Chapter 7
Chapter seven
Rook
I’d spent two days telling myself I had a plan. I’d find out what Kovac wanted and then decide how much of it to share with Varga. If I didn’t see any imminent danger, I didn’t need to talk about meeting Kovac six years ago at all.
The danger had already arrived. I’d said no, denying Varga’s existence to Kovac.
Now, Varga was pushing, whether or not he knew it. Then why are we still doing this?
I looked at him across the table. “Not tonight,” I said.
“Rook.”
“The reporter is part of this. Give me a few days, and we’ll talk about all of it.”
He stared into my eyes for a second. I braced. Then nothing.
“Okay,” he said.
He picked his fork up and took a bite of chicken salad.
“Heavy on the tarragon again,” he said. “One of these days I’ll hide the jar and see how long it takes you to notice.”
I sat there with my hands flat on the table.
The okay was wrong. Five years, and I’d never once known him to let go of something important. He’d stay on it. This mattered, and he set it aside like an empty beer bottle.
Varga didn’t flinch. The flat okay was louder than anything else he could have said.
We finished eating. He cleared the plates and rinsed them, talking the whole time.
“Rafe’s done. Did you see him out there? Legs like a newborn deer. He’s not going to survive the next road trip, Rook. We’re going to lose him somewhere over Pennsylvania, I’m calling it now.”
I killed the lights over the sink. He checked the bolt on the front door.
We climbed the stairs. Varga was ahead of me. I watched the easy roll of his shoulders. Then he paused, for only a second, before continuing up the last steps.
Our bedroom was half-dark, with only a sliver of light from the hall. Varga’s nightstand held its usual clutter: three phone chargers, a cold coffee cup he’d carried up two days ago, and the little carved bird from his grandmother that went everywhere he did.
My side had a lamp and a book. After five years, the room still split exactly down the middle, his side and mine, and most nights noticing that was one of the best parts of my day.
Tonight the room was too quiet.
We got ready for bed how we always did, except we did it without a word. We brushed our teeth and traded places at the sink the way we had a thousand times. The toilet flushing was loud in a house that was usually full of us talking.
Varga kicked off his shoes by the closet, one and then the other, and I heard each of them hit the floor. He slipped into bed on his side, and I turned off the lamp.
The rest didn’t happen.
On most nights, Varga reached for my hip and hooked a leg over mine. It was the cue for me to move closer.
Tonight his hand stayed where it was, and the foot of space between us stayed twelve inches wide.
He rolled over toward the window, his back to me. I lay there and looked at his body.
I didn’t read anger. If it were there, I would have understood, but he didn’t yank the duvet or square his shoulders. He rolled over like a tired man.
Five years ago, Varga lay on a rented couch with a wrapped knee and his hand open on the blanket, palm up. Stay, he’d said. I stayed, and I never left, but now there was distance, a cool slice of air between us.
It scared me.
The furnace kicked on under the house. Varga’s breathing slowed and evened out. I lay on my back and listened to it.
I gave up at four a.m. Moving slow to not wake Varga, I stood and went downstairs. My gut didn’t want coffee. I reached for the tea his mother had sent in the fall. I couldn’t read the Hungarian words on the label, but I filled the kettle and turned it on.
I stood at the island and thought back to year one.
It was a Tuesday in February on a road trip.
We were in Buffalo. A brutal snowstorm canceled our flight, and we had a night to kill.
Somehow, Varga found a dive bar open. We trudged through foot-deep snow while the rest of the team huddled in our hotel.
They were too busy watching weather reports to know we were gone.
It was a low brick place down a side street with a karaoke machine in the back and eleven customers, none of whom recognized us. Varga walked into the room as if he owned the deed to it, and I followed. We sat in a corner booth and drank cheap beer.
Two hours in, he got up. He put a dollar in the machine and picked “Islands in the Stream.” He did the Dolly part in falsetto, working the room like a Las Vegas lounge act.
The other customers loved him. And then he held the second mic out to me.
I don’t sing, and I rarely cheer. I’m the man who sits in the corner and lets the room happen around him. Varga already knew that about me. He held the mic out anyway, grinning.
I looked at him standing in a bar where nobody knew us, with the wind whipping the snow into a blizzard outside. I accepted the mic and sang the Kenny part—badly. Varga busted a gut and nearly missed his own line.
The eleven strangers clapped, and one woman laughed so hard that she cried. That was the night I understood Varga could undo all my rules if he chose to. For five years, he didn’t ask.
