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While Jack and Simon were distracted with their food, Charlie said, “I was thinking that maybe Rye should stay with me.”
“Rye’s already staying with you,” Jack said through a mouth of peanut butter.
“Yeah, but. I was thinking maybe he should keep staying with me.”
Simon raised an eyebrow.
“Is this a Penelope and the shroud situation?” he asked.
Charlie had no idea what that meant.
“Huh?”
“She said she’d remarry when she was done weaving a burial shroud, but every night she undid the work she’d done that day to put off ever having to choose a suitor.”
Charlie blinked.
“He’s saying do you want us to go dismantle the house bit by bit so Rye can’t move in and has to keep staying with you until he falls in love with you and you both live happily ever after,” Jack said, as if this were a totally reasonable request that they’d both be happy to execute under cover of night.
“Well, uh, I was more thinking I’d see if he wanted to rent the house out for a year. But I guess your idea has merit too.”
He looked at Simon, searching his memory of tenth grade English class.
“Is that the one with the giant horse that had people living inside it?”
Simon smiled kindly. Simon was unfailingly kind.
“Yep, same story. Different plot line.”
“Oh. Okay. Um, so, do you think I should ask Rye?”
Simon and Jack exchanged another look.
“That’s a pretty intense way to start a relationship,” Jack said. “But I guess you already started out that way, so...”
Jack shrugged and turned to Simon. Charlie forced his face to be neutral.
Simon smiled at them both. “Well, the Mathesons do seem to have kind of a thing about asking people to move in fast. Maybe it’s genetic.”
* * *
Charlie was going to do it. Who cared if it was faster than usual? Fuck expectations, as Rye would say. He knew what he wanted. He knew it because he finally felt like he was awake after years of sleepwalking.
He didn’t want to keep making choices that were neutral, preparing his life like a surgical field. He wanted to make choices with Rye. For both of them. He wanted all of it.
He felt reckless, impulsive.
After leaving Jack and Simon’s, he stopped at the Crow Lane house to see what materials he’d need to bring the next day. He drove with the window down, and the midday chirps of swallows and the fluffy scuffles in the trees made him smile.
The smile faded when he emerged into the clearing from the trees and saw the people in the Crow Lane house.
These must be the squatters that Rye had seen evidence of when he first arrived. Dammit, he knew he should’ve put a front door on last weekend. There wasn’t anything inside to steal yet, so he’d let it slide.
“Hey, folks,” he said, raising a hand to say he came in peace. “This house is owned so I’m afraid you can’t stay here.”
When they stood, Charlie realized they were just kids. Maybe sixteen or seventeen.
“Shouldn’t you all be in school?”
They exchanged eye rolls, and one of them gave him a withering look.
“We have permission,” she said.
“Permission from who, miss?”
The girl snorted.
“From the owner.”
“How do you know I’m not the owner?” Charlie said.
“Cuz we know him,” another kid said. He had angry acne and drawn features. “Rye said we were cool to hang as long as we were careful and didn’t die or burn the house down.”
Charlie’s heart started to pound, anger skittering through his veins. He wanted to dismiss the kids, but that sounded awfully like something Rye would say.
“You know Rye.”
They nodded as one stubborn body.
“And Rye said you could hang out here.”
Another collective nod.
Charlie pictured one of the kids tripping down the stairs, breaking a leg, or their neck. Their parents suing Rye. He pictured one of their candles falling over and setting the house aflame by accident, burning to the ground long before the fire department could do anything to save it. He imagined the bank loan defaulting to him when Rye was unable to pay it back, his father’s store being claimed as collateral.
He tried to windshield wiper it away. But with each pass of his mental blades, a new potential disaster bloomed, and all of it added up to the same thing.
Everything he’d worked for, everything he’d built, everything he’d sacrificed for, gone in the capricious kiss of flame and wood. And all because the man he wanted to build a life with let it happen, with a shrug and a careless quip.
Fury struck like a snakebite.
* * *
Charlie stormed into his own house. He was shaking. “Rye! Rye, are you here?”
There was a thump, then the sound of Rye swearing, then he padded out of his bedroom, hair wet and wearing only Charlie’s sweatpants, which he now considered his own.
