Best Laid Plans (Garnet Run 2)

When he’d told Charlie about his own parents, Charlie had raged against them, and agreed with Rye about how lucky he’d been that he had friends who could give him the affection his parents never had.

Rye had thought he understood. How cruel people could be. How powerless it was possible to feel. What a relief it was to find ways to rebuild that power.

But was Charlie only sympathetic when it cost him nothing to be so? When there was no risk involved? Did he only care about the people he loved, and everyone else in need could go to hell? Rye didn’t want to think it of him, but the pit in his stomach wouldn’t let him dismiss the idea.

Rye pulled off the main road and turned off the car. It was mostly dark now and drizzling, a fine mist that delicately beaded his already damp hair like dew on a spider’s web. It smelled clean and green out. How could rain through trees in Wyoming smell so different than rain through trees in Seattle? It was just one more reminder of how far Rye had moved from everything he once knew.

Rye sat in the car, in the dark, in the middle of a road no one drove down. The night critters were emerging and the day critters were bedding down; a brief, noisy overlap.

Rye had begun to think of Charlie as the person he might be able to have a life with. A life with joy and comfort, silliness and fun. Care. A life that was also about something bigger than themselves. But if he and Charlie didn’t even agree that it was good for kids in need of a safe place to have one...what hope was there?

Rye sighed from the depths of his being, turned the car on, and started back toward Garnet Run; to the Crow Lane house. His house.

He shoved his book in his back pocket and used his phone’s flashlight to guide him, and he went inside out of the rain.

Out of habit, he settled on the spot where he’d laid his sleeping bag when he first arrived, in the corner, facing the door. He wished Marmot were with him. If she were, she’d be sticking her nose out the front doorway and into the rain right now. She’d let the rain dampen her whiskers and cheeks and then she’d retreat back indoors, shaking her head like a dog to dry off before curling next to Rye.

He leaned against the wall—which, he noted with a combination of grudging satisfaction and grim resentment, didn’t squish the way it had before Charlie reframed it.

Ugh, damned Charlie with his way of making everything better and stronger.

Everything.

Rye slumped. Everything about his life—except, fine, maybe his takeout options—was better now than it had ever been. He had a job. He had a place to live that he didn’t constantly worry about losing, whether for monetary reasons or interpersonal ones.

He had a relationship that he loved with someone who truly saw him for who he was and cared about all of him. He had the space to contemplate a future—futures, really. All the possible futures.

And it was all because of meeting Charlie.

Without Charlie this house would currently be falling down around him, unnavigable by all but Marmot, who could flit through the most intimidating of rubble like it was a kitty amusement park.

The image reminded him of a video he’d seen: of a woman who had turned her small, suburban house into a maze of cat ramps with archways and tunnels between the rooms. He thumbed through his phone to find the video again.

God, Marmot would love that. He could just imagine her appearing in the kitchen while he was making breakfast, sticking her little head in at the smell of bacon cooking. Or seeing her pop into the living room and jump onto his shoulder from the ramp near the ceiling.

If Jane were there too, they’d probably chase each other. Jane would take up residence on a platform and snooze there peacefully until Marmot pounced on her and got her to play, exhausting them both until they curled up in a fluffy pile on the floor.

Fuck, that was an adorable picture.

He wished he was with Marmot and Jane. Wished they were curled up with him on the couch, purring, Marmot’s a light rumble and Jane’s the sound of tearing metal.

Which means you wish you were back at Charlie’s.

“Shut up,” Rye grumbled at his treacherous brain.

He let his eyelids fall half-shut to better see the cat playground he was envisioning. Tracy and Nate, and especially River, would get a kick out of a cat playground in the house.

He pulled up the hood of his sweatshirt and let his eyes drift the rest of the way shut as his mind wandered in the dark.