48. Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Seven
Jake
Jake made two cups of lemon balm tea, just in case Rye ended up coming out of his room. He set them on the coffee table and then settled in his usual spot on the couch in the Davises’ living room. For the next hour or so, he alternated between reading a research article about microplastics in coral reefs and playing some annoyingly awful word game on his cell phone.
The house stayed quiet. There’d been no sounds from Rye’s room at all, which really wasn’t abnormal for a day like this.
But Jake couldn’t shake the feeling that his actions the night before, careful as he’d been, might have caused Rye’s discomfort. Or whatever it was that was making it too hard for him to get out of bed.
He tapped a few buttons on his phone to bring up Rye’s texts, and he hesitated for just a few seconds before typing out a short message.
Jake (9:21 a.m.): No pressure, but if you’re hungry, I can make you something. Eggs and toast? And some tea
He hit send, then stood, picked up his empty mug and the mug filled with Rye’s now-cold tea, and headed toward the kitchen. He’d just poured the old tea down the drain in the sink when he heard soft footsteps approaching from down the hallway.
Relieved, he turned around, and his eyes landed on his friend, now standing just at the end of the hallway. Rye looked like he’d just woken up; his hair was mussed, long curls falling haphazardly over his forehead, and he wore a set of blue-and-black plaid pajama pants with a gray T-shirt. His eyes were a little puffy, and his cheeks had a slight flush to them. A thin layer of patchy stubble covered his chin and jaw. And he looked frail this morning. Thin and small, and maybe like he wanted to slink back down the hallway and disappear.
The room suddenly seemed much too big, and something tugged Jake, drew him away from the counter and toward Rye. For a moment, he let it, following the pull. But then he heard his sister’s voice, reminding him, and he paused, still in the kitchen.
“Maybe he is feeling something, Jake,” Krista had said on the phone the night before. “But he still might not be ready. It still has to be him who makes the first move. You... you know that, I think.”
Jake stuffed his hands in his pockets and swallowed hard. “Hey, Rye. Good morning,” he said, mildly surprised when his voice managed to sound mostly normal.
Rye held onto the wall next to him, and he seemed to be fighting his body, swaying slightly. He didn’t speak, which was okay, but he also didn’t move to come closer.
“I haven’t checked the fridge, but your mom usually has eggs, yeah?” Rye didn’t answer again, and Jake hesitated before adding, “I mean, if you’re hungry?”
Rye blinked, his arm moving to grip his midsection, and Jake waited for a response, holding his breath. It was another few seconds before Rye nodded just once.
A rush of relief hit Jake, harder than he’d expected, and he forced a smile to hide it. “Great. Give me a few minutes, okay?”
Rye nodded again and then pushed himself away from the wall and started toward the dining table. And for the next ten minutes or so, Jake busied himself with getting their breakfast ready. He talked a bit, telling Rye about the article he’d read that morning and the pelicans he’d seen flying in formation over the water just before he’d left home.
And maybe it was just one of those days, because Rye was quiet. He didn’t speak at all, although he did manage a small smile when Jake described the pelicans.
They’d had days like this before.
It was okay. It would be okay. Maybe.
Something seemed a little different. Slightly off. Or maybe it was just him worrying himself over last night.
When he finished cooking, Jake moved their food and drinks to the table. Toast and eggs—scrambled and topped with a little bit of cheddar cheese and ketchup for Rye, plain for Jake. And he’d made more lemon balm tea. He sat in the chair closest to Rye, and they both ate in relative silence .
The good thing was that Rye did actually eat. He finished everything on his plate and drank all his tea. The bad thing was afterward. Afterward, he sat hunched, his arms gripping his stomach like it was hurting. And when Jake asked if he was okay, Rye hesitated and then shook his head.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
Rye shook his head again and closed his eyes, and Jake could see the muscles in his jaw tighten.
“Okay, that’s okay. What if... we go outside for a bit? Just in the backyard. Sit on the porch and get some fresh air, and maybe we’ll see that hawk you mentioned last week?”
As soon as he said it, he regretted it. There was too much expectation in his voice, too much pressure. And that was probably the opposite of what Rye needed right now. He started to speak again, to apologize and offer to clean up the dishes so Rye could head back to bed, if that was what he needed. But before he could, Rye finally looked up at him, his eyes intense and searching. He held Jake’s gaze for what was probably only a few seconds, although it felt like forever, and then he nodded slowly.
Jake smiled, relieved again, and he cleared the table while Rye went and got his shoes on. Then they headed outside.
The small porch along the back of the house overlooked a well-manicured backyard, and beyond the wood fence at the back of the property, thick forest stretched out up a steep hill. The birds sang in the trees, and a few little robins hopped on the ground near a young apple tree in the back corner.
Rye stepped across the porch ahead of Jake, his arms still wrapped around his midsection but his shoulders noticeably less tense, and he took a seat on the far side of the porch swing hanging from the rafters. Jake joined him, lowering himself carefully. The swing creaked under Jake’s weight, as it always did, and Jake closed his eyes and grimaced as he settled down.
