Rye dropped his duffel on the chair, and perched on the edge of the bed as Marmot sniffed the corners of Charlie’s guest room.
For a few weeks, he’d been on his own, and now here he was again, crashing in someone else’s house, preparing to accustom himself to yet another person’s habits so they didn’t kick him out.
“At least this time there’s a bed,” he muttered to Marmot.
Charlie had told him to make himself at home, but Rye had only felt at home once in his life. They’d called the house Skeletor for serpentine reasons of the moment that Rye no longer remembered. It was a five-bedroom house in Beacon Hill and there were six of them, so thrilled to have found it that they’d signed the lease even though the move-in was immediate and some of their leases weren’t up.
They shared food, cooked together, rotated chores, calculated each person’s rent based on their income and other expenses. They took care of each other.
It had lasted two and a half years.
Rye would move nearly every year for the next six years, until the eviction that found him couch hopping before he came to Garnet Run.
Through all those apartments, with all those roommates, Rye had gotten a great deal of experience in living with a huge variety of people with different backgrounds, levels of cleanliness, attitudes, worldviews, and personalities.
Before, when he lived with his parents, even though he’d had his own room, it hadn’t felt like home either. He’d still contorted himself—only those had been psychic contortions. The kind that made you smaller and smaller until you threatened to disappear if you didn’t get out. So he had.
Now he had another room of his own in another person’s home. But this one was nothing like any of the cramped apartments or sublets he’d stayed in. This was a grown-up’s house, with a laundry room and hand towels and no detritus of previous housemates or furniture accumulated from the cast-offs of passers-through.
There was something ruthlessly practical about most of the choices Charlie had made about the space, as if they’d had to pass a test of neutrality so as not to offend anyone. Even so, Rye could extract patterns of color, shape, and angle. He could tell Charlie liked cool colors and natural materials, and that he enjoyed soft things to touch.
He could tell that Charlie didn’t travel. There wasn’t a single object in the house that seemed to come from anywhere else, nor was there anything that seemed to come from somebody else. No inside jokes or decorative souvenirs; no gift books or magnets from Arizona. No shot glasses from a Florida airport or repurposed cookie tins with Christmas bears on them. No stash of pilfered hotel shampoo bottles in the guest bathroom. Nothing.
The only framed art was a series of color illustrations of animals: a moose, a bear, a lynx.
He should be happy. He had a shower again! A toilet and running water and an outlet to plug his phone into. A bed, and a washing machine. A kitchen. And he was happy... Kind of.
He also couldn’t help feeling like he was right back where he’d been when he was crashing on Kyle’s couch in Seattle—though at least he now had a bed and a door.
Was this how his life was always going to be: beholden to others for the crumbs of generosity they offered him? Trying to live in empty corners of someone else’s life?
“Fuck,” he muttered, and Marmot sprang silently onto the bed beside him. She seemed to have no problem making herself at home anywhere. She curled into a small spiral in the direct center of the blanket and yawned, like a nice big house with a comfortable bed in it was merely her due. Rye wished he could feel more like her.
Rye woke with a start. He hadn’t even realized he’d fallen asleep, and for a moment he was totally disoriented. The surface he was lying on was confusingly soft and he was strangely warm. The only familiar thing, in fact, was the purring form against his stomach.
“Rye? Dinner.”
A knock at the door and that was Charlie. Right, he was in Charlie’s guest room. And Charlie had...cooked dinner?
Still sleep-sodden, Rye pushed the hair out of his face and made a sound that must’ve sounded enough like communication that Charlie said, “Okay.”
Marmot yawned and stretched, her tiny paws splaying in the air. Rye darted in and pressed his cheek to her belly. Claws caught in his hair and he drew back before they tangled there.
“Dinner,” he echoed, to see if it sounded as strange when he said it. Yup.
He followed the aroma of food into the kitchen and found Charlie dishing up something that looked like a casserole.
“You didn’t have to do that,” Rye said, voice rough with sleep.
“Do what, cook dinner? I do it every night. Gotta eat.”
“I just meant you didn’t have to do it for me.”
“I didn’t do it for you.”
Rye felt squirmy. Intruder. Freeloader. The first word was his own, the second was his father’s. He squeezed his hands into fists to stop the word that usually came next and focused on all angles of what was. He was in a warm, safe place. He and Marmot were together. There was food, and Charlie was offering to share it with him. It felt hard to accept what Charlie was offering, but it seemed freely given. He was okay.
