Chapter 18
“Lift with your back,” I advise Rylie from where I lean against my apartment building, raising my face to the autumn sun while I sip my coffee. Rylie slings a series of curse words at me as he struggles with one of my giant suitcases.
“What did you pack in here? The bodies of your enemies?”
“It’s shoes,” I reply in a way that lets him know that should be obvious.
Rylie drops my suitcase to the curb, face twisting with incredulity. “Shoes? As in plural?”
“I’m not going to wear a single shoe, Rylie. No free feet, not even for charity.”
He drags a hand down his face, slowly shaking his head. “I mean you brought multiple pairs of shoes?”
“Uh, yeah?”
“We’re going for one night! You have three suitcases and one of them is solely for shoes ?”
I smile at him, but narrow my eyes. “You seem to be having a lot of feelings right now, but please note that I’m not in charge of managing them.”
“I’m not having a lot of feelings!” he says in a pitch that leads me to believe he’s having a tremendous amount of feelings. “I’m having one feeling and it’s that you exist just to torture me.”
I make a show of looking around. “What rock have you been living under, bud?”
“Just help me lift this.”
“I would, but I just got a fresh mani. I can’t…” I gesture vaguely at all my shit plus the items Lilith recruited Rylie to transport to the venue uptown. She might be the first person to ever discover a practical use for a PT Cruiser.
Rylie surprised me by booking us a room at the hotel where the fundraiser is being held and I expressed my excitement by packing enough to stay for two weeks. Manipulate for the stay you want, not the stay you get, as they say.
When he’s close to finishing loading my ludicrously capacious bags into his trunk, I saunter over, giving him a smack on the ass in support. He pretends to scowl over his shoulder but it quickly rises to a grin.
“Oh, shoot,” I say, when he’s looking away, ducking to the ground and pretending like I dropped my lipstick from my purse. Acting fast, I tear off the backing of a large bumper sticker and slap it on the fat rear of the PT Cruiser, then brush myself off nonchalantly as I return to standing.
It’s all done so quickly and efficiently—Rylie fixing me with a buoyant smile as he closes the trunk, taking a moment to cup my face between his hands as he gently brushes his lips against mine—that I think I’ve gotten away with it.
With one last kiss, he lets me go, moving toward the driver’s side door.
“Shoe’s untied,” he mumbles, stopping in his tracks and propping his foot on the back of the car. The way he leans over to tie his laces brings him eye level with the bright-pink holographic bumper sticker declaring in giant red letters: PLEASE BE PATIENT, BABY GIRL ON BOARD .
His foot slips, and he catches himself with his hands, bringing his face even closer to the glorious moniker.
He stares at it for a second. Then another.
With a deep growl he picks at the corner of it, but that sucker is sealed tight and all he manages to do is make an awful nails-on-a-chalkboard sound.
“You are a pain in the fucking ass,” Rylie says, straightening.
He loops an arm around my waist, hitching me against him.
Glaring at me, he threads his hand into my hair with a tight grip, tilting my head to give me a deep, searing kiss.
I hum in satisfaction, my hands pressed to his chest. “I’m not sure why I put up with you,” he whispers against my lips.
“Oh, really?”
“Really.”
“I’ll remind you of that later when you’re panting into my mouth and telling me how good I feel.”
Rylie’s grunt is somewhere between a laugh and a moan. “Never mind, you’ve jogged my memory. Get in the car.”
Strapped in and excited like pioneers headed west, we begin our drive uptown.
While our trip is only around eight miles, the instant gridlock makes our ETA no less than eighty-two minutes.
With legs carelessly propped on the dash and Rylie’s warm palm on my thigh, I start to wonder if traffic might actually be a beautiful gift we take for granted.
“Music?” Rylie asks, thumbing through his phone with his free hand as we enter the fifth minute of standstill traffic.
“No. Let’s sit in silence and ruminate on our most embarrassing moments.”
