“Sorry to keep you from it,” I said.
“Oh no, we went before I even texted you,” Theo said.
“One of the upsides of being an insomniac recovering addict and a bouncy ex–rock star in a town with lots of old people,” Caleb said dryly. “The farmer’s market starts hella early.”
Theo snorted and elbowed him.
“I’m not bouncy,” he groused. Caleb smiled and put a hand on his knee, which was bouncing steadily. “Oh.”
After we cleaned up lunch, we took a pitcher of iced tea out on their screened-in porch.
“Hey,” Caleb said suddenly, “what’d you get Rhys for his birthday? He said you gave him the best present but he didn’t say what it was.”
My face probably turned as red as the dildo I’d fucked myself with, gasping and splayed before Rhys’s watchful gaze. “Uh . . . um . . .”
Theo rolled his eyes at Caleb. “Duh, Cay.”
“What?” Caleb looked at my face and then his boyfriend’s disbelieving head shake. “Oh. Oh, sorry.” He cleared his throat and the porch plunged into an awkward silence.
“Actually,” I said, mostly to break the tension, “I was kind of thinking I’d get food for dinner the night he gets home. Like a belated birthday dinner thing.” I took a deep breath and forced myself to look at Caleb. “Do you know Rhys’s all-time favorite meal? I feel like I should know that but . . .”
“But he kind of eats anything and everything? Yeah. Hmm, yeah, he says everything he eats is his favorite if he eats it when he’s hungry.” I smiled at the truth in that. “You could call Mona.”
Mona was Rhys’s mom, and I’d only ever spoken to her right after we got married, when Rhys video chatted his parents and pulled me in front of the camera to say, “See, he’s real.” That and when he’d called for her birthday or on the holidays. She was very nice and very talkative and the idea of calling her filled me with dread.
“Right, sure, okay, thanks.”
Theo changed the subject, thankfully, and I listened as he and Caleb talked about a song Theo was writing. I liked to hear the way they talked to each other. Passionately opinionated but with an undercurrent of respect, like first and foremost they were allies.
Even in the shade of the deck, the heat of the afternoon didn’t let me do anything but sit still and listen distractedly. After a while my thoughts drifted, as they nearly always did, to Rhys.
* * *
—
I got home from Theo and Caleb’s around dinnertime and my phone chimed as I rummaged through the kitchen looking for anything edible.
It was Grin: When was the last time you heard from Sid?
The summer Grin and I were fifteen we got jobs making subs and minding the short-lived buffet at a bodega in the Village. Sid was a year older than us and worked at the flower shop across the street.
Every day, she came in for lunch and piled a plate full of the most grotesque combination of foods from the buffet I had ever seen—macaroni salad, General Tso’s chicken, Jell-O parfait, iceberg lettuce with ranch, and mini cheese-filled hotdogs all piled together.
We stared at her for weeks before Grin finally went up to her and, laying his hand to his heart, said, “My friend and I gotta know: Are you one of the robot advance guard and you weren’t programmed to eat like a human?”
She looked at him and said flatly, “I was programmed to annihilate any threat to my security by immolating myself and anything within a twenty-yard range.”
Sid was smart and incapable of lying to herself, which meant that she was mostly miserable and also hilarious to be around. It was Sid I’d first told that I was gay (Grin had guessed), and Sid who’d dragged Grin to the hospital after he got the shit kicked out of him the next year and wouldn’t admit how badly he was hurt.
We’d lost track of her for a little while after we left St. Jerome’s, but Grin had made contact again a year later, after he’d moved to Miami. He was much better than I was about checking in. Sid and I were similarly capable of going long periods of time without being in touch by phone. Last year, I’d started to hear from her less and less.
Now, with Grin’s text, I realized I hadn’t talked to her in a long time. I thumbed to her contact and saw the last text I’d sent her, about eight months ago, had remained unanswered.
I texted Grin, last text I have is the group one from new years eve. You?
I called her a couple times and nothing. Maybe she’s got a new phone . . .
You worried?
Naaaah, he wrote, but then: Well. I asked a couple people and nobodys heard from her in a while is all.