“No, I know, I only meant—Never mind. Thanks.”
Charlie nodded and turned out a tin of wet cat food on a small plate and set it on the dining table—it looked like a cat food commercial. Jane slunk into the room, meowed her strange ripping metal meow, and jumped onto the chair in front of her food. She sniffed delicately at the plate and then began to eat.
Rye hovered, waiting to see where Charlie would go. When Charlie sat down next to Jane with his food, Rye did the same.
“Thanks,” he said again. “For dinner and for letting me stay here.”
Charlie was watching him with an assessing look.
“You’re very welcome,” he said simply. Then he went back to his dinner. And it was as easy as that.
The chicken with mushrooms casserole was what might generously be called hearty and ungenerously be called bland. But it was the first hot meal Rye’d had in two weeks and he scarfed it down gratefully, forcing himself not to add the cost of its ingredients to the ever-growing tally in his head of what he owed the man sitting across from him. He never got on the right side of those tallies, so he’d stopped keeping them.
They ate in a silence that might have been awkward except that every time their eyes met, Charlie smiled at him, as if maybe he was genuinely glad Rye was here.
Rye drove to the Crow Lane house the next morning, with instructions from Charlie that his brother, Jack, would meet him over there, and he should wait until Jack got there to do anything. Rye grumbled at this as a matter of course, but was secretly relieved. He didn’t want a repeat of demoing the wall. He’d been terrified that every swing of the hammer would be the one that brought the house tumbling down.
Jack was there when Rye arrived. He was clearly a Matheson—a smaller, younger, slightly more refined-looking version of Charlie.
Jack raised a hand in a half wave, half salute.
Rye wished he could have brought Marmot.
“I’m Jack. I live right there.” He pointed to the roof just visible over the rise.
“Hey. Rye.”
“Simon will be by later to help,” Jack said. “He had to do a work thing.”
“Who’s Simon?”
Jack smiled a smile of pure sweetness.
“My boyfriend.”
Something unclenched in Rye’s stomach that he hadn’t known was tensed. He wasn’t the only queer person in Garnet Run, thank fuck! And if Jack and his boyfriend were happy here, then maybe he could be too. Maybe.
Jack winked.
“Let’s make a pile to the side of the house so when they drop off the dumpster everything will be in one place and out of our way,” he suggested.
Rye wanted to argue out of habit, because it was his house and he didn’t need a bunch of Charlies and Jacks coming in here and telling him what to do. But it wasn’t like he had any idea what he was doing.
“You used a sledge before?” Jack asked.
Rye shook his head.
“Don’t drop it.”
Yeah, thanks, he was pretty sure he could’ve figured that much out. Then again, he had stomped a hole in his own floor.
Jack showed him where to hit, handed him a mask, and then left him blessedly alone. Unlike his brother, who seemed to watch Rye’s every move. Was Charlie just waiting for Rye to mess something up in his house? Steal something?
They worked in companionable silence—well, companionable din—for a while, and Rye could acknowledge that doing this with someone who knew what they were doing—and with a sledgehammer—was preferable to doing it without.
When Jack’s phone chimed, he stepped out for a minute. There was a furrow between his brows when he returned.
“Simon will be here in a few to help us,” he said.
Rye nodded, but Jack didn’t pull his mask back up. He took two steps closer to Rye, expression forbidding.
“Listen. Simon has bad social anxiety and right now he’ll just want to hit shit with a hammer and not talk to anyone. So don’t give him any shit.”
This last was clearly a warning that if Rye did give him any shit he’d have to expect some in return from Jack. It was an unnecessary threat—Rye only ever gave people shit if they gave it to him first—but Jack’s protectiveness of his boyfriend sent a frisson of heat up Rye’s spine.
“Got it.”
“I’m serious. Don’t tease him and don’t look at him funny, no matter what.”
“Of course not,” Rye said, raising his palms in peace.
Jack’s eyes narrowed but he just nodded.
At the sound of tires coming up the drive, Jack put down his hammer and went outside. Through the dirty window, Rye could just make out a tall, thin man with wavy dark hair who must be Simon. Jack opened his arms and the man pressed tight inside them. Even though they were almost the same height, Simon made himself small enough to be folded up in Jack’s arms.
They clung to each other for minutes. Rye smashed the wall with the hammer, but his gaze was drawn to the window again.
Jack rocked them slowly, running a hand through Simon’s hair and Simon buried his face in Jack’s neck.
