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“Just had a bad dream,” I said, my voice rough from puking.
I pushed past Rhys and down the stairs and started to make coffee. The clock on the microwave told me it was only 1 a.m. but no way was I sleeping any more tonight.
The familiar rough spot on the ceiling of the living room seemed like it had gotten bigger. I walked into the living room to look at it more closely.
I heard my name and then Rhys was there. His face was drawn, his hair a mess.
“You need to talk to me,” he said. “What’s going on? Please, Matty, you’re fucking scaring me. Just tell me something.”
“I—I love you,” I said, because it was all I had to offer.
Rhys flinched.
“Goddamn it, Matt,” he said. “I love you too, more than anything. But you can’t use that phrase to get out of having a conversation with me. You can’t just say you love me and think it’s enough.”
I cringed and swallowed hard. “What do you want to know?”
Rhys reached out a hand to me and I took it. He warmed it in both of his, and for once it seemed like he didn’t know what to say.
“Why didn’t you call me when you found out your friend died?”
“I don’t know. It . . . you and Sid, it’s like you’re two different lives. I didn’t even think about it really.”
The flicker of hurt in Rhys’s face told me that wasn’t the right answer.
“I just didn’t want to interrupt you when there was nothing you could do about it,” I said.
He narrowed his eyes. “Well, I couldn’t have brought her back from the dead, no, but I could’ve been there for you.”
“Sorry,” I muttered.
“It’s kinda why I’m here, ya know?” He squeezed my shoulder.
“Yeah well you weren’t here.”
It was out of my mouth before I was aware I’d said it, and Rhys snatched his hand back like I’d burned him.
“Thought you said you weren’t upset?” he said mildly.
I ran my hands through my hair.
“Fuck. I’m not, I just—” Fucking say something, Argento. “I . . . it’s hard for me. To talk to you when you’re not here.”
I’d meant that it was difficult to make myself talk on the phone, but Rhys’s expression flashed anger.
“Well, I’m not sure what to tell you, Matt. Maybe if you’d talk about what was going on instead of bottling it all up, you wouldn’t end up having a panic attack on the street.”
I flinched away from him at the memory of cradling the phone to my ear, wishing more than anything that Rhys were there to touch me.
“Are you seriously going to hold that against me?”
“I don’t hold it against you! I was fucking horrified that you were so upset and I couldn’t get to you. I felt totally powerless, Matty! Like you could be dying on the other end of the line and there was nothing I could do. I didn’t even know your fucking friend had died.”
He grabbed my hand and held it in both of his, and said, softer than he usually spoke, “You scared me.”
I scared myself.
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry! Tell me that next time something like your friend dying happens you’ll call me!”
He let go of my hand to run his own through his hair. It was a gesture of exasperation.
His words—call me, not tell me—conjured images where Rhys was gone. On tour. Away. Always away. Leaving me in this haunted house where silence was so loud and the dark was exposing and I wandered from room to room like a ghost in my own fucking life.
I could smell the coffee brewing, murky and burnt.
I realized suddenly that I was sweating. A cold sweat under my arms and down my spine. Along my hairline. I wiped a bead of sweat from my upper lip and stared at the book of stories on the coffee table, the card marking “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.”
Poor Ichabod Crane. He never had a chance. No one could outrun a ghost.
“Matt. Fuck, Matty, are you okay?”
I didn’t notice I was shaking till Rhys took my hand again and I could feel it vibrate against his steady one.
“Uh-huh.” I wiped my forehead with my sleeve. Fuck, I was drenched in sweat.
Rhys’s eyes were wide.
“I should have come home that day. I should have, shouldn’t I?”
“What? No. Course not, I told you.”
Rhys bent down and looked at me. Cupped my face and really looked at me. His brow furrowed, and his eyes lost their spark at whatever he saw in mine.
“Fuck,” he said. “Fuck, baby, I should have come home.”
It wasn’t a question this time. There was guilt in his eyes and in his voice. Guilt because he hadn’t dropped everything and run back to his pathetic fucking husband who couldn’t spend a couple weeks alone.
“I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have—”
