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“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.”
Chapter Eighteen
Charlie
In the thin light of dawn, Charlie Matheson woke up gasping.
For the first time in his life, arms tightened around him and a sleepy voice mumbled, “Ymkay?”
Rye.
Rye was warm and pliant and splayed half on top of him with his head tucked beneath Charlie’s chin.
Charlie took a deep breath that smelled like Rye.
“Yeah.”
Rye curled into him and fell right back asleep.
Charlie lay awake and thought.
He stroked Rye’s back and felt the steady snuffle of his breath and thought about his life.
Usually he avoided thinking—especially about his life. Usually he acted. He filled his days with doing, and sometimes with worrying, but worrying was great because you could worry about anything and still not really think about it.
He had something with Rye. Something rough and new, but something nonetheless, and he didn’t want to lose it. He didn’t want to lose it because Rye left, but if that happened, it was Rye’s choice. What was his choice was losing it because he was too scared to talk to Rye, too scared to be vulnerable.
He had to be braver. Try harder.
“I will be,” he whispered.
“Hmm?”
Rye rearranged himself so he was completely on top of Charlie and buried his face in Charlie’s neck, reminding Charlie so much of Marmot that he chuckled.
Rye grumbled a vague inquiry against Charlie’s neck.
“I didn’t know you were so cuddly,” Charlie murmured, pressing down on Rye’s back to keep him in place for the inevitable retraction of his cuddliness the second it was noted.
Sure enough, Rye went to move, muttering, “Mmnotcuddly.”
“Stay.” Charlie closed his arms around him. “I like it.”
Rye grumbled, but stayed on top of Charlie.
“Mysquishingyou?”
“No.”
Rye relaxed and Charlie went back to stroking his hair.
“There was one guy,” he said so softly that no one whose ear wasn’t an inch from his lips could have heard. “On the football team with me in high school. He was beautiful and we kissed, fooled around. Um, you know, jerked each other off.”
Rye’s breathing was deep and even, but he wasn’t asleep.
“He moved the week before my parents died. He’s the only person I’ve ever, you know. For a long time after they died, I didn’t think about sex. I didn’t think about anything. I don’t know if it’s normal or not, but I just... Everything that I didn’t have to do to keep things going overwhelmed me.”
“Fuck normal,” Rye said. “It’s not a real thing.”
Charlie hadn’t known it was possible to mutter aggressively into someone’s shoulder, but Rye had certainly managed it.
“And when I would feel...that way, I just... I thought of him and that made me think of them dying and it got all...mixed up together.”
Rye stroked the back of his neck.
“I feel like I missed it. The period of brave experimentation when people learn who they are.”
And I’ll never get it back.
Rye unburied his face.
“Baby, your parents died. You were totally traumatized. Of course you weren’t playing spin the bottle in the college common room. Or whatever people do in college.”
Charlie forced air into his lungs and made the words come out.
“I’m not quite sure why I’m so scared to have sex with you. I’m not sure why I can’t tell whether I want to or not.”
Rye squeezed him.
“It kinda sounds like you’re cut off from your body. Like, you were turned on watching me come in the woodshop. You were turned on when I was touching you the way I wanted to on the couch. But both those times it wasn’t—like, you weren’t actively participating. You were kinda...being an instrument of my pleasure the first time. Then you were doing exactly what I told you the second time.”
