Best Laid Plans (Garnet Run 2)

He could tell that Charlie didn’t travel. There wasn’t a single object in the house that seemed to come from anywhere else, nor was there anything that seemed to come from somebody else. No inside jokes or decorative souvenirs; no gift books or magnets from Arizona. No shot glasses from a Florida airport or repurposed cookie tins with Christmas bears on them. No stash of pilfered hotel shampoo bottles in the guest bathroom. Nothing.

The only framed art was a series of color illustrations of animals: a moose, a bear, a lynx.

He should be happy. He had a shower again! A toilet and running water and an outlet to plug his phone into. A bed, and a washing machine. A kitchen. And he was happy... Kind of.

He also couldn’t help feeling like he was right back where he’d been when he was crashing on Kyle’s couch in Seattle—though at least he now had a bed and a door.

Was this how his life was always going to be: beholden to others for the crumbs of generosity they offered him? Trying to live in empty corners of someone else’s life?

“Fuck,” he muttered, and Marmot sprang silently onto the bed beside him. She seemed to have no problem making herself at home anywhere. She curled into a small spiral in the direct center of the blanket and yawned, like a nice big house with a comfortable bed in it was merely her due. Rye wished he could feel more like her.

* * *

Rye woke with a start. He hadn’t even realized he’d fallen asleep, and for a moment he was totally disoriented. The surface he was lying on was confusingly soft and he was strangely warm. The only familiar thing, in fact, was the purring form against his stomach.

“Rye? Dinner.”

A knock at the door and that was Charlie. Right, he was in Charlie’s guest room. And Charlie had...cooked dinner?

Still sleep-sodden, Rye pushed the hair out of his face and made a sound that must’ve sounded enough like communication that Charlie said, “Okay.”

Marmot yawned and stretched, her tiny paws splaying in the air. Rye darted in and pressed his cheek to her belly. Claws caught in his hair and he drew back before they tangled there.

“Dinner,” he echoed, to see if it sounded as strange when he said it. Yup.

He followed the aroma of food into the kitchen and found Charlie dishing up something that looked like a casserole.

“You didn’t have to do that,” Rye said, voice rough with sleep.

“Do what, cook dinner? I do it every night. Gotta eat.”

“I just meant you didn’t have to do it for me.”

“I didn’t do it for you.”

Rye felt squirmy. Intruder. Freeloader. The first word was his own, the second was his father’s. He squeezed his hands into fists to stop the word that usually came next and focused on all angles of what was. He was in a warm, safe place. He and Marmot were together. There was food, and Charlie was offering to share it with him. It felt hard to accept what Charlie was offering, but it seemed freely given. He was okay.

“No, I know, I only meant—Never mind. Thanks.”

Charlie nodded and turned out a tin of wet cat food on a small plate and set it on the dining table—it looked like a cat food commercial. Jane slunk into the room, meowed her strange ripping metal meow, and jumped onto the chair in front of her food. She sniffed delicately at the plate and then began to eat.

Rye hovered, waiting to see where Charlie would go. When Charlie sat down next to Jane with his food, Rye did the same.

“Thanks,” he said again. “For dinner and for letting me stay here.”

Charlie was watching him with an assessing look.

“You’re very welcome,” he said simply. Then he went back to his dinner. And it was as easy as that.

The chicken with mushrooms casserole was what might generously be called hearty and ungenerously be called bland. But it was the first hot meal Rye’d had in two weeks and he scarfed it down gratefully, forcing himself not to add the cost of its ingredients to the ever-growing tally in his head of what he owed the man sitting across from him. He never got on the right side of those tallies, so he’d stopped keeping them.

They ate in a silence that might have been awkward except that every time their eyes met, Charlie smiled at him, as if maybe he was genuinely glad Rye was here.

* * *

Rye drove to the Crow Lane house the next morning, with instructions from Charlie that his brother, Jack, would meet him over there, and he should wait until Jack got there to do anything. Rye grumbled at this as a matter of course, but was secretly relieved. He didn’t want a repeat of demoing the wall. He’d been terrified that every swing of the hammer would be the one that brought the house tumbling down.