Chapter Forty-Four. Rory
Rory
And then, new sounds: A key turning. The door swinging open. A thump of bags hitting the floors. Footsteps.
Rory got up to find Wynne framed in the doorway, almost too still to be real. Her hair was shorter than the last time he saw her, a sharp bob beaded with raindrops, her skin somehow summer-tan.
“You’re back,” Rory said.
“You’re really here,” she said at the same time.
He saw her taking in the signs of his habitation—empty mugs and dirty dishes and old socks. Light and more clothes spilling from the door to the guest room. His room.
“I thought you weren’t coming back until March.” His voice rose in a way that made it sound like a question.
“The weather was awful, so I decided to cut it short.” She made a face. “So …” She stretched the word like toffee. “I guess you weren’t kidding when you said you moved in.”
Rory shifted uneasily. “Is that still okay?”
Wynne was silent just long enough to make Rory nervous.
And then she stepped forward, detaching from the doorway like a painted figure striding out of its picture.
Unframed, she seemed much realer. A tangible sister, instead of a two-dimensional suggestion of one, her smile less omnipotent and more travel-creased.
“Yeah,” she said, “it’s still okay.” The word dumbass, though unsaid, was strongly implied. “It’s about time, is what it is.”
Rory slouched with relief.
“How was the epic trip?” he asked.
She sighed. “Epic. And long. Too long. I’ll tell you all about it, but I’ve been traveling for two days straight, and I’m about to kill for a shower and a meal that isn’t a stale train sandwich.”
“There’s takeaway in the fridge.” Rory pointed. “And the shower is still where you left it. Sort of. Just …” He rubbed the back of his head. “Just don’t look at anything for too long. Or, better yet, try to shower with your eyes closed.”
“I’m tired enough that I might just do that.”
“Do you want me to heat up the leftovers in the meantime?”
“Thanks.” Wynne reached out and ruffled his hair. Her scent enveloped him, coffee and verbena. He couldn’t believe it’d been eight months since he’d seen her last. “I missed you, baby brother. It’s good to have you here.”
“I missed you, too,” Rory said, feeling much younger than he’d felt thirty minutes before. “I’m happy you’re home.”
Wynne’s return transformed the apartment in subtle yet profound ways.
Rory collected his socks from the various corners in which they nestled.
Stray pens and hand lotion tubes hurried to replace them.
Vegetables appeared in the fridge, and coffee dregs clogged the sink.
The powdery smell of makeup and the citrusy scent of hair-care products permeated the air.
Empty cups multiplied like bunnies until every surface seemed to brim with them, and the bathroom glimmered white.
Within days, they fell into a comfortable rhythm: silent, sleep-mussed mornings filled with the gurgle of the coffee machine and queues for the shower, followed by afternoons of Rory doing his homework at the kitchen table, with Wynne stopping by to share a piece of gossip about his professors on the way to the fridge.
“There’s a good concert in the park this Friday.
” Wynne leaned against the counter, brandishing a takeaway carton while Rory tried to finish a lab report.
“I’m going with some friends. Want to tag along?
I could get you a couple of tickets, call it a belated birthday present.
You could bring one of your little friends. Hanna, maybe?” she added slyly.
“Hanna and I don’t talk much these days,” Rory answered absently. “And anyway, I’ll be home with Daye. But thanks.”
“Aha.” Wynne speared a spear of broccoli and crunched it loudly. “I don’t get why you have to go every weekend. It’s February, it’s not like you’ll need to transition her anytime soon.”
“I don’t go home because of that,” he said, jotting down one final line.
“Then why? There’s no reason for you to lug half the library to that godforsaken hole when you could just stay here and go to parties and write your papers like a normal person.”
“I prefer being with Daye.”
“Every weekend?” Wynne dug at the bottom of the container. “Don’t you want to see your other friends from time to time?” The word real seemed to linger at the edge of her question, somehow louder than if she’d actually said it.
That argument, again. Rory sighed. “I see my friends plenty.”
“You know,” she said in a singsong voice, purposefully annoying. “I have a lot of close friends too, but I don’t have to see them every—single—week.”
“You know that Daye is more than just my friend.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know.” Wynne waved him off. “You grew up with her and all that super special bond.” She made a face.
Rory took a deep breath. He didn’t have to correct Wynne. It would be so easy to just let it go. It wouldn’t be lying, exactly. It would just be … Rory’s shoulders slumped in resignation.
It had been so easy to pretend that this conversation was already behind him.
After all, so much time had passed that it seemed impossible that Wynne didn’t know about Daye and him.
Only she couldn’t, could she? Because Wynne left in spring, when everything with Daye was too new, too fragile, for Rory to put into words.
And since she’d come back, their conversations had been so full of laundry arguments and grocery lists and stories about Wynne’s travels that it just …
didn’t come up. Even in his head, this excuse sounded feeble.
Better get it over with now, Rory thought, steeling himself. God, he hated talking with Wynne about Daye.