I poured the hot water into a mug and dunked one of the Hungarian tea bags.
While it steeped, for one moment I wondered what it was like to be Heath. How would it feel to wear a ring in the locker room and have it be uninteresting to the rest of the team? What would it be like to sit next to Varga on a plane while he stole the cashews from my bag of mixed nuts?
Standing there in the kitchen at four in the morning, I let myself call the sensation what it was.
Envy.
I sat with it. Heath and Kieran were a couple, out and public, because somewhere along the way, one of them asked for it.
Varga had asked me for one thing in five years. He asked me to stay, and I bought us a house with a garage. It was a life without seams. Somewhere in the process, he’d stopped asking me for anything else because I answered before he could.
Last night, he’d asked me an important question, and I deflected. Then he said okay.
The clock said 4:26. I left the tea on the counter and walked back up the stairs.
Varga had turned in his sleep. He lay flat on his back with one arm above his head. I climbed in on my side and slid up against him. He didn’t wake up .
***
I was three steps down before I heard Varga in the kitchen.
He started talking before I even appeared.
”—the thing about a duvet, Rook, a real duvet, is the tog rating, and ours is a four-season tog, which is a compromise tog.
It’s wrong eight months out of twelve, and I have said this from the day we bought it—“
He was at the espresso machine in his shorts and nothing else, hair flat on one side, seating the portafilter. The machine hissed and spat.
I raked my fingers through my hair. “You bought the duvet,” I said.
“I bought the duvet under duress. You stood in that store and did the thing with your jaw, and I folded, and now I sleep under a compromise three hundred nights a year. Someday a documentary crew is going to ask me the great regret of my life, and I’m going to look into the camera and say the tog, Rook. The tog.”
There was nothing from last night in him. He was back to his usual morning narration. It could have been avocados or free-range eggs, but for this morning, he chose duvets.
He pulled the shot and turned, looking at me.
“There he is,” he said. “You look like hell. Did you sleep?”
“Some.”
“Liar.” He set the cup down, stepped around the island, placed a hand on my jaw, and kissed me. I reached for the back of his neck and pressed my T-shirt-covered chest against his bare one.
He broke the kiss and smiled. Then his phone went off on the island, face-up, buzzing itself in a slow half-circle. He glanced at the screen, then at me, and thumbed the speaker on without picking it up.
“Rafe. You’re alive. I had you dead over Pennsylvania.”
”—Varga?“ The kid’s voice came out of the phone thin and careful. “Sorry. Is it early?”
“It’s never early for you, you farm animal. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong. I just, the road trip. Coach has me on your wing for the back-to-back, and I wanted to ask about the weak-side forecheck, the thing you do where you—“
“Where I bail you out, you mean.”
“...Yes, sir.”
“Don’t yes-sir me, I’m not Coach. What do you need?”
“Nothing. I—it’s the off day. I didn’t have anybody else to ask.” A pause. “Kieran invited me to the aquarium. He does volunteer stuff there, I guess. He said I should come and watch the beluga feed.”
“Kieran invited you to look at fish?”
“Whales. Belugas are whales. Those aren’t fish. And one of them has a calf.”
Varga set his cup down. “You like that stuff,” he said.
“I’m from a farm in Saskatchewan.” It was his explanation, and then his tone turned quieter. “I’ve never seen a whale in real life. There’s no ocean for two thousand miles where I grew up. I used to have a poster.” He stopped. “Anyway.”
That was the kid’s entire life in one word.
“Go,” Varga said. “Tell Kieran you’re coming. Don’t leave him standing there with his belugas. Take a picture. I want to see the calf.”
“Okay.” I could hear the kid smiling. “Thanks, Varga.”
“None needed.”
“Hey, before I let you go,” Rafe said. “Some guy emailed the team account, doing a feature on the room. Wanted twenty minutes. PR sent it to a few of us. Did you get that one?”
My coffee was halfway to my lips. I set it back down on the counter.
“Everybody gets those,” Varga said. “Tell PR to handle it. You don’t talk to anyone you didn’t grow up with, Rafe. Rule one.”
“Okay. Thanks, Varga.”
“Drink water. See you on the ice.”
He thumbed the call off, and the kitchen went quiet again.
Turning toward the refrigerator, he opened the door and peered inside. “We’re out of eggs,” he said. “I bought a dozen Saturday—“
“You made an omelet that would feed four on Monday.”
He picked his espresso back up, drank half of it, and looked at me over the rim. “What?” he asked.
“Nothing,” I said.