Marmot and Jane lay in a heap on Charlie’s bed when he got out of the shower. Marmot was angry at Rye because Rye had insisted on thoroughly searching her for ticks the previous evening she’d run straight into the woods and come back covered in dust and bits of fern.
“He just did what’s best for you,” Charlie informed Marmot. Marmot yawned, unmoved.
Rye had been napping when Charlie got home from work. Rye was, it turned out, a joyous and dedicated napper, while Charlie only ever slept during the day when he was ill, disliking the groggy sensation that accompanied waking at any time other than morning.
Now Rye wandered into the room, bleary-eyed and rumpled and thoroughly adorable.
“Traitor,” he muttered to Marmot and reached out to pet between her ears. She allowed it.
Seemingly unbalanced by sleep, he leaned a little into Charlie, and Charlie’s heart soared. It happened every time Rye touched him. This affected him even more, though, because the casualness of it spoke of an assumption of intimacy which answered a call that came from Charlie’s very depths.
Charlie ran his fingers through Rye’s hair, combing out the ever-present tangles and Rye dropped his head against Charlie’s shoulder.
In moments like this, Charlie could almost imagine that he and Rye had been together for years; considered one another’s bodies their own, to lean on as they wished.
When the pizza came, they settled in on the couch. The cats followed them one by one, wanting to sit on their laps at the exact moment they were trying to get pizza and seeming uninterested in them once they’d sat back, laps free.
Instead of Secaucus Psychic, Charlie turned on Make it Home, a new home renovation show he’d been wanting to check out.
Rye’d been so overwhelmed at his house the other day that Charlie thought maybe it would help him to see what happened during a home renovation.
The designer and the carpenter on the show were putting an addition on the house of a family with a teenage daughter who had recently been hospitalized long-term. They wanted to make her a space where she could enjoy privacy as well as be comfortable in bed for long stretches.
“This designer is pretty hot,” Rye said. Charlie agreed, but he couldn’t deny the pang of jealousy that shot through him too.
What, you think that once someone touches you they’ll never find another human being attractive ever again?
“Jeez, the carpenter’s even hotter,” Rye said. “Is everyone on this show hot? No wonder you like it.”
“I’ve never even seen it before.”
“You could totally have your own show,” Rye mused a few minutes later, when the designer and the carpenter were discussing the challenges of the space and bouncing ideas off each other about how to bring the girl’s love of French architecture into play in the family’s Rhode Island home. “Only you could be the designer and the carpenter.”
“Nah,” Charlie said. But he was flattered.
“Sure you could. You designed this place, didn’t you?”
“Yeah. But this place was just for me.”
Rye shot him a look from where he was splayed over the couch.
“Not all for you,” he said.
Charlie froze.
No one knew. No one knew that Charlie had picked out things that were neutral enough that he hoped they would appeal to someone who might someday live here. Because what if he’d painted the living room green and they hated green? Sure, he could always repaint, but what if that paint color—or the drawer pulls, or the molding—was the thing that stood between that person seeing themselves at home here and not?
He’d made his bathroom exactly what he wanted and felt great about it for one week, until this had occurred to him. Tile wasn’t so easy to change. But he decided he wouldn’t make the same mistake with the rest of the house. He wouldn’t give that person any reason not to stay with him.
It was cringeworthy, but once the thought had invaded his mind, no amount of visualizing windshield wipers had managed to clear it. This, he could control. This, he could manage. He couldn’t know who they might be or what they might like—hell, he didn’t even really believe they would ever come along—but he could make sure that nothing he chose was particular enough to push them away.
“What do you mean?” Charlie asked, keeping his voice completely neutral.
“You must’ve picked a lot of this stuff cuz you thought it’d help you sell the house,” Rye said. “It’s all so, what’s the word? Neutral. It’s not really like you. Except the bathroom. But that makes stuff easier to sell, right?”
Charlie swallowed his relief and cleared his throat.
“Right,” he choked out.
“Bro. I know you’re into him because I saw you together,” Jack said, rolling his eyes.
