Chapter 6
Benson
Remi and I agree to head back to Darling Ranch instead of him dropping me off at home. We spent longer at the vet than expected, and he has work to finish, whereas my afternoon is open.
I told him I don’t mind hanging around until he’s done, and I mean it.
Mouse was cleared of just about every possible danger before we left. No hantavirus. No leptospirosis. No salmonella. No mites or fleas, even. She’s as healthy as a field mouse can be, barring the broken leg.
She’s in a cast now, the tiniest cone I’ve ever seen secured around her neck to stop her from chewing through the material. I thought she’d be more upset about her present predicament, but she seems to have accepted it. She’s lying comfortably on the towel, her nose twitching occasionally.
When Remi parks his truck, I come back to the world around me. We’re in the lot outside the main house, a smile on Remi’s face like he knows I spent the last half hour elsewhere.
“Come on,” he says, opening his door to the cold. “I have somewhere you can hide out.”
I don’t ask why the two of us need to hide. Whether it’s for my sake or Mouse’s. It’d be easy to assume the latter, but… I think Remi has noticed my need for quiet. To be alone at times.
Steph calls it a social battery. Some people get charged around others. I get drained.
One of the many things she’s been encouraging me to do since I started seeing her is to prioritize recharging time. “It’s not a weakness, Benson, to create an environment that suits you. Everyone is different. We all have different batteries. Different ways of charging.”
Her words stick with me now as I follow Remi into the ranch house. How does he recharge? Does he like quiet, like me? Or does he prefer to be surrounded by other people’s energy? Just the thought of that has me shifting uncomfortably.
I don’t understand how anyone prefers that, but there’s so much about people I don’t understand. Not relating to others is nothing new.
Christ, how didn’t I see it? In forty-two years, how didn’t anyone?
I set Mouse’s box down to take off my shoes. The house is quiet at the moment, although I hear someone moving around in the kitchen. Likely Ash, preparing dinner for the ranch hands. After hanging up my coat, I follow Remi upstairs.
It feels odd, being this far inside the house for the first time in decades. Remi’s room is the same as the one he had as a kid, albeit the decor has changed. He doesn’t stop there, though. He walks past his doorway, opening the door at the end of the hall that leads up to the attic.
“I’m having a very particular flashback right now,” I note.
Remi smiles before starting up the curving stairs, keeping me in his line of sight as we walk. “Yeah?”
I shift Mouse’s shoebox under my arm to sign, ‘Cookie.’
Remi’s eyebrow climbs, the man pausing a step above me. ‘Yes, dumpling?’
It takes me a second to recognize the word dumpling. And then to realize Remi used it as an endearment, even teasingly.
“I mean, like, cookies,” I tell him, feeling my cheeks heat. “The kind you eat?”
Remi chuckles, clearly having understood me the first time. “Go on,” he says, climbing the rest of the way into the wide-open attic.
Or it was wide open last I was here, used as a playroom. Now…
Now it’s an…art studio?
“What is this?” I ask Remi, although I suspect I know.
He shrugs, flicking on a light, even though the windows are letting plenty of it in. “It’s where I come to paint.” He brushes his fingers across his palm lovingly, so much feeling in the sign my chest aches.
I step forward with Mouse still tucked under my arm, looking at the canvases spread along the walls beneath the windows and set atop easels in the center of the room. Most of the paintings are of nature. More than anything, flowers.
“Your cookie story?” Remi prompts, although he doesn’t ask me to stop perusing his art.
“Colton,” I say, fingerspelling his name.
When Remi reminds me what Colton’s name sign is, I copy it, and he nods.
I try to sign along with my story, but there are a few words I’m unsure of.
Spelling them slows me down. “There was this time when I was ten. He was…seven. Our moms were baking cookies, and Colton, with the help of two oven mitts, snuck a whole pan upstairs when they weren’t looking.
I don’t know why I followed. I hated getting into trouble.
But for whatever reason, I found myself up in this attic with him, the two of us eating half a dozen chocolate chip cookies each. ”
Remi snorts, the smile on his face telling me he can picture that all too clearly. I pull Mouse’s box out from under my arm and set her down to shift one of Remi’s canvases aside.
“Right here,” I point out. “You can still see the burn mark from the bottom of the pan.”
“Holy shit,” Remi breathes, crouching down like me. “I always wondered what that was from. I’m not the least bit surprised to find out it was Colton.”
“He’s a really good guy. He cares a lot.”