“No,” he said cautiously. “I mean, she’s more than my friend. She’s my …” Girlfriend was too small for what Daye was for him. “We’re together,” he said instead. “We’re a couple. Have been since spring.”
Wynne froze. “Rory—” She sounded strangely breathless.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before.” He hurried to cut her off. “It’s just that you’ve been gone for so long, and it seemed strange to put it in a letter …” He trailed off.
“Rory, no,” Wynne repeated. A crestfallen expression was stealing across her face in increments: first the bunching of eyebrows, then the lips thinning, and finally the color leaching away from her cheeks.
“Look—” Rory couldn’t help the defensiveness in his voice. “I know you don’t like Daye and don’t approve of how close we are. I get it. But you had to know how I felt about her—it’s been years. You don’t even have to like Daye. Just, please, can you not say anything horrible about her?”
“You think that’s my problem with this? Come on, Rory, you know it’s not okay being with her like that.”
“Like what? Like she’s a person?” It was the same argument, always. He and Wynne had been having it for ten years now.
“Yes, like that.” She was getting angry now. “There’s no way you can’t see how fucked it is for you to be with her that way.” She threw the empty carton into the garbage. It landed with a clang, like an exclamation mark.
“Why is it fucked?” Rory threw up his hands.
“You really don’t see it?” She took a deep breath. “Rory, you created her. She literally can’t survive without you. She is something you made—can you not see how bloody fucked that is?”
“She won’t stay that way. This is exactly why I’m here at university, to find a way to make her independent. So that if something happens to me, she’ll still be okay.”
“And how’s that been going for you?” Wynne asked.
“You’ve been over this for years now. You know as well as I do that it’s not going to happen.
You can make her last longer—sure. Maybe a month or so.
Hell, with the amount of thought you’ve put into it, maybe even a year.
But eventually she’ll still fall apart if you’re not there to weave her back together. ”
“I’ll find a way.”
“How?”
“I will.”
Now it was Wynne’s turn to throw her hands up in frustration. “Sure you will. Even though nobody’s found a way to do it, you’ll crack it before you’re twenty.”
Rory crossed his arms and looked at her stubbornly.
“Oh, don’t look at me like that. You know I’m right. Or have you found something I don’t know about?”
Rory pursed his lips.
“Fine. Just—just stop and think for a second. Can she even say no? And I don’t mean just because she’ll stop existing without you, I mean literally—do you even know if she can say no?
She was created to be a playmate that’ll always play with you.
That’s hardwired into the core of her. I know—I’m the one who created her that way.
How can you tell if it doesn’t stretch to cover bed play as well? ”
“Daye’s told me no plenty of times,” Rory said, closing the notebooks spread on the table and piling them together, movements jerky.
“Has she? Really? Has she ever not wanted to play or had an off day? Has she ever fought with you?”
“Yes! Yes, she’s told me no. She’s had bad moods. She’s gotten angry about stuff.”
“Has she really, or was it just the seasonal shit? Did she actually say no?”
“She can’t actually say anything because she has no fucking voice, but she knows how to make herself clear.” Rory was yelling now.
“Are you sure?” Wynne said, taking a step toward him. “Because nothing in what I know about Blodeuwedds says they have a choice about doing what they’re told. And you’re pretty much telling her to be physical with you. Or do you expect me to believe you’re only holding hands?”
Rory could feel his face blotching crimson.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought.” Wynne’s mouth twisted like she tasted something sour. “Wait, how can you even— It’s not like she has any of the internal—”
She broke off at Rory’s guilty expression.
“Oh my god.” She covered her mouth with her hands. “You didn’t. You built her genitals so you could sleep with her? You actually created your own sex doll. Did you tell her you were going to do it, or did she simply wake up one day with new organs? Rory!”
Rory flinched. “It’s not like that. You know it’s not like that.
Of course I asked her. We talked about it.
It was her decision. We—” His mouth snapped shut when he saw Wynne’s lips curling in something close to a sneer.
Straightening, he enunciated each word deliberately.
“I love Daye, and she loves me. We are together because both of us want to be, and I will find a way to make her independent. And the moment I do, I’ll go down on one knee and ask her to marry me. ”
“Sure you will.”
Rory just looked at her, determined.
“Okay, let’s put aside the question of if she can even consent and the general ickiness of building your own portable genitalia and focus on your insane plan to marry her for a second.
Will you live there in the middle of nowhere for the rest of your life, doing nothing?
Or do you plan to bring her here to the city?
” Her eyebrows arched knowingly. “Because I haven’t seen you bringing her here yet. ”
“I don’t know, but we’ll figure it out when we need to.”
“Rory—”
“I’m not discussing this with you anymore. This conversation is over.” Rory stalked past her and into the living room.
“Refusing to talk about it won’t make any of it any less fucked up,” she said to his back.
Rory turned around. “Stop. Just— Stop. I’m not having this conversation.”
Wynne rolled her eyes. “You don’t need to be so dramatic.”
“Are you going to drop it?”
“Are you going to admit it’s fucked up?”
Rory yanked open the apartment’s door and slammed it behind him, cutting off whatever else his sister had to say.