Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
Barret
I stay with Cleo almost all day, guitar in my lap because that’s what she asked for—“Play like music might stitch the air together.”
I play quietly, close to her, my fingers finding a progression that sounds like a door unlatching.
The chorus was born on a night I didn’t drink, a lullaby I wrote for Arlo that keeps surprising me by how soft it wants to be.
Between songs, I lift my head and say, “More?” She nods, or shakes her head, or slides her tea toward me so I’ll steal a sip and keep going.
Each small motion is a vote for the world, and I count them like fortunes.
We take breaks. She eats—small, stubborn victories: strawberries that stain her thumb, two careful bites of toast, then half a bowl of chicken soup Eddie has simmered until it smells like someone tried to make comfort happen on purpose.
Eddie sets the bowl down with that look he has, equal parts worry and worship, and I see him unclench a little when she eats.
Today might’ve been the day the therapist warned us about, the day a breakdown could come like a wave. Hopefully, this is rock bottom, and it holds long enough for her to choose the next breath and for us to hand her a rope to pull herself out of that hole.
Maybe she’ll want to go downstairs and not sprint for the trees tomorrow.
Maybe she’ll hate the idea so fiercely she won’t leave the bedroom.
I don’t know what tomorrow looks like. I try not to bet on hours I don’t own.
Instead, I play the next few notes, watch the corners of her mouth relax when the melody finds the place inside her that remembers how to breathe, and I let that be enough for now.
Near evening, the gray outside turns deeper and softer (not darker—just thicker), and her eyes start losing the fight with the day.
She falls asleep before the last chord is done, head tipped toward the window like she’s still bargaining with the horizon.
I want to stay—stretch along the base of the bed, keep guard with a guitar pick and bad posture—but I don’t press my luck.
I lean in and kiss her forehead, soft as a thought I’m not ready to say out loud.
Door open. Window closed. If I leave it cracked, the night will slide in and punish her bones. I check the latch twice anyway. My hands hover, then leave the room.
Eddie’s in the doorway of the room he’s been using since she arrived—no tie, the first three buttons of his shirt undone, sleeves pushed up, shoulder against the jamb as if he propped himself there to keep from pacing a trench in the floor.
“How is she?” he asks.
“Asleep,” I say. “Window shut. Door open.”
His sigh is quiet enough not to wake a house. He steps back and gives me space to pass. I don’t. I lean on the opposite wall. We stand like that for a breath while the house ticks.
“About earlier,” he says, eyes catching mine before flicking to the pick I’m still turning in my fingers. “The kiss.”
I swallow, unsure if I should look away.
He studies me for a long moment, then—quiet, almost like he’s testing the air—“Can I have another?”
I snort. “I needed it, just like I’m sure that would’ve distracted you from wanting to chase after her,” I explain. “I also needed to learn I could stop at one.”
“You did—it helped,” he admits. “You didn’t run after her, either.
” Eddie’s temporary room is the opposite of his usual life—no framed art, no curated anything.
Just a bed he barely touches and a chair.
He gestures at the chair. Instead, I drop to the floor, back to the bed, legs stretched out.
He lowers onto the edge of the mattress, hands clasped like he might pray if we were different men.
“We should talk,” he says.
“We really should.”
He rubs his knuckles like he’s checking to make sure they still work.
“When she ran, I wanted to chase. Then I wanted to call the pilot. Then I wanted to call every therapist we have on speed dial. You told me to hold. You kissed me and told me to hold. That kiss got me through thirty minutes I didn’t think I had. ”
“I know,” I say. “I also know you were saving yourself with it as much as I was.”
“And you?” he asks. “What did it do to you?”
I let out a laugh that’s both small and a little mean. “Everything. Nothing. I wanted it to, and nothing I’m going to follow through on—not tonight. It was a hand on the panic button with a sign that said: not yet.”
He nods, like he’s filing the line away under a tab labeled Things To Learn. He doesn’t move to fix this. Good. “I’m trying,” he says. “Which sounds like a coward’s sentence. I don’t want to keep failing you.”
“Say it differently,” I tell him, letting my head fall back into the mattress.
These conversations sometimes are so fucking hard.
However, my sponsor and my therapist insist I have to have them.