He gives my thigh a squeeze that’s supposed to be a warning, but only sends a delicious shiver through my body.
I pluck his phone from his hands and hit shuffle, leaning in to give him a kiss on the cheek.
I nearly headbutt him when “Monster Mash” starts blaring from the speakers as we finally start to move.
I glance at him out of the corner of my eye for the first thirty seconds of the song, waiting for any signal that he realizes this is not a normal tune to have favorited.
“Is this your lovemaking playlist?” I ask casually.
Rylie’s face wrinkles in disgust as he looks at me, then back to the road. “Eva, be serious for once, please.” There’s a thoughtful pause as he switches lanes. “Everyone knows this is a peak raunchy foreplay song. It’s the perfect opener for my ‘Down and Dirty Fucking’ playlist.”
I really shouldn’t encourage him, but I let out a booming laugh. Rylie’s lips twitch but he keeps his expression serious. “Obviously, I keep ‘This Is Halloween’ on my lovemaking playlist.”
I reach over, raking my hand through the waves of his hair, then give his earlobe a gentle tug. This man is a ghoul and I like him so much my chest hurts.
“Can I ask you a question?” I say when a reasonable amount of normal songs have played and we’re bumper to bumper again.
“Is it going to subtly destroy my self-confidence?” Rylie asks, flashing me a winning smile.
“Okay, so now’s not the time to ask how you feel about the nickname Short King? Got it.”
“I’m six foot!”
“Sure you are, sweetie.”
Rylie pokes a spot beneath my ribs, making me yelp. “What’s your question, demon spawn?”
“What led to the Rylie Cooper renaissance?”
“The what ?” For the first time since I’ve met him, he looks genuinely horrified. And this is coming from the man wearing a mustard-yellow crewneck featuring Tweety Bird smoking a cigarette saying I GOT OUT OF BED, WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT?
“Your whole, I don’t know”—I gesture at him—“fuckboy reformation. I know in therapy you talked about hitting rock bottom, but I guess… I guess I was wondering what that was. Or what made you start to climb up from it?”
Rylie’s hands tighten on the steering wheel, a muscle in his cheek twitching.
He stays quiet for so long—a frown notched between his eyebrows—that it seems like he’s going to ignore my question entirely.
Sudden panic blooms through me as I wonder if I made him mad, pushed him too far with my prying.
I just want to know him so badly, so deeply.
I want to collect every piece of him from over the years like I can put them in a box of keepsakes and memorize all the details.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have… We don’t—”
Rylie silences me by cupping the back of my neck, gently massaging the taut muscles. His smile is strained but genuine as he looks at me. “Don’t apologize, Kitten. You didn’t upset me. It’s just a hard question to come up with a succinct answer to.”
I nod, leaning into his touch, wanting to melt at the sweet relief of his voice.
This is all so new to me, this mutual vulnerability.
It’s like learning a foreign language, and sometimes it feels too mortifying to attempt a sentence.
I’m worried I’ll be tripping over the vocabulary and grammar for years.
But something in Rylie’s relentless patience gives me the confidence to keep trying.
“I guess it was about a year after I graduated,” Rylie says, and I turn down the music so I don’t miss a word. “Honestly, I wasn’t a star student before I lost my sister, but my grades tanked senior year. They gave me a pity degree for sure.”
“I’m sure that’s not true,” I grumble, feeling oddly defensive of him. “You’re very smart.”
Rylie’s grin is so radiant, it steals the breath from my chest. “That might be the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
“Don’t get used to it.”
“I wouldn’t dare.” Rylie’s quiet for a few more moments, glancing at the directions on his phone.
He lets out a deep breath. “And while I appreciate your belief in me, my college self definitely didn’t deserve it.
I didn’t even pretend to look for a job after graduation.
I moved back home and took advantage of the grace people give you when someone you love dies.
I slept all day, ate all the food my mom would buy, and left the kitchen trashed.