Rye smashed the wall again. He looked out the window again and this time Jack was cupping Simon’s face in his hands and Simon was saying something with his eyes closed.
Rye wanted to smash everything. He wanted to bust it all wide open. He wanted to hit someone. He wanted to tear the world apart.
He wanted someone to hold him as tight and as unendingly as Jack Matheson was holding his boyfriend.
Fuck.
Rye dropped the sledgehammer. It, predictably, busted a floorboard.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
He tried to pull the board back flat. Naturally, at just that moment, Jack walked through the door. But though he opened his mouth, he shut it again in favor of ushering Simon in.
Rye told Simon, “Thanks for helping out,” without looking at him.
Simon made an inarticulate sound of assent. He grabbed the sledgehammer Jack had been using. Then, silently, single-mindedly, he beat holy hell out of the kitchen wall. When it lay in rubble at his feet he glanced up at Jack, and gave a single nod.
Rye could feel blisters coming out on his palms from swinging the sledgehammer and his back was complaining, but goddamn it felt good to hit something. To see the concrete proof of his actions. He let those newly earned pains swell until they eclipsed the pain in his shin, the pain of leaving Seattle, the pain of starting over, and the pain of yet again needing help.
By the time Charlie showed up midafternoon with two more helpers named Rachel and Vanessa, they’d reduced most of the interior walls to wreckage, and Rye’s entire body ached. He felt wrung out and light as air, cares smashed out of him.
Charlie stood with his hands on his hips and surveyed the scene, looking utterly at home in the midst of controlled demolition.
“You got a lot more done than I expected,” he said, and Rye rolled his eyes.
“Thanks for the superlow expectations, bro,” Jack said, and Rye liked him three percent more. “Hey, Van. Rach.”
“You know that’s not what I meant,” Charlie said.
“I know,” Jack said, shooting a look at Rye.
Charlie turned to Rye. “That wasn’t what I meant. I think with Rachel and Van’s help we can finish today. I’ll get the ladder for the second floor.”
“Okay,” Rye said, as if any of this was actually being run past him.
He tried to redo his ponytail to eliminate the hair that had escaped to cling to his neck in sweaty strands and hissed as his abused hands stung.
At the sound, Charlie crossed to him, took his hands, and turned them palm up. He frowned at the red, pinched skin and the blisters beginning to emerge on his fingers.
“You should’ve worn gloves,” he scolded.
But whereas before Rye had felt reprimanded, now he saw clearly that Charlie’s reproach was on his behalf. Charlie ran his fingertips over Rye’s reddened palms and cringed.
“Jack, why didn’t you make him wear gloves?”
“Cuz I’m not his dad,” Jack said. “I offered.”
That was true.
“I’m fine,” Rye said.
“You won’t be tomorrow,” Charlie forecast darkly. “I’ve got some salve at home.”
He squeezed Rye’s shoulder and began carrying armfuls of debris outside to the pile they’d begun.
At home.
Vanessa and Rachel had clearly done this before—they worked as an efficient unit, finding time to tease Jack about something that Rye couldn’t quite track.
“Are you afraid of heights?” Charlie asked, and when Rye shook his head, showed him how to pull shingles off the roof.
From the ladder, he could see more of Jack and Simon’s house—could see, as well, the swath of trees surrounding them in every direction, tops so soft and green that Rye felt like if he fell backward onto them, he’d be cradled like a baby.
The sky was crayon blue and the clouds were perfectly fat and white, like the drawings in a storybook, and why the hell couldn’t he stop thinking about Charlie?
And watching him. The breadth of his shoulders and the gentleness of his corrections. The way he squinted slightly when he was thinking and how the muscles of his back moved under the soft fabric of his green and black flannel shirt.
After they’d removed the shoddy shingles, Charlie declared the roof beams salvageable. When Rye climbed down the ladder, he nearly collided with Charlie. For a moment their eyes locked, then Charlie kept walking.
Three hours, two minor injuries, and one snake later, the house was down to its gnarled bones.
Charlie ordered pizza for everyone and they ate leaning against his truck with the pizza boxes in the bed.
“Remember the time Charlie hired Jack and me to demo that lake house?” Vanessa was saying. Rye, of course, did not remember that time, and his attention drifted. He ate a piece of pizza without tasting it.