Remi’s eyes meet mine, so light they remind me of the sky in springtime. “Yeah, he does. Not a lot of people see that.”
“Not a lot of people look.”
Remi’s eyes ping between my own. I replace his canvas and pick up Mouse again.
“You can go,” I tell him. “I know you have a lot to do. Sorry I can’t help. I just…”
His hand lands softly on my shoulder, warm as he squeezes me once. “I get it. You have an injured mouse to look after. I’ll be back in a couple hours. If you want food or anything, you know where to find it.”
I nod, Remi’s fingers ghosting over my neck as he stands.
I take a couple breaths, listening to his footfalls grow farther away.
Once he’s back down on the second floor, I stand with Mouse and continue looking around the room.
There’s a painting in shades of gold and orange, a dozen buttercups stretching into the rays of sun that light the image like fire.
Another is almost entirely white, soft wisps of color streaking the canvas in texture more than hue, a single dandelion blown apart and the seeds scattering.
There’s another so colorful I can’t count the shades.
Wildflowers in abundance, a wealth of life priceless in both senses of the word.
Is this how Remi sees the world around him? In joy and abundance?
I settle with Mouse in a spot of slanted sun, opening her shoebox lid to check on her.
She’s tucked in a corner, her cheek pressed against the side of her cone.
I carefully slip the plastic loose and off her head.
She immediately sets to sniffing the cast keeping her back leg straight while the bone heals.
She licks it a few times, but she doesn’t try to chew, so I leave her cone off for now.
Looking around, I spot a small round bottle cap lying on the ground. Not seeing anything it belongs to, I pick it up, replacing Mouse’s lid before I head downstairs. I wash the cap in the second-story bathroom and fill it with water.
I feel marginally better setting the makeshift bowl into Mouse’s temporary home.
I have no doubt she could have extracted some moisture from the sponge if need be, but she seems happier with this new offering, hobble-walking the half inch to dip her tongue inside.
As she drinks, I move the sunflower seeds closer, hoping she’ll eat something now that she’s not under such duress.
I’m not expecting her tiny mouth to clamp onto my finger, but I hold still when it does. She’s not biting hard enough to hurt or break skin. She nibbles the edge of my nail for a moment before turning her attention toward the seeds.
A smile stretches across my face as she hastily shoves a few inside her cheeks. Seeing her looking for a place to burrow, I unroll one edge of the towel and fold it over. She scoots herself inside, her cast leg dragging somewhat awkwardly behind her.
I watch her for long minutes, wondering why people couldn’t be this easy and uncomplicated.
It’s well past dinnertime when Remi returns to the art studio, two plates and a bowl balanced in his hands. His lips quirk when he finds me sitting on the floor with a now-resting Mouse. “Did you eat anything?”
“No,” I admit, having forgotten.
He nods as if he expected that might be the case. Sitting down beside me, he sets the bowl next to the shoebox first, what looks like a selection of foods inside that are safe for Mouse to eat. Then he sets a plate in front of me, piled as high as his own but with no meat.
“You’ll eat all that?” I ask, wondering where he puts it.
He snorts. “Yeah. I missed lunch.”
My stomach sinks. “I’m sorry, Remi.”
“What for? I’m a big boy. I would’ve grabbed something before now if I really needed it.”
I nod, taking him at his word. The food is delicious, not a surprise after the last meal I had here. I enjoy this one more, though. Just me and Remi.
Not for the first time over these past couple days, I run through my most recent session with Steph. My pulse beats swiftly, but I force words past my throat and out of my mouth.
“Remi. On the way to the vet… I wanted to tell you something.”
I can feel the weight of his appraisal, searing like the sun on those buttercups. He nods, his voice soft. “Go ahead.”
I’ve been avoiding this conversation with my mother and August out of fear of what they’ll say. How their perception of me might change. How they’ll react.
With denial, like my father?
Understanding?
Confusion?
For some reason, it feels easier to start with Remi. I’d like to say it’s because there’s less to lose, but that’s not the truth, not really. He just…makes it easy.
I run my thumb along the handle of the fork set atop my plate, wishing I could bring myself to watch Remi’s expression but knowing I’m not brave enough to do so. He waits patiently, even as it feels like something inside of me might snap.
A soft touch at the base of my skull has me jumping. Remi’s hand immediately lifts away. “Sorry, I—”
“No, please,” I tell him, my heart pounding. “I just didn’t expect it.”
I hold my breath, praying I don’t have to beg him to touch me a second time.