I worked a few shifts at my town’s Wendy’s just to have some cash to buy weed and booze.
I was a lowlife with no interest in doing anything different. ”
“That doesn’t sound super unreasonable after losing a sibling,” I whisper, placing my hand on his thigh.
Rylie chews on his lower lip again as he thinks, then shrugs.
“Maybe it’s not. But I know Hailey would have hated who I’d become in her memory.
” He picks up my hand, lifting it and brushing my knuckles against his mouth.
“I probably would have kept going that way if it weren’t for Katie.
She was still so young and trapped in the rubble of our family’s crumbling.
I came home from a late shift one night and found her curled on the couch, bawling her eyes out.
She was only thirteen or fourteen at the time, but when she looked up at me—fuck, she looked so old.
So weary and lonely and broken, like life had already beaten her to a pulp.
It sort of shattered me out of my fog, if that makes any sense. ”
I nod, encouraging him to keep going.
“She opened up to me that night; I think she’d been trying to for a long time but I wasn’t in a place to listen.
She talked about how alone she felt, how afraid.
How she thought losing Hailey would be the worst thing to ever happen to her but over the past year she’d felt like she’d lost me and our parents too, how their marriage was falling apart.
That last part was probably the most jarring.
I was so numb to everything, I had no idea my parents were struggling with their marriage.
I kind of… Well, it sounds super naive, but I kind of assumed that something like that would glue them together. Make them unbreakable.
“But after Katie talked to me, and I started paying attention, I realized how horrible things had gotten. I saw how badly my dad was failing to step up and be the partner my mom needed. It was heartbreaking to watch, to see this woman reach day in and day out for something as simple as a hug or a word of reassurance or even just acknowledgment from her husband, and not get it.” Rylie’s voice cracks, and he takes a moment to clear his throat.
“I didn’t know how to process it,” he continues.
“Realizing your parents are human is a devastating thing. And I always looked up to my dad as the model man, the kind of person I wanted to be. But he checked out, and it fucked with my head. I didn’t know what it meant to be a man, let alone a partner. ”
We stop at a red light, and Rylie tilts his head up, rolling out his neck as he thinks about his next words.
“I cleaned up my act after that. Slowly, but I did. I started helping my mom around the house, talking with my sister every day, taking her out and trying to bring some enjoyment back into her life. Before the second anniversary of Hailey’s death, my mom filed for divorce and it was probably one of the best things she’s ever done.
“I know this will sound weird,” Rylie says, glancing at me, then away.
“But through all of that I found a sort of… beauty in our grief. In the way my mom, sister, and I came together. How we hurt in a way that was the same but also vastly unique for each of us. I became sort of fascinated with that, with feelings, for lack of better phrasing.” He lets out a rough laugh, giving me a sardonic smile.
“Probably because I was feeling so many of them for once.”
I smile back, cupping his cheek as emotions knot through me.
“And I needed to find some sort of purpose. Katie was blossoming in high school, my mom was starting to carve out a new life for herself. I realized I wanted to do the same. So I took all those feelings and my fascination with them and applied for master’s programs in counseling.
And I loved it. I loved studying human nature and trying to understand how all of these awful, wonderful things that happen to us shape us.
Then I started sharing what I was learning online in funny bits or whatever.
And it resonated with people, I guess. I’m able to make a living off my stupid videos and my podcast and continually learn more about people. It’s a pretty amazing thing, I think.”
Rylie pulls into the driveway of our hotel and a bellman heads in our direction. The second he puts the car in park, I dive across the center console, gripping his face between my palms and kissing him with everything I have.
“It’s very amazing,” I say against his lips, feeling his smile. I kiss his nose. His eyelids. His forehead. Then his mouth again. “Thank you for sharing that part of your story with me.”
Rylie drops his forehead to mine, our shallow breaths mingling. “Kitten,” he says, dragging a palm from my throat down my back. “Every part of me is yours if you want it.”