“You want me to do this standing outside.”
Rye sat down on the step and stuck out his leg.
That’s when Charlie noticed Rye was still wearing the sweats he’d given him the other day, only they had a layer of...was that dust? Dirt? It was in Rye’s hair too. There was even a patina of it freckling his face. Charlie leaned in closer and swept a finger down Rye’s nose.
“What the hell?” Rye said.
Charlie’s heart sped as he recognized the grit.
“Did a wall fall down?”
Rye’s eyes went wide, then narrowed.
“No,” he snapped. Then added, “Not exactly.”
Charlie pictured Rye sleeping in the house as it crumbled around him; Rye trapped under falling debris, screaming with no one to hear or help him.
Charlie’s heart started pounding. He flung the door open and went inside, avoiding the hole in the floor. He could smell destruction. The half clean, half dirty scent of ozone and rotten wood.
The wall between the staircase and the living room gaped, its rough-hewn beams a naked skeleton and splintered wood and plaster in a heap on the floor.
There was a band of tight heat around Charlie’s chest, constricting his lungs. Terror. He swung around to Rye.
“Did this wall fall down and you stayed here anyway?”
Rye’s gray eyes were narrowed, ready to fight.
“Not...exactly...”
Charlie narrowed his eyes. “Rye. Did you tear this fucking wall down?”
The flicker of Rye’s gaze told Charlie he was right and he wheeled around and looked again. The load-bearing post was still in place, but he figured that was because Rye didn’t have the tools to remove it, not because he knew what it was.
“The whole second story could have fallen on you!” Charlie yelled, breath coming shallow and heart slamming against his ribs. “What the hell possessed you to do such an idiotic thing?”
Rye glared beams of fire.
“You’re the one who said we’d need to demo the inside before we could fix the house!”
Charlie gaped. “I—You—So—I—”
It was so reckless, so unthinking, so foolish! He could’ve been killed.
Rye scowled and hugged himself, Charlie’s sweatshirt swallowing him up.
“You can’t just demo a house! You need to know which walls are load bearing and you need a dumpster to haul the debris to. It could be full of lead or black mold or...or...anything. You need a mask and gloves and you can’t do it by yourself. Jesus, the ceiling could’ve collapsed on you as you slept. You can’t just stay here while you demo—”
He cut himself off, voice shaking so hard he was sure Rye could hear it.
Charlie felt a familiar tingling in his fingertips. The buzzing in his ears came a few seconds later and he fled from the house and into the clearing behind it.
He searched for the roof of Jack’s cabin to steady himself.
He stared at the tiny distant triangle and forced himself to breathe through his nose. He dug his thumbs into the pressure points on his wrists and tried to calm down. It had been months since he’d had to do this. Not since Jack’s accident last year. But Jack was fine now. Better than fine. Jack was thriving.
Charlie clenched his eyes shut, but all he saw with closed eyes was his parents, dead two days before his eighteenth birthday. Jack’s face when Charlie told him they were gone. Jack’s chin wobbling like it had when he was a little boy. The nights when Charlie would wake from nightmares into one.
“Hey. Are you okay?”
Rye stood to his left, Marmot in his arms.
Charlie nodded automatically.
Rye held out the cat like he was sharing a stuffed animal with a friend on the playground. Charlie shook his hands out, trying to dispel the tingling. When he took Marmot she put her paws on his shoulder and plastered herself against his chest over his heart. Her rumbling purr vibrated against his neck.
“I’m fine,” Charlie said blankly.
“Yeah, you’re clearly doing great,” Rye muttered wryly.
Charlie kept his eyes on Jack’s house. He wished he could see Jack right now. Just to make sure he was all right. Maybe he’d just send him a quick text—
“So what’s the deal with your brother? You guys estranged or something?”
“What? No. Why would you think that?”
Rye shrugged.
“You’re looking at his roof like it’s the closest you’ll ever get to him.”
“No I’m not,” Charlie grumbled. “We’re not estranged,” he felt compelled to add again.
They stood in silence for a while. It was a cool, sunny day, and the breeze felt good ruffling Charlie’s hair and kissing his face.
When Rye spoke again there was a softness to his voice.
“I didn’t just tear the wall down without thinking, you know. I googled it. I watched a bunch of videos.”
Charlie sighed. It was mildly comforting that Rye hadn’t simply started swinging a sledgehammer, but only very mildly.
“There’s stuff you can’t learn from a video. It’s... I’m sorry I yelled. But it’s so damn dangerous. Even if you’ve demoed a hundred houses, you can never completely predict what will happen. Sometimes there are places a house has settled or buckled or been eaten by termites and things just...happen.”