Chapter Fifty-Eight. Rory
Rory
The sky was dark by the time Rory got back to the apartment.
He lowered himself onto the couch, feeling bruised and foggy with lack of sleep.
Muscles he didn’t remember he had protested.
Since when did he have muscles that could be pulled on the back of his knee?
His elbow, for crying out loud? The double punishment of skating and walking back and forth to the train station had left him a puddle of sore and twinging muscles.
Which was ridiculous—he used to walk these distances every day with Daye.
Skate whole days and then run home without a second thought.
I’m only eighteen, he thought. Way too young to feel this old.
He dropped his head back against the couch. The prospect of finding something for dinner seemed a herculean effort. Even the thought of getting up and crossing the short distance to his room felt too grueling to contemplate.
Daye would tease him endlessly if she saw him hobbling like this after one afternoon of skating.
Rubbing at his leg, Rory idly wondered if his old skates back home still fit him.
Probably not. It had been at least two years, and he remembered them already pinching the last time he put them on.
He should buy a new pair and go skating with Daye next weekend.
Or maybe he should wait to ask Daye if she had outgrown hers, too?
Only—he suddenly remembered—it didn’t work that way with Daye.
Her feet wouldn’t have changed as she grew older, would never outgrow her boots or skates.
Her feet would remain the same, forever.
Because, no matter how much he tried, Daye would forever be like one of those windup toys he brought her from the city, slowly counting back to undoing.
Maybe today wasn’t the day. Maybe today he’d panicked for nothing. But someday—
Deep in his guts, he knew it was only a matter of time. That no matter what he did, no matter what fancy solutions he conjured, one day he would come back to an empty house. One day Daye would fall to pieces too small for him to put together again. Either that or …
He buried his head in his hands, bracing his elbows on his knees. Most of the time, he could brush all of it aside. But this morning’s horror was still too fresh. No matter how much he tried to bury everything in some dark corner of his mind, it kept pouncing every time he closed his eyes.
His shoulders were shaking, and odd clicking noises rattled in his chest. It was only when his sister said his name—too softly, as if years were raining down around them—that Rory realized his cheeks were wet.
“Rory, sweetheart, what’s wrong?” Wynne’s weight beside him on the couch, her arms encircling his shoulders.
She hadn’t called him that since he was fourteen, and Daye was crumbling up in his room.
Hadn’t hugged him this way, either. Her hair smelled like roses now instead of verbena, and her arms were smaller and shorter around him.
But somehow it felt the same. “You weren’t here when I woke up. Did something happen? Are you okay?”
Rory looked up at her. They had barely talked for months now.
It was no longer the defiant, hostile silence that came right after their fight, but a distant, almost polite sort of silence; one that was punctured with daily conversations about laundry and grocery shopping and burned-out light bulbs that needed changing.
But the strain that usually lurked under her expression whenever she looked at him was absent, and she was hugging him, and Rory was talking before he ever decided to.
“Professor McGill offered me a place in an exchange program at Aranrhod University yesterday.” The words were out of his mouth without him ever intending to say them.
“Isn’t that a good thing?” she asked, voice soft.
“I got into this program,” he said into her shoulder, “and I’m too afraid to go.”
“Oh, Rory.” Her fingers combed through his hair, soft and soothing, and for a moment, Rory let himself be held, be taken care of. God, how long has it been? he thought. Years, he answered himself. Years and years.
“What are you afraid of?” Wynne asked.
“What I’m always afraid of.” His voice was bitter under the tremble of his lips. “Coming home and finding a pile of leaf dust instead of Daye.”
Wynne inhaled deeply, causing Rory’s head to bob up and down with the movement.
Already, the fabric under him was damp. Just a little bit more, he thought, just a few more minutes.
But he knew he was out of time. It was his sister, and this was about Daye, and he could feel the admonishments and distance building up under his cheek, ready to spill out.
It’s okay, he thought, bracing. I don’t need soothing.
He sat up. “Sorry, sorry.” He wiped his eyes with his sleeve.
“Just ignore me. Don’t know what came over me. It’s been a long day.”
“Rory—” his sister said, voice lilting in that special way it did when she had things to say.
“Can we not? The Daye lecture, can we not do it right now?”
“I’m not going to lecture you,” Wynne said. “I just—”
“Just going to use a lot of words to tell me how Daye isn’t a person and how horrible it is that we’re a couple?
” Rory finished for her. Wynne’s expression was confirmation enough.
Rory sighed. “Look, I know you don’t approve of any of it.
I get it. But—but there’s no way you really don’t understand.
Even if I didn’t feel that way for her, even if I wasn’t in love with her, she’d still be my family, same as you.
It doesn’t matter that she’s not a person, like you keep saying, or that she’s a Blodeuwedd.
She’s still my best friend, and I can’t help being afraid that something will happen to her.
God, today I got there, and she wasn’t anywhere, and I thought, and I just couldn’t—” He breathed in convulsively.
“You have to get it, Wynne. You have to.” His voice broke.
“Shit.” Wynne reached out and gathered him in her arms again, and Rory let her, too exhausted to pretend he didn’t need it.
“I’m just so fucking tired,” he mumbled into Wynne’s shoulder. “I’m just so tired of being afraid.”
Wynne stayed silent, stroking his hair. Rory was grateful for the reprieve. He knew he should get up, get himself together, figure out what to do next. But her fingers were smoothing through his curls slowly, methodically, almost drugging. He couldn’t bring himself to move, not yet.
“I want to go. I want to go so much,” he found himself confessing into the damp fabric of her shirt.
“So go.” As if it were simple. As if he could up and leave.
“You know I can’t.”
Wynne sighed. “I can go check on her once a month.”
“Really?” Rory sat up, surprised. “You’d do it? For me?”
“Yeah, for you. You’re my baby brother. And you’re right, I don’t like it. But I don’t like you tying yourself up in knots like this, either.”
“Thank you.” His voice sounded too fervent.
“Can I ask something, without you biting my head off?” she asked.
He knew it was too fucking easy. “What?”
“Didn’t you find a solution already? This summer?”
“I … Yeah.”
“Then why are you still afraid that something will happen?”
And now Rory was crying again, a breaking-down sort of crying—fast and salty and loud.
Crying like he hadn’t for years. Not since he was fourteen.
“I don’t know. I don’t know. It was supposed to be over.
It was supposed to solve it. It was supposed to make it all okay. But I still can’t fucking breathe.”
“Shit. I’m sorry, sweetheart. I’m sorry. It’s okay.” Wynne was cradling him, rocking him gently from side to side. Her voice, above him, dissolved into a soothing murmur, a jumble of shh and deep breaths and everything is going to be all right, moving back and forth like waves.
Finally, Rory was cried out. He sat up, breathing heavily. There was a taste of salt in his mouth and heaviness behind his eyes, and he was thirsty and so tired. The couch shifted beside him as Wynne stood up. “I’m going to make tea,” she said, looking down at him. “And then we are going to talk.”
“About what?”
“You’re going to walk me through everything you tried with Daye, both the things that worked and the things that didn’t.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re my brother, and I can’t have you spending your life feeling like this.” She made a gesture at Rory’s red-rimmed eyes and hunched shoulders. “So, you and I, we’re going to find a solution for that, once and for all.”