They’re the difference between keeping myself clean and finding the life I love versus just barely hanging on.
“Say you’ll keep doing it even if you fail—more so because it scares you.
That’s the one I want to hear. That’s what counts. ”
He looks at me like I handed him a script. “I’m going to keep doing it even if I fail—more so because it’s fucking scary.”
“Okay,” I tell him.
I slide my hand into the front pocket of my jeans and come up with the smooth pick—worn edges rounded from a thousand lazy riffs.
It’s the one I carry like a ridiculous talisman, the thing that lives in my pocket when I sleep and comes out when I need to prove the world is still mine for a minute.
I slide the pick into my thumb and roll it until it clicks—small, private.
My breathing eases, a quieter rhythm that isn’t performance or for anyone’s record.
Eddie’s beside me. Today, he’s the man in the room who needs keeping whole. A strange statement when he’s the one usually keeping everything together. He glances at the door, then back at me, simultaneously with wonder and fear burning in his eyes.
“Can I ask for something you probably can’t give?” he says.
“Ask.”
“Stay with me tonight. Just—” He swallows. “I need a person in the room who isn’t a problem to be solved.”
“Fuck,” I say, because I’m not sure I can be in the same bed with him and not want him in the way that makes everything complicated.
We’re not ready for sex.
Though, fuck, didn’t I do that earlier—sit in the tub with a very beautiful, very naked Cleo and just hold her because she asked? Didn’t that teach me the difference between needing and protecting?
I can protect him. I can be that guy for him, more so when he’s being vulnerable.
“Yeah. Okay,” I tell him.
We make dinner like two people pretending we know how to be ordinary. The staff have all gone back to their places. Tonight, the kitchen is ours. No silver trays, no staged niceties—just a pantry, a bottle of decent olive oil, a lemon, and a stubborn will to make something small feel like us.
Eddie takes point on the chopping board.
He slices shallots so thin they practically dissolve, the knife tapping a quiet rhythm against the board.
The smell of onion, soft and raw, hits the air.
He tosses the slivers into a pan where butter melts and hisses, then drops in smashed garlic and a scatter of chili flakes.
Heat climbs, and the kitchen fills with a scent that makes you forgive everything—even yourself.
I’m on pasta duty—straight from the pantry, long strands that go into a pot of salted water like hands slipping into warm sleeves.
I stir, leaning close to steal a breath of steam, and taste the broth on the spoon.
It’s not perfect, but it is ours. Eddie watches me with that look he gets, the one that reads like both question and answer.
When I pass him the spoon, he lifts it to his lips and his eyes close for a second.
It is stupid and quiet and makes my throat ache in a good way.
We move around each other without bumping.
He reaches for the lemon and zests it with the rasp of a grater; the scent brightens the room.
I catch the zest in my palm and drop it into the pan with a handful of chopped parsley, tossing the pasta in to soak up the sauce.
When I reach for the colander, he reaches too, and our fingers brush—electric, and then we laugh like idiots.
Eddie slides a spoonful of sauce into my mouth.
I close my eyes and savor. The taste is warm and more than just food.
I wipe my fingers on a towel, and he takes my hand and laces his thumb through my knuckles the way someone steadies a teetering glass.
Not possessive. Not showy. Just a small proof that we’re here.
I hum under my breath, a soft rhythm that mirrors the knife, and he hums back—an answering chord.
There is chemistry in the tiny choreography: the way he angles his shoulder to let me pass, the way I reach to steady a pan when his arm tenses.
We argue about salt and laugh about burnt bread.
We find a crooked candle and set it on the counter; the flame leans toward us like it has a plan.
We sit at the counter with two bowls, knees almost touching.
He feeds me a forkful and watches like he’s memorizing how I take it.
I feed him back. The conversation is small—old stories, dumb jokes—but the way we hand each other pieces of ourselves over a homemade meal does more work than any big speech could.
Tonight, the kitchen is proof that we can do something ordinary and make it mean everything.
Afterwards, we clear the plates together, fingers sliding along the same dish towel. When the kitchen is finally quiet, Eddie catches my eye, and the look says something without a sentence: You and me, here. Eddie takes my hand and squeezes.