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The scent of smoke and cooking meat filled the backyard, and my stomach growled. Rhys gazed at me steadily. His light-blue eyes could look as cold as glacial ice or as hot as neon.
“Did you?” he asked.
I sighed. “No.”
* * *
—
All I’d known of Sleepy Hollow when Rhys first told me he lived there was the story of the headless horseman, and honestly even my knowledge of that was vague.
When I moved here after we got married, I realized that, even though Rhys had lived here for a couple years, he hadn’t spent much time in town. When he was recording in the city, he usually crashed at a studio-owned apartment or with different musicians he knew. When he was touring, he could be away for weeks or months at a time. And since I worked during the week, and Rhys gigged or was in the studio on the weekends, there still hadn’t been much time to explore.
So, after we slept late on Saturday, we decided to go for a walk. Rhys tugged my hand, steering us into the cemetery. It was almost comical, the bright August sun filtering through lush leaves, chittering squirrels and fat chipmunks chasing each other, birds cleaning their feathers, a man throwing a ball for his collie, all against the backdrop of graves and tombs.
“The Ramones shot the video for ‘Pet Sematary’ here,” Rhys said, pointing. “In a grave over there.”
I didn’t know the song. It was one of Rhys’s greatest amusements that I didn’t really care about contemporary music. When we’d first met, I think he got the sense I was overstating my ignorance, but now he just liked to tease me about it.
Rhys’s phone buzzed with a text, and he sighed when he read it.
“Tour problems?”
“Nah, it’s just Mal.” Mal Omin was opening for Rhys on tour. “I told her to add anything she wanted on the bus and backstage to Benny’s list and she just wrote ‘I don’t need anything.’”
“Is that . . . bad?”
“Not bad. I want her to have the stuff she likes, that’s all. Benny’s gotta stock the van. It’s so much easier if she just makes a list.”
I kicked at a rock and it landed in a bush, scaring a squirrel out into the sun.
“She probably just doesn’t want to make it seem like she’s a burden. It’s her first tour.”
Rhys squinted at me.
“A burden? We all add to the list. I asked her straight-out. Why would she be a burden? Kid’s gotta eat. I don’t give a shit if it’s cheese puffs or granola bars.”
I bumped him with my shoulder.
“She’s nervous, Rhys. You’re a big deal. She’s a nobody. It’s her big chance. She probably doesn’t want to demand anything because she’s trying to fly under the radar.”
A different brand of cereal at every house, different shampoo. Don’t get attached to anything, don’t ask for anything. Keep the door closed, your bag packed, and don’t expect anything from anyone.
Rhys chuckled and slid an arm through mine.
“Well, she’s gonna have to get over it if she’s gonna be on tour. I specifically invited her to open; that should tell her everything she needs to know.”
His voice was warm and offhand. To him, it really was that simple.
We walked through the rambling paths, wending our way up to the apex of the cemetery, commenting on the more outrageously nineteenth-century names and teasing each other about what we’d get on our tombstones instead of angels or anchors. Rhys made up stories about the inhabitants’ lives based on their epitaphs and absently said excuse me to one, when he accidentally kicked the edge of the gravestone.
“When my grandmother died, Morgan and I were kids, and my mom brought paper and crayons and had us do rubbings of graves to keep us busy during the funeral.”
I smiled at the image of Rhys as a little blond boy, biting his lip like he often did when he was concentrating and accidentally scribbling red crayon on some old lady’s grave.
I caught him by the hand and pulled him close, kissing him. When I kissed Rhys, I could feel every molecule of his attention shift to me. It was the headiest feeling in the world. One hand tangled in my hair, the other rested just above the curve of my ass, and he held me to him like he might never let go.
In the circle of his arms, his warm mouth opening to mine, I would have stayed among the dead forever, because I’d never felt more alive.
Finally, he broke the kiss with a groan and a drag of his hardening cock against mine that spoke of fun if we headed for home. But there was no urgency to it. Just promise. I reminded myself that we had time. Not just time before he left, but time together. A whole life together. That was what marriage was supposed to mean, right? That we were starting to build our lives together. My heart pounded like it always did when I let myself think about it. Part relief and part terror, wrapped up so close together they were inexorable.
