"Okay," I say. "So we rebuild."
"We rebuild," Alex confirms.
***
Evening comes slowly.
Someone suggests a movie. This leads to a twenty-minute negotiation that involves Malcolm campaigning hard for an action movie, Finn lobbying for a documentary, Rhys not caring, Alex staying out of it, and me eventually choosing something none of them suggested just to end the debate.
Finn starts to push the coffee table aside. Malcolm joins him without being asked.
"What are we doing?" Alex asks from the armchair.
"Floor night," I say.
"We have a couch."
"Floor night," Malcolm repeats, already dragging blankets out of the hall closet.
Alex watches the couch get abandoned for a pile of blankets and pillows on the floor. He looks at the couch. He looks at the floor. He looks at me.
"Floor night," he says. Resigned.
We build the nest together. Malcolm brings every blanket and pillow in the cabin. Finn arranges them with a system thatonly makes sense to him. Rhys contributes by standing in the middle of the operation and being directed by Finn to place things in high locations.
When it's done it's a ridiculous sprawling mess of bedding that takes up most of the living room floor.
I settle into the center of it.
Alex lies down beside me. This is the first time he's been in the nest pile since and I can feel the significance of it in how he lets himself be close without a buffer. His arm comes around me. The weight of it against my ribs.
Rhys takes my other side. He arranges himself with his usual precision, accounting for his size, making sure I have room. His warmth is immediate and steady.
Malcolm drops down on the other side of Alex and stretches out with the contentment of a man who has achieved exactly what he wanted. His hand finds my knee across the pile, just resting there. Contact.
Finn settles in against Rhys's other side, which puts him at the edge of the nest. He adjusts three times, rearranges his pillow, takes off his glasses and puts them carefully on the coffee table, puts them back on, takes them off again.
"Finn," Malcolm says. "Lie down."
"I'm optimizing."
"Lie down."
He lies down. Then shifts once more. "Okay. Good."
The movie starts.
Nobody watches it.
Malcolm and Finn pick up an argument from earlier in the day. It has something to do with pasta and whether a specific shape is objectively superior to another shape. It escalates. Finn uses the word "empirically." Malcolm uses the word "wrong." Alex tells them both to be quiet. Neither of them is quiet.
Rhys's purr starts up beside me. The stuttering rhythm of it moves through the blankets into my bones. I press closer to him and his arm tightens slightly.
Alex's fingertips trace circles on my hip. Slow. Absent. Like he's not even aware he's doing it.
On screen, a car chase happens. Nobody notices.
"Penne is structurally superior," Finn says. "The tube holds the sauce."
