Chapter 45
Rhys
I wake up in Jamie's bed for the third time this week.
At some point this stopped being something I thought about and started being something that just — happens.
Like the way he's always already awake when I open my eyes.
Like the way his arm is around me and I hear him breathing and I'm tingly everywhere and the ceiling above me is not my ceiling and I don't care even a little.
Sunday.
No practice. No obligations. Nothing on the schedule except the Eldridge game getting one day closer which I'm choosing not to think about for the next thirty seconds while I lie here and exist in this peace, staring in awe at the person next to me.
His arm tightens slightly, holding me against his chest. "You're thinking loud," he says into my hair.
"I'm not thinking anything."
"The Eldridge thing."
"I said I'm not thinking anything, just shut up."
He pulls me tighter and stays there and I close my eyes and take the thirty seconds I promised myself, inhaling his scent. Then I sit up.
"Come to mine today."
He looks at me. Hair everywhere, eyes still half closed, and he looks — he looks like something I'd like to keep looking at, but I don’t want to waste the day or any more time.
"Your place?"
"Blake will be there. We can hang out, order food, do nothing." I look at him. "You're good at doing nothing now. I've seen it."
The corner of his mouth lifts and he looks at me innocently. "I’m good at doing you."
I fake gasp. "Jamie Nash, are you flirting with me?"
"Absolutely." That earns him a genuine smile.
"Come to my place, please, please," I beg. "You can do nothing and also do me."
"Okay," he says, in mock defeat, like I’m forcing him.
Fuck yeah.
Blake is at the kitchen counter when we walk in, coffee in hand, laptop open, looking exactly like a concerned father who has been waiting for me for days.
He looks at Jamie.
Jamie looks at him.
So awkward.
Loving this already.
"Blake," I say. "You've met Jamie."
"Ah, yes, the man who has been sleeping with my son."
"Oh, my god. This was a mistake.” Jamie quips.
"Relax. I’m happy you took his virginity. Nobody wanted it anyway. About the dowry though, he’s worth a lot to me."
“Blake, you can’t just sell me to the highest bidder.” I say. “Right, Jamie? Unless—wait, what are your assets like?”
"No, not doing this." Jamie turns around. "We're leaving."
"Sit down," Blake says. Completely smooth. "I'm kidding, I’m kidding. Mostly." He looks at Jamie. "You want coffee?"
Jamie blinks. "Sure."
"He wants coffee," I say. "That's it. No more talking. Shut your fucking mouth, Blake."
"He can speak for himself."
"He really can't right now, he's in shock."
"I'm fine," Jamie says, between us.
"You're not fine, you’re in shock, so be quiet."
Blake hands him a coffee and Jamie takes it. They hold the look with the energy of two people who are going to understand each other perfectly somehow and I'm going to hate it.
"Thank you," Jamie says.
"Mm." Blake leans back against the counter. "You know, Rhys talks about you constantly."
"Blake—"
"No, not like that."
"Then like what?"
"Like he’s obsessed with you.”
I’ll finally kill him today.
Jamie looks at me with an expression that is half flattered and half suspicious. "Wow. And here I thought you hated me."
"Don't let it go to your head." I drop onto the couch. "Blake, come hang out with us today."
"No."
"Blake."
"I have work."
"It's Sunday."
"Chemistry doesn't care what day it is. You’re just irresponsible.
" He turns back to his laptop. "Go away.
" I try to move Blake toward the couch. Blake does not move.
Blake has the density of a piece of load bearing wall.
I get maybe two steps of progress before he simply — redirects me, walks me backward until my legs hit the couch, and plops me down.
He just returns to the kitchen and opens the laptop again.
"No," he says.
I look at Jamie.
"You could've helped," I say.
"You were doing great."
"Blake weighs nothing."
"A hundred and seventy five," Blake says, distantly. "CrossFit, baby."
"Nobody asked."
"You lost to someone nobody asked about. Interesting morning for you."
I get up off the couch with as much dignity as I can recover, which is not a lot, and I look at Jamie and drag him with me. "My room," I say, in a huff.
I close the door behind us. My room is mine in every way Jamie's isn't. Books stacked however they fit. Record player in the corner I got at a market and will keep until I die. Clothes on the chair. Hockey stuff everywhere. The particular chaos of a person who lives loudly even in private.
Jamie stands in the middle of it and looks around.
