught up to him.
“I’m so sorry,” Rye said again.
He dared a glance at Charlie’s face, not sure what type of anger or scorn he might find, but Charlie looked confused.
“It’s okay,” he said immediately.
“No. It’s not.”
Charlie called for Jane like he could deflect the focus onto the cat. It made Rye’s stomach hurt.
Could he get a Lyft from here? His phone was still plugged into the USB cord in Charlie’s truck. Where was Marmot?
“Let me get you some socks,” Charlie said, and hurried away.
Rye’s stomach was in knots. His clothes probably weren’t dry yet and there was no way he could walk all that way in oversized sweats with a cat in his arms. And he needed his phone.
Charlie tossed him a pair of wool socks that bounced off his chest and onto the rug. Rye stared at them.
“Your laundry won’t be done for another hour or so,” Charlie said, all business again. “Do you want to wait, or should I take you home now and I can drop it off for you later?”
Rye blinked. Charlie wasn’t quite meeting his eyes.
“Are we...? I...? Should we...?”
Charlie said nothing. The awkwardness was exquisite.
“Uh. Okay, then. Whichever’s easier,” Rye said.
Charlie shook his head. No help from that quarter.
Rye just wanted to get out of there. He couldn’t stand looking at Charlie; being looked at.
“Now I guess,” Rye got out. “I can get my clothes later.”
“Okay.”
But Charlie just stood there. He touched his chin, then his mouth.
“Do you know where the cats are?”
He walked out of the room and reappeared a few minutes later with Marmot in his arms. Rye reached for her, pulled her to his chest, and held her a little tighter than she liked. She smelled like wood shavings.
They drove back to Rye’s in silence. He searched his brain for a single, solitary thing to say, but it was a vast, razed field, and every attempt stuck in his throat.
Rye was out of the car the second Charlie shifted into Park.
“Thanks,” he said uselessly. “I’m sorry.”
His stomach was a hollow pit.
“Come to the store tomorrow or the next day,” Charlie instructed. He was all business. “I’ll change the bandage. And I’ll bring your clothes.”
Rye nodded, then fled inside. The house smelled dank and moldy. The chill was biting. It would be dark soon. Rye scooped some food into Marmot’s bowl and climbed into the sleeping bag. He was suddenly overwhelmed with exhaustion. Even with the padding of the bag, it wasn’t nearly as soft as Charlie’s rug had been.
Charlie’s house had smelled good too. Clean and fresh and airy.
He stared at the ceiling until the sun set and he couldn’t see anything anymore. Then Marmot came, pawing to be let into the sleeping bag and breathing cat food breath in his face. She settled in, her tiny body his only comfort.
“You made a friend, huh?”
Marmot purred.
“Sorry you’ll probably never see her again,” Rye said. “I fucked up. I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” he said over and over.
He’d fucked things up before they’d even talked about the house. What the hell had he been thinking? He’d seen something in Charlie’s eyes that he’d...badly misread, obviously.
He pulled his hood up, letting the jasmine smell of his clean hair surround him, and tried to escape into sleep.