Tentatively, his fingers thread through my hair, the gentle scrape of his blunt nails moving in a patternless glide that causes my eyes to slip shut.
I’m afraid to speak, as if any sound or slight movement might make him stop.
“When’s the last time you hugged someone?” Remi asks me.
I pull in a shaky breath. “When I got back. My mom hugged me.”
“Yeah, but that didn’t answer my question.”
No, it didn’t. Did it?
Remi gives my hair a gentle tug. “Tell me what you want to say, Ben. And then you’ll hug me, and I’ll hug you back. All right?”
I nod, my throat feeling hot. “I’m autistic. I found out last year. You’re the second person I’ve told.”
Remi’s fingers slow for only a second before resuming their soothing scratching motion. “Huh.”
That response, so absolutely nonchalant, has me turning my gaze his way. Remi’s brow is furrowed, his own gaze lost somewhere inside the room. “Huh?”
“Yeah, huh. I have a lot of questions, but I’m not sure if you want me to ask them right now. And no, I’m not asking if I can.”
I huff at that, the tightness in my chest loosening a fraction.
Remi turns his blue eyes my way, his fingers giving the back of my neck a squeeze. “How are you feeling about that?”
I can tell Remi isn’t expecting the hug so soon. And I’m not even sure myself if it’s so I can hide my face or simply because the one question he did ask was so painfully perfect.
Remi was right. It has been a long time since I’ve hugged someone. Hugging and being hugged aren’t the same thing. You hug someone because you either want to give comfort or you’re seeking it.
And seeking comfort in other people? That’s never come easy for me. Even something as simple as a hug feels so intimate. So…personal.
But there’s no hesitation as my arms wrap around Remi. He catches up quickly, one arm curling around my shoulder, his other hand still in my hair. He smells like hay. And he hums like he’s happy.
And he does hug me back, as he promised, giving the comfort I didn’t know I so desperately needed.
“I’m a mess,” I tell him truthfully. “Because I’m realizing I don’t know myself at all. And yet, at the same time, I’m more at peace than ever before. Tell me how that makes any sense?”
Remi’s sigh is soft, his embrace fierce. “You don’t have to have all the answers to know you’re on the right track.”
“You sound like Steph.”
“Steph?”
“My therapist,” I explain.
I can hear Remi’s smile in his words. “You call your therapist by her first name?”
“Of course I do. She asked me to when we first met. Am I supposed to call her something more professional just for propriety’s sake when it would go against her direct wishes?”
“No,” Remi says gently, still smiling. “I suppose not. Have you been seeing her a long time?”
“Just since this last year. After…I got my diagnosis. She’s helping me to understand it.”
Remi’s hand smooths over my back, up and down. “And has it? Helped?”
I blow out a quiet breath, unable to tear myself away from Remi quite yet. He doesn’t seem to mind. “Yes. Because for the first time in my life, I don’t feel quite so alone.”
Remi makes this sad, mournful sound, and I almost regret my words. But then he’s hugging me tighter. “Is that why you stayed away? You were trying to figure out how to tell me?”
“In part,” I admit. “I also just needed…”
“To be alone?” he guesses.
“Yeah.”
Remi’s hand scratches through my hair again, a shiver following in its wake. “I’m honored that you told me, Ben. I can’t imagine this has been easy.”
No, it hasn’t. “It reminds me of coming out.”
Remi makes a curious noise, so I elaborate.
“I’m realizing it’s something I’m going to be doing all my life, you know? Not that every person I meet needs to be given that information, but deciding when and how to share it is a choice I’ll be making again and again.”
Remi leans back enough to look at the side of my face. “Are you out?”
“Yes?” After a pause in which Remi doesn’t say a word, I add, “I’m guessing by the question I haven’t mentioned it before?”
He huffs a quiet laugh. “No.”
“Bi,” I tell him. “Autistic. Forty-two and trying to figure out who the hell I am.”
Remi’s arms tighten around me again. “Pan. Deaf. Nearly thirty. And…maybe we can figure that out together.”
I’m almost afraid of the way my heart leaps hopefully at that. It shouldn’t be a big deal, that offer of friendship. Of support.
But I’ve had very little of either throughout my life. And I’m not sure I know how to accept it.
I want to try, though. Which is new. And scary.
I nod in answer, and Remi and I sit for quite a while longer on the floor, our arms around one another and a field of wildflowers keeping us company as snow drifts slowly past the windowpanes.