The quiet huff from next to him sounded a heck of a lot like a laugh, and Jake allowed himself a cautiously hopeful grin as he tilted his head to look at Rye. Rye had pulled his feet up onto the bench to sit cross-legged, and he was indeed smiling, amusement in his eyes.
“Hey, now, don’t laugh. I’ve actually had one of these swings break on me before, and it’s not pretty,” Jake mock-chided, not at all serious. Rye laughed again without trying to hide it this time, and the sound was like music to Jake’s anxious ears.
Beautiful.
“You don’t believe me?” Jake asked, and Rye shook his head, still smiling. “Just ask Kris about it sometime. She’ll be more than happy to tell you. ”
Rye scrunched his eyebrows together and shook his head, and Jake groaned dramatically.
“Ugh, fine,” he relented, and Rye’s smile grew eager as he pulled his knees up and turned to face Jake. “Alright, so, I was in tenth grade, I think. And I’d just had this huge growth spurt. I’m talking like six inches in a matter of four or five months. It was awful. And not just height, either. I gained probably thirty or forty pounds, and a lot of muscle. I was probably the most uncoordinated person you’d ever meet too. Anyway, Kris had just started dating Sheila, and she invited Sheila over to my dad’s when he was out of town. And they both thought it also a good idea to invite over a bunch of other friends too. So suddenly there’s like fifteen people at our house, all mid-twenty-somethings like Kris and Sheila. They’re all drinking and dancing and swimming and having a good time, and I’m there, this awkward teen, trying to look cool, like I fit in—”
Rye snorted a laugh, and Jake shook his head. “You laugh now, just wait. It gets better. We had this old, rickety porch swing that dad had been meaning to replace. It had no business being sat on at all, much less by the giant of a teen I’d suddenly become. And I knew that.”
Rye’s grin twisted a bit, and he looked up at where the chains holding up the swing attached to the rafters, then back to Jake. He bit his lip as though trying not to laugh again.
“No, it was the wood of the swing itself,” Jake explained. “It was old and rotted. And, god... So, I was outside on the porch, watching Kris and her friends mess around in the pool. One of Kris’s friends, Rob, came up onto the porch and asked me something. Maybe where the bathroom was in the house, I don’t really remember. I just remember that I turned to point toward the house to, I dunno, direct him or something, and my darn feet tripped over themselves somehow. I did some weird thing where I stumbled backward, and I thought I was going to fall into the swing, but I managed to stop myself just before I did. Then, the lunkhead that I am, I was so relieved I hadn’t fallen into the darn thing that I forgot it would be an awful idea to sit on it. So I did. Right in the middle. And the wood snapped, and I went crashing down to the ground. Very, very gracefully, I might add.”
Rye’s eyes had grown wide, and his cheeks turned red as he covered his mouth, maybe trying to hold back his laughter. He shook his head, and Jake just grinned.
“Nah, it’s fine to laugh, really. It was hilarious,” he said. “Rob felt so awful that he helped me up, and then he came back the next day, and he and Kris and I spent hours building a new porch swing together before my dad got back from his trip. It ended up being the only ‘evidence’ of the ‘party.’ Kris totally had to fess up to my dad about the whole thing. And I mean, she was an adult at the time, and she’d been helping my dad out with his mortgage for a while, so it wasn’t like she wasn’t allowed to have friends over. But...” Jake trailed off and shrugged, then he rested his arm across the back of the porch swing, shifting slightly. The swing creaked again, and he cringed. “This one is nice and sturdy, really. But every time I sit on it... ugh.”
He glanced at Rye, who was still watching him with an amused expression, his deep, stormy blue eyes filled with curiosity and intrigue. Jake sighed quietly as he let himself linger there for a long minute, lost.
Beautiful.
God. Rye was beautiful. Everything about him.
Jake inhaled deeply and smiled again, and then turned and looked out across the backyard.
“He trusts me, Kris. And I wish . . .”
“Jake.”
“I know. I have to be patient. I just... sometimes I just wish I could tell him.”
“That you’re head over heels in love?”
“Kris, I’m not—”
“You sooooooo are. Don’t even try to deny it.”
Up in one of the taller trees just on the other side of the fence line, two squirrels raced around, chasing each other as they circled the trunk. When they were about halfway down, one stopped suddenly, and the other seemed caught off guard. It leapt over the first and then spun back around and chirped loudly, as though scolding its friend.
Rye laughed, the sound carrying out over the yard, and the swing moved a bit, forward and back. Jake closed his eyes.
“I’m being serious here, Kris. What do I do?”
“The same thing you’ve been doing. I know that’s not the answer you want, but it’s the truth. You show up, you be there for him. And you wait. And if he does feel something for you, he’ll tell you when he’s ready to.”
“. . . Yeah, you’re right.”
“I usually am. But Jake?”
“Hmm?”
“It’ll be worth the wait, little brother. I promise.”
Remnants of an unfamiliar heat spread through his fingertips and palm where they’d touched Rye’s cheek the night before. He glanced sideways, and his breath caught as he saw Rye still staring off toward the trees, his eyes expressive and bright.
Krista was right, as always. It would be worth the wait.
Rye would be worth the wait.