With the heat blasting, the Chevy’s cab is perfectly warm, but Lance still misses Robbie’s coat.
While Robbie trudges after the cows, Lance rummages for his phone in the plastic baggie from the jail. Not because he expects to have missed any important calls, but because if he doesn’t do something to distract himself, he’ll just stare out the window and watch every move Robbie makes. Staring at Robbie will only make managing his turbulent emotions harder.
And he has to get himself under control. He can’t humiliate himself with Robbie. Not again.
When he rolls his thumb over the screen to bring it back to life, though, the first thing he sees is a bolded notification. No service. The low-battery warning is blinking, as well as a notification for one missed call and two texts.
Danny: I talked to Robbie, and he’s coming as soon as he can get there.
Danny: I just realized you might not be getting these texts. If you are, will you text me back? I called and left a message too, but you can ignore that if you want.
Lance bites his lip at that roundabout reminder that he hasn’t returned any of Danny’s calls in approximately five years. He isn’t sure how he would reply even if he could, but the question is moot. Unsurprisingly, considering Niall reported the car that he gave Lance as stolen, he’s already shut off his phone service, too.
He tucks the phone in his pocket just as Robbie climbs out of the ditch and comes back toward the truck.
Tension fills him at the prospect of sharing the tiny space of the Chevy’s interior with Robbie again in just a few moments. He isn’t sure how much longer he can control himself in this kind of close proximity. They’re just a couple of minutes away from Riverside now, though, and when they get to the ranch, he’ll at least be able to put a closed door between them.
Will Robbie put him up in Danny’s room? He hopes so. The memory of being tucked safely into that lumpy double bed is one that Lance has held close over the years. He hopes that Danny left up all of his dumb childhood posters that he still hadn’t gotten around to taking down by the time they were teenagers. Lance remembers that strange, incongruous wallpaper fondly: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Nintendo characters half-plastered-over with more recent band stickers, movie posters, and concert flyers.
Robbie climbs in, accompanied by a blast of cold air and icy snow that makes Lance shudder. He pulls out his own phone, which looks enormous because it’s in one of those practically bombproof cases. “He needs to fix his goddamn fence,” he mutters to himself, then frowns while, presumably, the phone rings unanswered several times. Then he sighs, pushes another button, and drops the phone on the dash. He casts Lance a quick glance as he puts the truck in gear. “Okay?”
Lance nods, clutches his knees, and tries to smile. “Yeah.”
They bump down the driveway without speaking to each other, but though Lance is still wrestling with his feelings, the silence isn’t uncomfortable. Robbie has never been much of a talker. Maybe that’s because his younger brothers didn’t know how to be quiet, between their fondly antagonistic banter, Danny’s endearing, know-it-all observations, and Johnny’s constant quips. The handful of times Robbie and Lance happened to be alone together for some odd reason or another, it was like this. Quiet.
Memories of that quiet companionship have led Lance through some of his darker moments, in fact.
The Chevy glides through the snow around the last bend in the long driveway to Riverside, and Lance’s heart speeds up. His gaze can’t help wandering to the tree line that clogs the slope down toward Chase Creek. How many times did he hike through that stretch of forest, wade through the shallow spot in the water or shimmy across the fallen tree that bridged the banks, and escape from his side of the creek to the creaky farmhouse and the Chases, safe on the other side?
It’s impossible to see the creek, named for Robbie’s ancestor, that forms the property line, let alone the house where Lance grew up, but Lance can feel it—out of sight, but summoning his attention, anyway. He can trace the route from here to there in his mind’s eye, imagining the scarred surface of its solid wood exterior door and the fear of what waited for him on its other side.
“It’ll look a little different to you,” Robbie murmurs as they pull into the yard. Lance snaps his head around like he’s just been startled from a dream. Maybe he has.
He sees what Robbie means right away. The yard is the same—holding the enormous, old stone barn, the tidy, white-painted board fences, a handful of small stone buildings, and the lean-to with a few familiar horses peering out.
But the house is gone. Where it stood, there’s nothing but snow-covered emptiness; all that remains is the old hedge of rose bushes planted by some Chase grandmother along the porch. He remembers sitting on the porch swing in summertime and inhaling their heady perfume. At the moment, they’re nothing but leafless frames draped in snow.
Bewildered, Lance looks at Robbie. “What happened?”
His face is pinched with grief. “Fire. Last fall.”
Horrified, Lance thinks of the tall, two-story silhouette that he always searched for when he approached the Chases’ home. The generous porch, the white pillars—and, seemingly at random, his mind pulls another, specific memory, of the curtains billowing in the kitchen window when Robbie left it open to let out the heat; he had his sleeves rolled up, standing at the oven and reminding them not to run in the house. A rule they never heeded and which he seemed unwilling to actually enforce.