I watch him look around, touching things here and there, pulling books out and examining them.
"Go ahead," I say.
"I didn't say anything."
"You were about to."
"I was going to say it suits you." He looks at me with a small smile. "That's all. I like it. It’s very you."
I drop onto the bed and ignore the rapid thudding in my chest. I suddenly feel very vulnerable that he’s here in my space.
"Pick a record."
He goes to the shelf. Looks at it with his arms crossed, head slightly tilted, reading spines the way he reads a play — methodically, like there's a right answer.
He pulls one out and looks at the cover for a bit.
Puts it back. Pulls another and brings it to me to inspect.
I look at it and smile wide. One of my favorites.
The most played one on the shelf. The vinyl has its own history at this point.
"Good choice," I compliment.
"I picked the most worn one." He hands it to me.
His fingers brush mine and he doesn't move them away.
"Figured that meant it was important." The needle drops.
The room fills with it — halting and a little scratchy the way records always are at first — and I sit back on the bed and watch him listen.
The slight shift in his expression. The way he tips his head just barely, closes his eyes. Then he looks at me.
"Good," he says.
"Wow, high praise."
"It is from me." He comes and sits beside me. Our backs against the headboard, shoulders touching, legs stretched out in front of us, my leg over his.
He eyes me, suspiciously.
"What?" I say, poking him in the side.
"Nothing."
"Jamie, come on."
"I like watching you smile," he says. "You look different. When you’re listening to music. Like you forgot anyone could see you."
I'm smiling at the ceiling. I can feel it coming, but I let him have just one win where I don’t tease him.
“Tell me something," I say, instead. "Real. Something I don't know."
"Like what?"
"Anything. You're so—" I gesture at him. "Closed off."
He thinks about it. "I learned to skate before I could ride a bike."
"That's not—"
"I still can't ride a bike."
I turn to look at him fully. "You cannot ride a bike."
"No."
"Jamie."
"It never came up. I was on the ice before I was on anything else. It just never—"
"Jamie, I love when you tell me things you can’t do." I shake my head. "But I'm not even going to make fun of you this time. It's too bleak."
"Callahan."
"I'll teach you," I promise. "After the season. I'll find two bikes and I'll teach you."
"Okay," he says, timidly, pink crawling up his neck.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah."
We look at each other a beat too long, until the record skips and takes us out of the moment.
"Your turn," he says.
"I cried at the end of Toy Story. Alone in my dorm room. Called my brother Eli after and he cried too and we stayed on the phone for an hour. That was last year."
"We're close," I add.
"You cried about a children's movie and called your brother?"
"Yes."
"At twenty years old."
"The themes are universal, Jamie, it doesn't have an age limit, it applies to—"
"No, I—it's not a bad thing. I just—" He looks at me. "You called him. I’m just happy you had someone to call last year."
I look at him. At what's underneath that sentence. At what it means that he noticed that specifically and what it says about what he didn't have. "Yeah," I say. "I did. I at least had him."
We order food at noon. Sit cross-legged on my bed with containers between us and the second record playing — he picked this one too, went to the shelf without asking, and I didn't say anything about the fact that it's the one I played on a loop the night I packed up my dorm at Eldridge.
He didn't know that.
But he picked it.
Like he knows me well enough.
"Tell me about your mom," I say.
He's quiet. "What about her?"
"Anything. You mentioned her once. Before games."
"She used to say—" He stops. Starts again.
"She's not — she was different when my dad was around.
He had a way of making the room about him without trying.
She just got smaller over time." He looks at his food.
"I used to think when he was gone she'd come back to herself, but after a while she just disappeared further inside herself and never came back.
" A beat to catch his breath. "She was just trying her best. I don’t blame her. I think he broke her into a million pieces and they never fit back together again. She never wanted to leave him either.”
I don't say I'm sorry. I know he doesn't want that.
"Do you talk to her?" I ask.
"Sometimes. We're — it's complicated." He pauses.
"She used to sneak into my room after my dad put me on the ice.
Late. When he was asleep. Just to check on me.
" I can tell he’s uncomfortable, but keeps going.
"She wasn't supposed to. He didn't believe in — he thought it made you soft.
Being checked on." He says it evenly, like it's just information, like it hasn’t scarred him permanently.
"But she came anyway. Didn't say much. Just — sat there for a minute.
Checked my cuts and fixed me up. Stayed with me until I fell asleep. "