Everyone was laughing and Charlie was smiling and shaking his head while Jack and Vanessa looked sheepish. Rye shot a glance at Simon, who was standing next to Jack. He was leaning in, body language signaling that he was paying attention, but his eyes were fixed on his feet.
Jack had a casual arm around his waist. Vanessa and Rachel were leaning against each other. Were they a couple, too? Vanessa caught him looking and shot him a wink, then squeezed Rachel closer. Rye grinned at them. Apparently he’d fallen into the queer web without even trying.
Jack and Simon soon took off, citing a need to walk the dogs, and Vanessa and Rachel followed a few minutes later. Rye carried out a few more loads of debris, but as the sun set, it became harder and harder to see. When he tripped over a hunk of drywall and Charlie caught him by the arm, Charlie declared the workday over.
“You can leave your car,” Charlie offered, since they’d be coming back together the next day. It sounded pretty great not to have to lift his arms to operate a steering wheel, so Rye climbed into the passenger seat without complaint, groaning as he settled back against the cushions.
Charlie started talking about the dumpster and something about the roof but Rye couldn’t pay attention. Lassitude crept through every limb. He said “Mmm-hmm” every now and tried to nod but wasn’t quite certain his head actually moved. Charlie said something as they pulled into the driveway and Rye Mmm-hmmd him, and Charlie snorted.
When Rye tried to get out of the car, his muscles locked in place, and he groaned as he jolted to the pavement.
“Whoa,” Charlie said.
“Mfine,” Rye said. “Just need a shower.”
The hot water did help, and Rye slouched toward the kitchen, where Charlie was pulling a pizza out of the oven and beer out of the fridge. Though he’d had a slice earlier, Rye’s stomach growled. He could never get sick of pizza.
Instead of putting the food on the dining room table, Charlie took it to the living room. They ate pizza and drank beer on the couch. The cats emerged at the smell, Jane from one hallway and Marmot from the other.
It was so comfortable here; so goddamned nice. Charlie? Was so nice. Bossy, yeah, but nice. And the bossiness was...kind of hot? Wait. Surely Rye must’ve just been addled from so much physical labor.
“So, um, how’d you learn all that shit?” Rye asked.
Charlie snorted.
“By that shit do you mean carpentry?”
“Yeah.”
“My dad taught me some. Then when I was sixteen or so I started working construction in the summers. A friend’s dad ran the crew so he got a couple of us jobs. I liked it. I’ve always liked building things. Then after my parents died and I took over the store, I learned a lot really fast so I could help customers. And I started doing construction on the weekends for extra cash.”
“When did your parents die?”
“When I was seventeen. Almost eighteen.”
Rye sat up.
“Jesus, that’s awful. Both of them?”
Charlie nodded.
“Car accident.”
“Shit, I’m sorry.”
Charlie accepted the apology with an offhand nod that said he’d done so many, many times before, but Rye saw the tension in his jaw.
“Is Jack younger than you?”
Charlie nodded.
“He was thirteen when they died. So for a while it was just the two of us. It was...”
He shook his head like there was simply too much to say.
“You raised him.”
Rye knew it was true before Charlie nodded, and several pieces clicked into place.
For the first time Rye saw Charlie in a very different light. The man who had interceded in his disaster and given him a home. The man who cooked dinner every night and did laundry and ran his business in an orderly and practiced way. The man who knew about mortgages and loans and cosigning. Who worried about safety standards and about his brother, and always, always, always other people, but not about himself. He wasn’t bossy and overbearing—well, okay, he wasn’t simply bossy and overbearing. He had been a caretaker out of necessity and was a caretaker still.
“That sounds really, really hard.”
Charlie looked at him for a few moments and Rye wondered if he was going to lie. Then his eyes got a faraway look.
“It was. I think I spent about five years straight completely terrified. Terrified Matheson’s Hardware would fail, terrified we’d lose the house, terrified something would happen to Jack. Just terrified of everything. It was exhausting.”
“Were you close with them?”
“Yeah. My dad... I always wanted to be like him.”
He looked sheepish as he stroked his beard.
“At the time I didn’t say it because it wasn’t cool, right? You were supposed to think your parents were a pain. But my dad was great. He got the store from his parents. It was more of a farm store then, but he went in the hardware direction. Made it what it is today.”
In fact, the other day, Marie had mentioned that Charlie completely overhauled the store in the last ten years, adding the entire lumber department and partnering with as many local and sustainable businesses as possible. But it was just like Charlie not to mention that.