He’d come into the store on the pretense of buying a new axe head, but obviously just wanted to grill Charlie about Rye. He’d tried texting Charlie about it but Charlie hadn’t responded. He was too worried that he’d leave his phone lying out and Rye would see a text come through from Jack talking about it.
“Simon agrees with me,” Jack continued. “He says Rye has that whole feral cat being slowly domesticated at the hands of a patient human thing going on.”
Charlie couldn’t help but smile at that description. Simon’s powers of observation were nothing if not specific.
“Maybe. And much like a feral cat, when he decides it’s time, he’ll go back to the wild,” Charlie said.
“I knew it.”
“Jack. Do not say anything to Rye.”
“I wouldn’t do that,” Jack said, looking affronted.
He fiddled with the stapler on the desk Charlie had set up in what was once their father’s closet. It felt cramped with just Charlie in it. With both of them there was hardly room to move.
“I didn’t... I didn’t know you liked guys,” Jack said.
Charlie shrugged.
“Why didn’t you ever tell me?”
“Never told you I liked girls, but apparently you still thought I did.”
Jack shook his head.
“Actually, I thought you were probably ace. Since you never mentioned being attracted to anyone.”
Charlie was struck by an overwhelming wave of gratitude for his brother.
“So?” Jack prompted.
“So, what?”
“So, why didn’t you tell me?”
“I don’t know,” Charlie told him. It seemed impossible to convey to Jack the cocktail of panic and desperation that had accompanied everything in those years after their parents died, and it wouldn’t do any good to make him feel like part of what caused it.
“It’s not something I was keeping from you,” Charlie said. “I wasn’t in that mode, in my head. I mean... I didn’t...like anyone.”
“Until now,” Jack said.
Charlie slumped in his too-small chair and Jack clapped him on the shoulder.
“I’m really happy for you.”
“Don’t be. He’s not gonna stick around.”
“You don’t think so?”
Charlie shook his head and forced himself to say his greatest fear out loud, because sometimes just saying it out loud took some of the sting out of it.
“I think he’ll sell the house once we’re done and get out of here. Probably go back to Seattle.”
He stared at the wall but he could feel Jack’s eyes on him. It didn’t take any of the sting out of it after all.
“Hmm,” Jack said. “I’m not so sure.”
Jack stood, fiddling with the stapler on Charlie’s desk.
“Listen,” he said finally. “About what Rye said at dinner. The meatloaf thing. I’m really sorry.”
Charlie waved it away but Jack caught his hand.
“Seriously. I’ve been thinking about it ever since dinner, and he was right. Why didn’t I help cook? I was thirteen. That’s plenty old enough. But I let you do all that shit for me. I let you...be a parent. It felt good, I guess. That even though Mom and Dad were gone, I still got to have that. I’m sorry I was so selfish.”
Charlie’s stomach lurched and he stood and put his hands on Jack’s shoulders.
“No. You were a kid. And that’s what I wanted—for you to still feel like you had someone taking care of you.”
“I always knew you made sacrifices, Charlie. And I’ve appreciated them so much. I know how hard you worked to help me pay for school, and so many other things. But I didn’t think about it. It’s like... I don’t know, like you did it so automatically and so instantly after they were gone that it never seemed like a choice. It was just the new way things were. We never talked about it. It...”
He bit his lip and Charlie was horrified to hear a catch in his voice that meant Jack was going to cry.
“It was so unfair, C. I didn’t... Why... Why didn’t I help you? Why didn’t you ask for my help? You know I would have, right?”
Jack grabbed his arm and searched his face.
“I know.”
“Then why? I don’t understand. Did you think I couldn’t help?”
“No. Course not, I just... I wanted you to be a kid. You shouldn’t’ve had to do any of that shit.”
He knew what Jack was going to say. That Charlie shouldn’t’ve had to do it either. So he spoke before Jack could.
“Listen, even if I’d gone to UW, I was never gonna go pro. I would’ve wanted to come back here and work with Dad at the store. But you—”
“Are you saying you—you—you just gave up on having a future and decided I got to have one instead?”
Jack’s eyes blazed with anger.
