6. Heater. Heathen. Helium. #3
June ran up holding a piece of blue chalk and pointed at a shape beside Jay’s boots. “That’s Rain.”
The drawing resembled a potato with six legs.
“Beautiful,” Jay said.
June narrowed her eyes. At four, she could detect insincerity more reliably than several executives Jay knew.
Harris glanced over from the latch. “You’re in trouble.”
“With June?”
“Yup. Should’ve figured out where the real authority sits by now.”
June marched away with the wounded dignity of an artist misunderstood in her own time.
Willa tore past in the opposite direction, pink chalk in one fist and her entire body aimed at a wheelbarrow. Harris caught the back of her dress without fully turning and redirected her several feet to the left while his other hand continued tightening the latch.
“Walking.”
Willa slowed immediately.
“You need something, Navarro?” Harris asked.
Oh, right. Jay was still standing there.
“Uh, yeah. Priya wants to confirm tomorrow’s access route.”
“Map’s in my truck.”
Harris dropped the wrench into his toolbox and started across the concrete. Jay followed—and stepped directly on Rain.
June gasped.
His boot covered most of the horse’s blue body and at least two of its legs.
Harris chuckled.
“You’re a bad person,” Jay said.
“Ain’t the one who stepped on her.”
June was already approaching with chalk and vengeance in her eyes. Jay retreated while she crouched beside the horse to assess the damage. Her eyes held the grim concentration of a trauma surgeon.
Harris continued toward the truck, still visibly amused.
Jay followed, smiling despite himself. Harris’s laugh remained an unreasonable reward for minor humiliation.
Harris unfolded the location map across the hood and anchored one corner beneath the toolbox. “Western route’s washed out past the creek. Have to come ‘round the east side.”
“The county map shows it open.”
“County map’s wrong.”
“Good. Love that. How much longer is that route?”
“Forty minutes, maybe. Ground’ll still be soft after yesterday. Park here and carry the gear the rest,” Harris said, tracing the map with one long finger.
“We’ll keep it light.”
Jay’s phone buzzed against the hood.
Miles.
He declined the call. Three boxes in a Brooklyn storage unit had waited since 2022 and could continue practicing patience.
Harris continued. “Creek bed ain’t worth getting stuck in.”
The phone buzzed again.
“Problem?” Harris asked.
“My ex has decided we need to have a conversation about a storage unit.”
“She still got stuff at your place?”
“He.” The correction came automatically.
Harris looked up, and the entire conversation rearranged itself around one syllable.
For one brief and exceptionally stupid second, Jay considered pretending he had been trying to say something else.
Heater. Heathen. Helium.
All entirely plausible in a discussion of Brooklyn storage.
Instead, he kept one finger on the map. “My ex-boyfriend. Miles.”
The pause was not long. Only long enough for Harris’s face to become more carefully blank and the ease left by his laugh to disappear behind the internal door he closed whenever something became too personal.
“Huh,” he said, then looked back at the map.
Jay waited. Nothing else came.
Apparently Romy occasionally got to be right, which remained one of her worst qualities.
“We were together five years,” Jay added. “On and off a little longer.”
Why had he said that? Perhaps some self-destructive part of him wanted to make clear that this was not theoretical homosexuality or a misunderstood pronoun.
Harris gave one short nod. “Pretty long time.”
“Yeah.”
He tapped the southern approach. “Road’s washed out there too. East side’s your only reliable way in.”
The conversation returned so efficiently to access roads that Jay almost admired it.
Harris had not been rude or stepped away. He had simply become more intensely himself: practical, closed, and determined to keep the conversation within clearly marked boundaries. That described Harris on most days, but the timing made it difficult not to measure every glance.
Jay had spent enough of his life around men who were perfectly polite until sexuality stopped being theoretical to know that tolerance could come with narrow operating parameters.
Nothing Harris had done qualified as hostility.
The change was quieter than that, which made it harder to name and easier to doubt.
They confirmed the remaining directions. Then Harris folded the map.
“Need to look at the north trough before lunch.”
Harris turned and headed toward the barn.
Of course. The famous emergency trough.
“Right.”
Maybe Harris had genuinely remembered it. Maybe learning Jay was gay had meant nothing, and Jay was projecting awkwardness onto a man who regarded most personal information as an invasive species.
Or perhaps Harris was perfectly capable of being polite to a gay man and simply preferred not to know too much about the gay part.
That possibility settled less comfortably.
Jay could work with uncomfortable. He had done it before.
His phone buzzed once more.
Miles: Call me. This is stupid.
Jay stared at the message. “You have no idea.”