Charlie fumbled with the remote and flicked the TV on, signaling he was done talking about his parents. Rye got them each another beer and settled back on the couch, fatigue creeping through him.
“Tired,” he mumbled.
“Mmm,” Charlie agreed, his eyelids fluttering. He had put on an episode of Secaucus Psychic.
Rye raised an eyebrow.
“Shut up—’s good,” Charlie said, and bumped Rye’s shoulder with his. But because Charlie was huge, he kind of shoved Rye over on the couch. “Oops.”
Rye had never actually watched the show, though one of his old roommates had been obsessed with it, saying she wanted to make a pilgrimage to the East Coast to meet Jackie and have her contact her long-dead grandmother.
To Rye’s surprise, it turned out to be better than he expected.
“Isn’t she a medium, if she can talk to the dead?” Rye asked.
“Yeah,” said Charlie.
“But the title says she’s a psychic.”
“Are mediums psychics? Or are psychics mediums?” Charlie mused distractedly.
“I guess then it wouldn’t be...whattayacallit? Two s sounds. Catchy in a title.”
“Alliteration,” Charlie murmured.
On screen, Jackie told the man his deceased sister agreed that he should take a new job and move if it would make him happy. The man cried.
“Do you believe in this stuff?” Rye asked.
“Psychic stuff?”
“Yeah.”
“Nah,” Charlie said, but his eyes were glued to the TV.
A few hours ago, Rye would’ve said that figured, given how practical Charlie was. How grounded. But now that he knew about Charlie’s parents dying when he was young, he wondered if rather than dismissing it out of hand he’d had plenty of time to consider his stance.
“Not even a little?”
Charlie tipped his head to look at Rye. His eyes were the kind of hazel you forgot was a combination of green and brown except when they were fixed on you, paying attention to you, and then you didn’t know how you ever forgot.
“On the show, she calls some people blocks. People who aren’t sensitive to vibes or energy or currents of feeling. Jack says I’m a block.”
He shrugged and Rye took a moment to enjoy the notion that both Matheson brothers apparently watched this show.
“Do you feel like a block?”
“I think that’s the thing about blocks—they don’t feel things.”
He said it casually, like an offhand truth he didn’t need to consider.
“But...that’s just about psychic, ghosty stuff, right? Not about, er, earthly emotion?”
Charlie mumbled something Rye didn’t catch.
“What?”
But Charlie didn’t repeat it.
Up until now, Rye had thought Charlie was rather terse about personal matters. Now he wondered if Charlie simply wasn’t used to having someone to listen. So instead of dropping the subject, he pushed a little harder.
“Would you find it comforting to think that your parents are still around, in another form?”
Charlie’s eyes were fixed on the screen, but his jaw tightened.
“I dunno, sometimes. In that first year, I used to talk to them constantly. I had so many questions. No idea what I was doing. I’d ask them things and hope for an answer. Once I even—”
He cut himself off with a shake of his head.
“What?”
Charlie rolled his eyes.
“Once, I tried to ask them. Jack had this Ouija board that he’d gotten from a friend at Halloween the year before for some sleepover they had where they tried to scare the bejesus out of each other, and he hadn’t given it back. And I...you know.”
Rye imagined eighteen-year-old Charlie, really just a kid himself, trying desperately to ask his parents how to be an adult, and it broke his heart.
“What happened?” Rye asked gently.
“Nothing whatsoever except that I felt really foolish and hoped Jack wouldn’t notice I stepped on that little thingie that you use to move around the board.”
Charlie gave a ghost of a smile, then raised an eyebrow at Rye. “Do you? Believe in this stuff?”
“When I was a little boy—probably six or seven, given which apartment we were in—I saw a ghost. At least, I thought I did.”
He had Charlie’s full attention now.
“I woke up to the sound of someone crying and there was a small form in the corner of my room. Hazy, kind of, but there. It was a child, and they were sobbing.”
Rye had whispered, “Are you okay?”, not wanting the sound to wake his father, who would never accept weeping ghost as an explanation when he told Rye to stop making a racket.
The child had kept crying, the kind of snuffling, wet cries that can only last so long before they drain your energy out with them. Rye put a pillow over his head and went back to sleep, hoping it would be gone in the morning. When he woke, there was no evidence and when he asked if his parents had heard anything, his father just ranted about teenagers out until all hours of the night wreaking havoc.
He hadn’t seen anything like it since, but it had left him with a powerful sense of possibility.