Charlie tried to figure out how to phrase it another way, but he must’ve stayed silent a beat too long because Jack’s expression turned from anger to horror. Then his eyes filled with tears.
“You got the offer, didn’t you? They asked you to play and you turned it down.”
In an instant Charlie was back in Coach Tybee’s office at the end of March, six weeks after their parents died, the trifold papers lying on the desk between them. The poster yelling THERE IS NO I IN TEAM at him from above Coach’s chair.
The assistant coach from UW had spoken with Charlie at the beginning of the season, had come to several games and a practice. He’d made a verbal offer, but Charlie had known that wasn’t a guarantee.
He and his parents were invited down to Laramie in November to see a game, tour the campus, meet with coaches and players, but the snows had come early that year and after rescheduling twice Charlie accepted that a visit wasn’t in the cards.
He’d been disappointed but he’d been to games there before and been on campus. So he just kept his head down, kept working hard, and waited.
When his parents died, the calendar he’d kept such a close eye on for months of recruiting came unstuck, fluttering into a jumble of days and weeks that fell unnoticed around him.
By the time he got into Coach Tybee’s office in March he felt like a different person than the one who’d shaken Assistant Coach Brown’s hand and smiled to himself as he pictured Saturday mornings in a Laramie autumn.
He’d pushed signing until the absolute last moment he could, hoping. But come the end of April he knew. Accepting the offer meant Jack either went to Florida with their grandmother or went into foster care. That he’d either have to sell the store or close it. Sell the house or rent it out.
If he played football for the University of Wyoming, his and Jack’s life and their parents’ legacy in Garnet Run were over.
He had told Jack the offer never came.
“I made a choice,” Charlie said. “I chose to stay here instead of—”
“Charlie!” Jack’s voice shook. “I can’t believe you did that without telling me. Without talking to me, even!”
“And what would you have said? ‘Sure, Charlie, go to college. I’ll move to Florida with Grandma and not see you again for years’?”
Jack gaped. “I—”
“You would’ve hated Florida. You barely tolerated Grandma. I couldn’t have helped you pay for school if I wasn’t working. You would’ve ended up hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt at graduation with no place to live afterward, because I would’ve had to sell the cabin.” He shook his head. “No. There was no way.”
Tears were streaming unchecked down Jack’s face. Jack was looking at him with a kind of helplessness Charlie hadn’t seen in a long time. He slumped against the door frame and closed his eyes.
“I can’t believe you.” His voice was barely there. “I can’t believe you never told me you could’ve had your dream. You fucking gave it up for me and you didn’t even ask if I wanted you to.”
Charlie pulled him into a hug and Jack squeezed him so tight it almost hurt.
“I didn’t want that, Charlie,” he said.
“I know,” Charlie said. “That’s why I never told you.”
Then Charlie held him while he cried.
Saturday morning, Charlie came into the kitchen to find Rye sleepily stirring eggs in a pan on the stove, Marmot perched on his shoulder. He was a vision—all tangled hair and low-slung sweatpants and bare feet.
Charlie and Jane had had their morning nose bump in his room and she had curled back up on his pillow, her favorite place to sleep when he wasn’t home.
“Morning,” Charlie said, putting a hand out for Marmot to bump.
“Mmf,” Rye said.
Charlie took advantage of his sleepiness and moved in behind him, snaking his arms around Rye’s stomach while being careful not to dislodge Marmot. He kissed the top of Rye’s messy head and pretended that he would get to do this every morning.
Pretended that Rye wasn’t going to head back to Seattle after the house was done. That he wasn’t going to be another memory Charlie took out and looked at like a faded photograph on sad days.
“Mmfmf,” Rye said, and leaned back into Charlie with a little wiggle.
“Given any more thought to the layout of the downstairs?” Charlie asked. “Or do you want to leave it as it was?”
Rye didn’t say anything for a while. He turned the heat off under the eggs and picked up two forks from the counter. He offered one fork to Charlie and held out the pan of eggs.
He seemed to intend for them to stand there and eat them out of the pan. Charlie reached over him and took two plates out of the cabinet. Much as he’d enjoy sharing a plate, he didn’t trust sleepy Rye with a hot pan and a cat at the same time.