Lance also remembers sneaking up the open staircase, hand trailing along the wood bannister that glowed from the polish of generations of use. Tip-toeing his way to Danny’s room.
He’s too stunned for tears. He sees an understanding warmth in Robbie’s eyes, and for a moment thinks Robbie’s hand might land on his shoulder again, where a phantom of his touch has lived, ready to be revived at any moment, sweet and warm under Lance’s skin.
Instead, Robbie turns away to look at the place where the house used to be. “We started converting the hayloft a couple of years ago, as an apartment for Johnny, and since he isn’t using it, I’ve been staying up there.” He hesitates, looking at Lance again, and this time there’s uncertainty in his voice as he says, “I guess I should have said something before I asked you to stay.”
It’s left unspoken, but Lance understands: Robbie didn’t mention the house because, in the end, the details of the offered accommodations weren’t material. Beggars can’t be choosers.
Lance nods, his heart pounding like it could break his ribs. When he was a kid, he’d thought his heart could just bust free and run away from him. The power of his own heartbeat had terrified him. Now, he knows from countless past experiences how much his body can take.
“Let’s get inside,” Robbie murmurs, and before Lance can protest, he’s shed his coat again and thrust it into Lance’s lap. Then he’s out of the truck and pushing the door closed behind him before Lance can try to give it back.
The cold is an assault the second Lance opens the door to slide out of the truck. He hurries into Robbie’s coat as a blast of wind chases him from the truck and through the snow after Robbie, to the foot of a new wooden staircase and deck attached to the old stone barn. They’re camouflaged somewhat by the snow, and so he hadn’t noticed them when they’d first pulled into the yard. Lance remembers the barn well. He and Danny used to play in the hayloft as kids, and as they got older, they still sometimes stole up there to feel more alone, often with a pile of comics. Once, with a few wine coolers pilfered from Johnny. The hayloft had always felt magically enormous—a stretch of smooth wooden flooring beneath an arched ceiling of exposed wooden beams that had reminded Lance of a capsized ship.
It was never warm up there in the winter, however, and it’s far from the cozy bedroom that Lance had let himself hope for.
At the top of the stairs is a new wooden door. The opening was crafted to match the building; it’s framed in limestone just like each of the original window openings that are rowed to either side of it. Lance glances over his shoulder and sees the same view he remembers from his youth: the twist of the creek, the sea of trees, the rocky shelves of the hillsides, and then the river, stretching so far it might as well be an ocean.
“Come on in,” Robbie says, pushing the door open with his shoulder and making a halfhearted effort to knock the snow off his boots before going inside. Lance follows.
He isn’t expecting what he finds inside.
The ceiling is the same, but it seems to glow in a way it didn’t before, like someone has conditioned and sealed every board. Other than that, the hayloft is transformed. It’s still one open space, but the floor is refinished to a brighter, even smoother gleam, and in the middle of the room is an island of countertops and cabinets—a small but modern kitchen. At the north end of the space, there’s a wall that didn’t used to be there, with a door that probably leads to a bathroom, considering Lance sees no signs of one anywhere else. On the south end, where there used to be a massive, hinged door designed for the original purpose of pulling in netfuls of loose hay, there’s now an enormous glass window filling that entire opening with just a few large panes, and the view it frames of the snowy hills beyond is stunning. In front of the window is a bed, nightstand, and low dresser.
Lance’s stare lingers on the bed, helplessly imagining Robbie lying there. Then he hastily looks around the loft again, and it strikes him that the only other place where anyone can sleep is the threadbare couch shoved up against the wall next to the kitchen. A half-built bookshelf leans against the wall next to the couch, and a black cat is curled on the arm. It opens one yellow eye to see who’s responsible for interrupting its nap.
He stares back at the cat, still processing the revelation that this is one living space that Lance will share with Robbie with no possibility of privacy. It’s somewhere between a twisted dream come true for his younger self and a nightmare for his present-day self. He rakes a trembling hand through his hair, then slowly goes about taking off Robbie’s coat.
Robbie, seemingly oblivious to Lance’s internal crisis, has slipped out of his boots and put his hands back in his pockets, watching Lance with a small, uncertain smile. “I know it’s not exactly cozy.”
It’s way too fucking cozy! Lance’s panicked internal voice snaps.
But, of course, he doesn’t say this or anything else. He just offers a quick smile, turning away under the pretense of looking for somewhere to hang up the coat before Robbie can notice how his hands are shaking.