“It seems as likely to me as anything else, anyway,” he said, shrugging. I guess the idea that the energy of life can leave a mark on the world after we’re gone kind of appeals to me.”
Rye’s chaotic life had so far left nothing behind. If he died tomorrow there would be no tangible record of his existence on earth except a few government forms and his name carved very small at the base of a scarred tree in Discovery Park.
So when Charlie said, “I’m sure you’ll leave plenty of marks before you die,” with utter sincerity, it made Rye’s heart pound a little faster.
“Thanks,” he said, not sure that was quite the sentiment but wanting to say something.
When the episode ended, Charlie turned off the TV and lumbered to his feet. He held out a hand to Rye to help him up.
When Charlie’s warm hand closed around his own, Rye hissed at the sting, having forgotten the damage he’d done that day from demo.
Charlie eased his grip instantly, but kept Rye’s hand in his, and turned it over. He traced the blooming blisters with his fingertips and caressed the pinched skin.
“Shoulda worn gloves,” he murmured, like he couldn’t help himself. “Lemme get the salve.”
He left Rye standing in the middle of the living room, hand out like he was dancing with a ghost.
“C’mere,” Charlie said, and drew Rye back down on the couch.
He uncapped what looked like a shoe polish tin and scooped a fingerful of the stuff out. It smelled like mothballs and cloves.
“Maybe you just pretend to be a block but you’re actually anointing me with a potion right now,” Rye said.
Sleepy, tipsy Rye said silly things.
“I am anointing you with a potion,” Charlie said. “It’s a keep-your-hands-from-hurting-so-much-you-can’t-use-them-tomorrow potion, and it’s potent as hell.”
Rye closed his eyes and willed himself to be silent as Charlie worked the salve into his abused skin. Charlie’s strong thumbs dug into the tight tendons and muscles of his palm and fingers, like he could rub out the pain all the way down to his bones.
“Just relax,” Charlie murmured, and Rye pressed his shoulders to the back of the couch.
As Charlie switched hands, Rye’s attention wandered, and he imagined Charlie really was a witch. Charlie was giving him a potion that made him feel no pain, that made him good at demolition and construction, that gave him great credit and a high school diploma.
And hey, while it was magic, why not throw in the power to have a deep and lasting connection with another person?
Charlie rubbed the salve into his wrists too, and even though they weren’t blistered it felt heavenly.
“What are these of?” Charlie asked, tracing the tips of his tattoos.
“Oh.” Rye tugged up his sleeves, revealing the woodcut-style tattoos that ran up and down both arms. “Roots.”
To his great relief, Charlie just looked at them appreciatively instead of asking about them. He’d rather not talk about the way he’d gotten them a decade ago in the hopes of feeling like he was a part of something, since he had no contact with his parents, no siblings, and moved so often he never let his belongings swell to more than the two duffel bags and a backpack he kept in the closet.
He’d also rather not talk about how it hadn’t worked, so he’d gotten more, and those hadn’t worked either.
Instead, he let himself drift away on the river of peace that Charlie’s warm hands provided.
“Why didn’t you want to kiss me?” Rye heard himself ask, as if from a long ways off.
Charlie’s hands on his froze and Rye swallowed hard. But he didn’t want to let Charlie off the hook. He wanted the truth, even if it hurt. Even if it humiliated him.
“I... I did,” Charlie said.
Rye opened his eyes to see Charlie holding both his hands and staring at him awkwardly.
“You don’t have to say that,” Rye said. “You pushed me away from you like I was on fire. Which is fine. I just wondered why.”
Charlie noticed that he was still holding Rye’s hands and dropped them. Rye instantly missed the feeling of them being held.
“That wasn’t what I meant when I—I didn’t want—It seemed like you were thanking me or something, and I... I didn’t want that.”
Rye had questions, but he was too tired and too tipsy for this conversation.
“Okay, no problem. Night,” Rye said, and stood to go to bed.
At the doorway, though, he turned back. There was no reason not to be honest. He’d learned a long time ago that not being clear led to vastly more problems.
“Charlie. It wasn’t because I was thanking you. I thought... I thought you wanted me to. And I wanted to. So I did. I know I should’ve asked, but... Anyway, I’m sorry I didn’t ask, but I’m not sorry I kissed you.”
Charlie’s eyes, dark and serious, went wide and his lips parted, but he didn’t say anything. He just nodded.
“G’night,” Rye said again, and hurried off to bed.