He dished up the eggs, put the pan in the sink, and drew Rye to the kitchen table. Marmot absconded for territories unknown and Rye stared at his eggs confusedly for a moment as if he couldn’t quite track how they got from the pan to a plate.
Charlie had learned that it didn’t pay to try and drag answers out of Rye. He liked to think things through in his own time and tended to be snappish when rushed. So Charlie ate his eggs and watched Rye poke and scowl at his own.
“Can we leave the downstairs open?” he said finally.
“Sure,” Charlie said.
He wasn’t sure what Rye was thinking about so hard, or what his plans were, but he sketched plans on scrap paper while Rye ate his eggs in silence.
That night, after they’d showered off the day’s work and were once again watching Make it Home, Rye slumped to Charlie’s shoulder. He nuzzled into him and lifted Charlie’s arm, draping it around himself. Charlie pulled him close, encouraging him to rest his head on Charlie’s chest.
“One more?”
“Mmm-hmm.”
Charlie pushed play on the next episode but hardly noticed what the renovation was, so distracted was he by the feel of Rye in his arms. He had molded himself to Charlie’s side like a cat and his breathing was deep and even. He smelled warm and familiar.
Charlie rubbed the ends of Rye’s hair between his fingers. It was usually messy, but Rye had combed it after his shower and though it would be mussed by tomorrow morning, now it was smooth and soft and Charlie could run his fingers through the silky strands easily.
Rye nestled closer when he did it and Charlie moved from the long strands to Rye’s scalp, massaging gently with the pads of his fingers until Rye was liquid against him, practically purring.
Curious, Charlie moved from the pads of his fingers to the tips, lightly scratching Rye’s scalp. Rye made a happy sound. He continued scratching for a while, letting Rye relax further, then slowly—so slowly—he gathered a handful of hair and pulled. Not a yank or a tug, but a gentle pressure.
At first Rye didn’t seem to notice the change. He seemed as relaxed as before. Charlie pulled just the tiniest bit harder and Rye pressed his cheek into Charlie’s chest.
Charlie gathered Rye’s hair in his fist and tugged just a little harder and this time, Rye made a small whimpering sound, buried his face in Charlie’s chest, and curled his arm around Charlie’s leg.
“More,” he said softly.
Charlie pulled his hair more. Still gentle, but definitive. Rye kissed his chest.
“Can we go to bed?” Rye asked, looking up at Charlie with big, liquid eyes.
“Tired?” Charlie said.
“Not anymore.”
They walked hand in hand to Charlie’s bedroom without discussion and when they got inside Rye wrapped his arms around Charlie’s neck and pulled him into a kiss. Rye, who was often clumsy and awkward with tools or dishes, was grace personified when they kissed, when they touched, like it was his natural state and everything else was unfamiliar.
“Why does it turn you on?” Charlie asked. “When I...” He tugged on Rye’s hair and Rye fisted his shirt.
“I don’t know. Just does. Charlie.”
Rye pushed him down on the bed. He climbed astride Charlie’s hips, his eyes heavy lidded and his cheeks flushed.
“Charlie. I want you.”
He said it like it was an invocation.
“What do you want from me?”
Charlie meant it like I’ll gladly give you anything but Rye frowned and put a hand on his chest.
“Not from you. With you.”
Charlie’s heart pounded and he closed his eyes, but Rye already knew. Rye already knew he didn’t know what he was doing. Rye already knew he couldn’t expect him to take charge here, and it was okay.
Charlie opened his eyes.
“Tell me what you want?”
Rye licked his lips.
“I want... Would you want to maybe...be inside me?”
Desire rocked Charlie. He knew that wasn’t the language Rye would usually use. He knew it was for him. To make him comfortable. And it made him want Rye more.
“Okay.”
“If you don’t like it, we’ll stop. Okay?”
“Or if you don’t like it.”
Rye almost rolled his eyes and Charlie saw the moment he stopped himself because he realized Charlie was serious.
“Okay.”
