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“Wait!” I called, startling myself.
“You think of something you want?” he asked, sticking his head back through the doorway.
“No, I, uh, I’ll come with you.” I scrambled to find socks and jeans, pulled on a sweatshirt. “Okay?”
He gave me this fond, amused look, and smoothed my hair where the sweatshirt had tangled it in my face. “Okay,” he said softly.
It was a gorgeous fall day, warm in the sun, chilly in the shade, the air rich with the scent of dirt and turning leaves. Things decaying and dying, some of them to be born again.
At the store, I trailed behind Rhys as he put things in the cart. The market was bustling with Saturday shoppers, and I couldn’t believe it was the same place I’d been on my own, late at night, fluorescent lights piercing my eyes. Now it was warm and inviting, alive with the promise of good food.
Rhys is back! Rhys is back, and everything is better, even the grocery store.
Rhys teased me gently when we passed the macaroni and cheese, and now the whole salty birthday dinner debacle seemed silly. Nothing to get upset about, just a little mistake. No problem.
“You want a belated birthday cake?” I asked.
“Nah, how about a pie?” We were passing the bakery section and pies with all different crusts gleamed in the window. Latticework and braids and cutouts of leaves adorned the different fillings. My stomach gave an embarrassingly loud growl. “You pick,” Rhys said.
“Uh, pumpkin,” I said. “No, wait, apple streusel. No, pumpkin.”
Rhys got both.
We barbecued chicken and corn on the cob and ate pie as Rhys told me about a mountain range they’d driven through and how he wanted to take me there and go hiking.
“Of course,” Rhys teased, “you’d probably try to hike in jeans and holey sneakers and fall off the side of a mountain.”
I shoved his shoulder. “You’d probably try to high-five a bear and get torn to pieces,” I said, and he laughed and kissed me. Everything was perfect.
Then the sun began to set and the shadows crept in. My stomach turned over like it had every night in recent memory.
Except that wasn’t supposed to happen anymore, because Rhys was back now. I swallowed down my anxiety.
“Let’s bring this stuff in,” he said, gathering up the detritus of dinner and squeezing my shoulder.
“I’ll do the dishes,” I offered, wanting something to do with my hands.
I turned on both kitchen lights and then flicked on the hallway light for good measure. I ran the water on high so I wouldn’t hear the sounds of night setting in. The stirring of insects. The scratching of branches. The clip-clop, clip-clop of the headless horseman’s steed galloping down the wooded path behind the house. The terrified screams of the boy who’d found Malcolm Washington in the bathroom of St. Jerome’s, in a lake of his own blood, razor blade gleaming near his outstretched fingertips.
Fuck.
I jumped at Rhys’s hand on my back, and he wrapped his arms around my waist from behind. I put the last plate in the drying rack and leaned back against him, closing my eyes. When there was only this, I was fine. With Rhys’s arms around me, even with the water off, I didn’t hear any of it. No bugs. No scratching. No chase. No screaming.
“You seem kinda restless. You wanna take a walk?” he asked, and I nodded.
I pulled Rhys’s sweatshirt back on, and we walked toward the river, mostly in silence. We watched the water for a while, and when two trains rumbled past, Rhys took my hand and we headed for home.
“Are you upset with me?” he asked when we were almost home, voice low and nonthreatening.
“What? No. Why?”
“You haven’t said much since I got back. It seems like you don’t even want to look at me.”
I shook my head.
“Then look at me,” he said, halting just outside the front door.
I looked up at him.
“Tell me something,” he said. “Anything.”
There was a line between his eyebrows, and I’d put it there. What could I tell him?
You left me and I know it wasn’t really leaving, but it shook something loose in me—something I thought wasn’t there anymore. A fear that nips at my heels and gallops after me if I turn away from it. And I thought once you were back it would go to sleep again, but . . . it hasn’t.
“I love you,” I said. And it sounded too much like a question.
“Okay, Matt,” he said. “Okay. I love you too. Maybe it’ll just take a little time to settle back into things again.”
I nodded, and my lips formed the words I’m sorry as he turned away from me to unlock the door.
The next couple of days we circled around each other in the evenings, watchful and waiting. It felt strange now to go to work and come home and find Rhys there. I would catch him sometimes, looking at me from across the room like he couldn’t quite figure out who I was.
