Best Laid Plans (Garnet Run 2)

Simon’s eyes flashed wide beneath his dark brows and then he toed the ground.

Rye was asking someone who felt anxious around people to do the thing that made him anxious immediately after calling his boyfriend a dick, so he wasn’t that hopeful.

He added, “We could just be, like, text friends, if you want? We don’t have to hang out or anything.”

Simon crossed his arms but didn’t say anything.

“Never mind, man. I’m sorry. Didn’t mean to put you on the spot.”

Simon made a frustrated noise and gestured at Rye.

“Sorry, I don’t—Oh, sure.” He took his phone out of his pocket and made a new contact, then handed it to Simon.

When Simon handed his phone back, Rye texted him so he’d have his number.

Hi.

Simon’s fingers flew.

Now we can talk about the weirdness that is the Matheson Brothers without them knowing we’re sharing information.

“Sounds good,” Rye said. “I really didn’t mean to put you on the spot, though. Just because I’m staying with Charlie for a minute...”

Simon texted, Shut up, you didn’t pressure me. I’m not good at talking—doesn’t mean I can’t make my own choices.

“Got it,” Rye said. Then, searching for a topic that wasn’t So about me calling your boyfriend a dick, “Is your new puppy really that cute?”

She’s the cutest goddamn thing but she somehow corrals the other animals into mischief they’d never gotten into before we got her. She’s basically a cult leader.

Then Simon sent two pictures, one of a very adorable puppy snoozing by the fire with her big paws sticking straight out, and the second of that same puppy in a room with lots of books and art supplies, a vee of cats and dogs behind her. Destruction was a promise.

It’s hard when adorable things are evil, Simon wrote, and sighed.

The brothers came out of the kitchen and neither appeared to be damaged so Rye assumed things were okay. Simon’s attention was immediately on Jack. When Jack smiled, Simon shot Rye a quick look that managed to communicate that his last text had referred to Jack as much as to the puppy.

Rye nodded at him just as Charlie appeared beside him and he heard Simon’s little breath of laughter.

“Okay, uh, bye, bro,” Jack said stiffly. “Rye, thanks for dinner. It was really good. Night.”

Simon waved and they left with their arms around each other. Rye thought of the way Jack had held Simon at the Crow Lane house when he’d been upset. Held him so tight it’d looked as if Simon could have lost all his edges, flowed free, and Jack would still have managed to contain him.

Rye swallowed his envy and turned to Charlie.

“I stand by what I said,” he told Charlie before Charlie could say anything.

Charlie didn’t look angry. He looked confused.

“You really think my brother is an ungrateful dick?”

“I don’t think he is an ungrateful dick. I think he said a mean, ungrateful thing. And he said it without imagining that it might be hurtful, so I assume he’s said similar things often enough to know you wouldn’t tell him off.”

Charlie shook his head. “It’s fine. He doesn’t like meatloaf.”

Rye rolled his eyes.

“It’s not about the meatloaf, specifically. But come on! At eighteen you learned how to cook and cooked him dinner every night and what he has to say about it is to make jokes about how you’re a bad cook? You have to get that that’s ungrateful?”

Charlie’s brow furrowed even more.

“He was just a kid,” Charlie said softly.

“So were you. And he’s not a kid anymore.”

“He... Jack’s a sweetheart,” Charlie said.

“I’m not insulting your parenting skills,” Rye said gently. “It sounds like you stepped in and raised Jack so selflessly that he never had to think about it.”

Charlie shook his head again as if he could erase the things Rye was saying like an Etch A Sketch.

“He...he was so young, and...”

Rye put his hands on Charlie’s upper arms and squeezed.

“I know.”

Rye could feel how tense Charlie’s muscles were and see the faint lines around his eyes.

“I gotta sit down,” Charlie said.

Chapter Fifteen

Charlie

Charlie’s thoughts were skittering all over the place. He was walking into his living room with Rye after dinner and he was walking into the living room of his parents’ house with his grandmother. She’d flown up from Florida for the funeral and offered to take Jack with her for the remainder of high school.

Charlie, two weeks past the legal ability to claim guardianship, had claimed it, and sent her away empty-handed, the prospect of losing his brother as well as his parents unthinkable. He’d known it would be hard but he had been blessedly ignorant of how hard, because if he’d known then he might have taken her up on her offer.

Instead she sent what money she could, when she could, and came to visit for one week every summer, claiming that it was a relief to escape the July Tampa heat.