Charlie’s thoughts were all over the place. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to be helpless in front of you. This isn’t how I’m supposed to feel. His heart was pounding so fast it felt like a fluttering creature escaping through his ribs. Rye put his hand over it.
“You’re scared?”
Charlie nodded miserably.
Rye lay down on top of him.
“Of what?”
He hugged Rye to him tight.
“I guess because...”
He shook his head. He couldn’t physically get the words out. It had only happened to him once before: when he’d had to tell Jack their parents were dead.
Because if I’m bad at it you won’t stay with me. Because if I don’t like it you won’t stay with me. Then I’ll be alone again, but even more alone because now I know what it feels like to be with you.
“Charlie? You know that not liking sex is okay, don’t you?”
“I know that.”
But it’s not okay for me.
“And you know that penetrative sex is just one kind of sex, don’t you? Lots of people aren’t interested in it. And that’s okay too.”
Charlie nodded. He knew all this, intellectually. He had heard of the internet. But none of that knowledge made a bit of difference when the truth was that he was falling for a man who liked sex—and clearly liked penetrative sex—and wanted to have it with him and he just...didn’t know.
“Do you want to try? See what you think? Or no?”
Charlie’s head was spinning even though he was lying down. What he wanted was to already know these things about himself. To have spent years exploring and experimenting the way Rye had so that these were givens; no big deal.
Rye’s hand was still resting on his chest over his heart.
“Stay there, okay? Don’t move. I’ll be right back.”
Charlie closed his eyes. He couldn’t bear to watch Rye leave.
Rye’s warmth disappeared and Charlie was shivering. He climbed under the covers and pulled his pillow over his head.
The bed dipped and he felt Rye’s hand on his back. He also felt the familiar feeling of Jane making biscuits. Rye had brought Jane to him. He opened his eyes.
Rye’s eyes were gentle. “Can I get in with you?”
Charlie nodded and Rye insinuated himself beneath the covers while taking pains not to dislodge Jane. He was holding a pad of paper and a pen that he put on the bedside table.
Charlie turned onto his back and Jane curled up on his chest.
“C’mere.”
Rye snaked an arm around Charlie’s stomach and arranged them in a cuddle. Marmot yipped from down the hall and Rye scratched the blanket in a sound that usually attracted her. Within seconds she popped up onto the bed and curled between Rye’s legs.
Jane’s rattling purrs and Marmot’s tiny ones slowly relaxed Charlie.
“What’s the paper for?”
“Can I sleep here with you tonight?” Rye asked. “Just sleep.”
“Yeah. Course.”
“Then we’ll talk about it in the morning. Okay?”
The morning. But... Everything was processing strangely slowly.
“So we’re not going to...”
Rye shook his head and made an abortive gesture that looked like he was trying to turn the light switch across the room off with magic.
Charlie moved to get up but Rye stopped him.
“I got it.”
“But I haven’t brushed my teeth.”
“I think you’ll live just this once.”
Charlie let his head fall back down on the pillow.
“I don’t want to have bad breath.” If you kiss me, he left unsaid.
Rye seemed utterly unconcerned.
“Everyone has bad breath in the morning, even if they brush their teeth. It’s like a universal truth of bacteria. Go to sleep.”
He crawled to the end of the bed, put one foot on the floor, and reached as far as he could, just nicking the edge of the light switch with his outstretched finger.
“Hot lava?”
“Huh?”
“Never mind.”
He and Jack had played the game as children, jumping from bed to dresser to couch to TV console without touching the floor until, inevitably, one of them broke something and their parents yelled at them to stop.
“Charlie?”
“Hmm.”
“Can I kiss you good-night?”
Charlie groaned and pulled Rye to him, dislodging both Jane and a disgruntled Marmot, who stood for a moment, waiting for the annoying humans beneath the covers to stop moving. Then, when Charlie and Rye were cuddled up holding each other, they settled into the empty space behind Rye.
Rye put his head on Charlie’s shoulder and squeezed him tight and a lassitude like nothing he’d ever known spread through Charlie.
“Okay?” Rye murmured.
“It’s perfect.”