The screen was a disaster.
Seventeen texts from Jenkins, which I was not going to read in sequence because life was short. Four from Searcy. One from Knox that said onlycall mewhich meant Knox had his concerned face on and had decided to be economical about it.
Six missed calls from Dylan.
The phone rang while I was looking at it.
Dylan.
I picked it up and slid off the stool and walked back down the hallway toward the bedroom. Whatever Dylan was about to say, he was going to say it at volume and Cross's kitchen didn't need to hear it.
"Hey," I said.
"Where are you."
Not a question. Dylan didn't do questions when he was in this mode. He did statements with question marks attached, which was different.
"Good morning to you, too."
"It is not a good morning. It is mid-day and—”
“I think, it’s like, seven?”
“Whatever. I've been up since four because Jenkins called me at four— Jenkins, Wes, he calledme. Do you understand how bad it has to be for Jenkins to callme? Nobody could tell me where you were, and you didn't answer your phone, and I thought—" He stopped. I could hear him deciding not to say what he'd thought. "Where are you?"
"I'm okay," I said. "I'm being looked after."
"That is not an answer to the question I asked."
Cross's bedroom was the same in the morning as it had been last night, the same precise order, the same made bed with thecorner of the blanket I'd been under turned back exactly the width of one fold, the same single book on the nightstand.
I picked it up without thinking.The Peloponnesian War. What the fuck was that?
"You know what your problem is?" Dylan said, which meant the tirade was entering its second phase. I knew this phase. I had a whole relationship with this phase. "Your problem is that you have never once in your life had to deal with the consequences of anything. You do something stupid and someone fixes it. You get hurt and someone carries you. You disappear for a night and people lose their minds worrying while you're off being—" he stopped. I could hear him deciding. "Being looked after."
Something small and warm pressed against my ankle.
Leo had followed me. He was sitting on my feet, looking up at me with those brown eyes. Young cat, I could tell up close, still a little leggy, not quite grown into himself. A year old, maybe. Something about the way he was looking at me was so uncomplicated it was almost funny.
I picked him up.
No fighting this time. Leo settled immediately, boneless and purring, tucking his head under my chin. I stood in Cross's bedroom holding a cat I hadn't known existed twelve hours ago and listened to Dylan cover the final quarter mile of the argument.
"I do something stupid," Dylan was saying, "and I deal with it myself. Because that's how it works for me. That's always been how it works for me."
When he stopped, I said: "I'm with Cross."
A pause.
"Cross?" Dylan's voice shifted. "You’re getting checked out?"
I hadn't said that. I also wasn't not saying it. "Some follow up assessments," I said, which was true in a technical sense that I was not going to elaborate on.
"You’re such a fucking baby. I swear you would lose your own ass if it wasn’t part of your body."
“How is that even possible?”
“Shut the fuck up, Wes. That's—yeah, okay. This is good. Cross won't let you get away with shit."
