I’d always loved exploring alleys and narrow streets in the city, but all the abandoned buildings in my neighborhood as a kid had been squats or crash pads, and I’d learned young that no matter how tempting the exploration, wandering into a room with crackheads in every corner wasn’t worth it.
So I tugged Rhys into the barn with me to poke around. The weak sunlight fell in slashes, dust swirling in its beams giving the place a fairyland feel. “Wow,” I said and turned to find Rhys looking at me like I was magical. He slid a hand to the back of my neck and kissed me, suddenly, like a declaration. A vow.
“Matt, marry me,” he said, eyes on fire and lips inches from mine. I laughed at him, looked at the ground. Even as a joke, though, it had awoken something I hadn’t even known was there. “I’m dead serious,” he said. And then, when he cupped my face, I saw it. Saw that he was serious. That he was holding this out to me and all I had to do was take it.
“Marry me,” he said again. Then, “Please.”
And instead of laughing, instead of disbelieving, I had a single, unknowable moment of certainty, and I said, “Okay.”
“Wait, really?” He froze, staring at me. “Really, seriously, you will?”
And the moment of certainty evaporated. “I—did you not mean it?”
“I absolutely meant it, but I thought you’d make me wait a lot longer before I convinced you,” he said, grin irrepressible. “Matt, really? Say it again.” He clutched me to him.
“I—okay. Yes, I mean.”
“Yes what?” he murmured against my ear.
I rolled my eyes. “Yes, I’ll marry you. Asshole.”
Rhys gave a whoop of glee that startled mourning doves nesting in the rafters into flight, and grabbed me by the waist, swinging me around. When we got dizzy and collapsed onto the floor, he looked into my eyes and said, “Thank you. I’m so happy.”
And I kissed him, wanting to give him anything to keep that happy look on his face. But every second that passed, I waited for the bubble to burst. For him to say we’d talk more about it later, or we’d figure it out sometime in the future.
When we got back in the truck, though, Rhys drove straight into town to the courthouse. He asked five times if it was okay, if there was anyone I wanted to invite, anything I needed to get. But there was no one. Nothing.
“I’m just so excited. I don’t want you to change your mind,” Rhys said. It was the most vulnerable I’d seen him. He shone like the sun.
The way I saw it, it was me who’d jumped on the chance for something official and legal to tie us together; me who should be asking him if he was sure, since he actually had a family he might want to invite. But when I asked him he just smiled again, and said, “Nope. I just want you. Now.”
That night, for the first time in my life, when I fell asleep, I didn’t wonder if I’d be all alone in the morning. I fell asleep with a kind of dazed happiness that I thought might be monumental, but felt as warm and easy as Rhys’s hand on the back of my neck.
Chapter 8
I woke up and I knew that Sid was dead.
I’d been dreaming of my mother. I was watching her get ready in the mirror she’d stuck to the wall of the bedroom we shared, as I’d done so many times. She’d brush her hair, holding each curl in her palm and brushing them separately so they shone. Then she’d continue the brushstroke until it hit my curls, and she’d brush my hair softly.
It was four in the morning so I couldn’t call Grin. I dialed the old number I had for Sid and let it ring and ring, like that was some kind of proof. Then I made coffee and drank it on the couch as I waited for the sun to rise.
At seven, I called Grin.
“I think she’s dead,” I said.
“What? It’s fucking early, man.” I’d forgotten it was Sunday.
“Sid. I think she’s dead.”
“Why?”
My hands were shaking and something shimmered in the corner of the living room, above the bookcase where I couldn’t reach.
“I don’t know. I just know.”
Grin made me hang up the phone and said he’d call around and get back to me.
I turned on the TV and waited. I felt like bugs were crawling under my skin.
I left the house and walked. I ended up at the gates to the cemetery even though I’d thought I was walking the other way.
When my phone rang, I answered on the first ring.
“Is she?”
“Is who what?” It wasn’t Grin; it was Rhys.
“Oh hey, sorry, nothing. Hi.”
“Hey, baby. Who’d you think I was?”