“Daddy said aswear,” Gracie announced loudly. Since she normally didn’t mention it when Wilder’s language slipped, I guessed she was still mad about not being able to keep the dog. I got it.
Avery reached over and picked up Gracie’s empty spaghetti bowl and said, “Did you leave room for dessert, Gracie? Lee brought pie.”
She perked up instantly and I smiled. Avery knew what made Gracie tick. “What kind?”
“Peach,” Lee said. “Your favorite.”
“Yeah, but you brought it because it’smyfavorite, right?” Chase said, shooting Lee a look that might have been threatening if you didn’t know Chase. That was just his face.
“Sure. You keep telling yourself that,” Lee said. He was probably about the only person in the world who could say something like that to Chase and actually get him to laugh in return. It was something, watching Chase let himself relax and be happy. Like, actually, genuinely happy, not just flashing the sort of sharp grin that might have been a smile or might have been a warning. But throwing people off balance was part of what Chase did to keep safe, the same as I kept quiet. It had taken Chase a long time to figure out that he didn’t have to do it with our roommates, let alone how to let someone in even closer than that. But Lee was here now, in Chase’s life and in our house more often than not, and I was so fucking proud of Chase for allowing that to happen.
It had been hard, though, for me, because the more there was a Chase and Lee, the less room there was for a Chase and Cash, and that hurt. Like, it wasn’t as though Chase could be there for me in the middle of the night every time to make sure I slept, and I knew that. Hell, I’d been the one to tell him so when he was being a dumbass about dating Lee in the first place. But it turnedout that being right wasn’t any consolation when I woke up alone and shaking from a nightmare, and Imissedhim.
Maybe if I got to keep the dog, the nights wouldn’t be so lonely, and I wouldn’t have to lie there in the dark when things were bad and fight the urge to go and get Chase. And some nights I lost that fight, and I did go and get him, and he never minded. Neither did Lee.
But I’d meant what I told him when he started dating Lee. I didn’t want to spend the rest of our lives depending on each other and holding each other back at the same time. And I was working on getting better and talking more. It was justhard.
I thought about Mason again, even though I didn’t knowwhatto think about him. I just kept coming back to poke at the idea of him, like he was a bruise I couldn’t leave alone. I liked him because he seemed like a good guy, and he hadn’t done anything to make me not like him. So that wasn’t the issue. The issue was that I wasn’t sure what I meant when I told myself I liked him. That was a word that could mean a whole lot of different things. It never had for me before now, but when I thought about Mason, everything seemed complicated—him, me, and that little word that got trickier to pin down every time I tried to look at it.
I thought of Mr. Conrad and the Lego we were building together. You just had to follow the instructions and place one brick at a time. There was a life lesson in that, Mr. Conrad liked to say with a laugh, but I doubted Lego had made instructions that covered how to figure out the feelings you were having for the local vet. Like, Ihadfeelings. They were fucking loud, louder than spaghetti night. But hell if they could tell me what they wanted.
I ate my peach pie and tried to enjoy the rest of spaghetti night.
Later that night, back home, I sat on the ratty old couch on the front porch and stared out into the darkness while I listened to a podcast on how communication worked in deep space. Which was funny since I couldn’t even figure out how to make it work in Goose Run. Behind the voice of the podcast host, I could hear the usual sounds coming from inside the house as everyone settled down for the night—muted conversations and low laughter, the squeal of the pipes as someone used the shower, the background music of whatever was on the television in the living room.
I slid a hand under the neckline of my borrowed scrub shirt and curled my fingers over my shoulder to ease the phantom itch I sometimes got there. I didn’t have to scratch or anything, just rub my hand over the skin as though it needed the touch to remember it was healed now. The burns hadn’t been as bad as they could have been, but my shoulders in particular had blistered like I’d layered a few weeks’ worth of bad summer sunburns over each other all at once, and even now I hated the smell of Neosporin. Chase had applied it diligently to my skin for weeks, stealing a fresh tube from the Piggly Wiggly whenever we were close to running out.
Mason hadn’t been weird about the scars. He’d seen them, but he hadn’t reacted. That was good. Like, it wasn’t a huge jump for him to figure out that the guy who couldn’t talk about anything especially couldn’t talk about his scars, but I appreciated it all the same because not everyone would have pretended like nothing had happened. It reminded me of the way Mason was with the dog, just talking to it in a regular way like nothing was wrong, even when the dog was vibrating with anxiety while Mason checked his injured ear.
I didn’t know what it said about my perception of Mason, or myself, when I was comparing myself to a dog in this scenario, but hey, I already knew the part of my brain that was in charge ofemotional regulation was a total dumpster fire, so the dog thing wasn’t even that crazy.
The front door opened, spilling light out onto the porch, and Chase flung himself down on the couch beside me. He was wearing a T-shirt and boxer shorts, and his hair was still wet from the shower.
“You okay?” he asked me, his shoulder knocking against mine. He gave me a narrow, scowling look in the darkness. It was the sort of look he gave when he was about to pick a fight with someone. It was also the sort of look he gave most of the other times, so he could be hard to read if you didn’t know him like I did. “You sure that vet guy didn’t get you to work all day on your day off?”
I snorted. “His name is Mason, and no, he didn’t make me do anything, so you don’t need to go and let the air out of his tires or whatever. I bathed and brushed the dog and then played with it for like the whole day.” I didn’t mention I’d folded some towels because Chase would want to know if that was coming off my debt or not, and I didn’t know either. “It was good.”
Chase didn’t look convinced, but we had different ideas of what counted as fun.
“I got free lunch too,” I said.
“What’d you have?”
“Chicken and mayo sandwiches.”
Chase gave an approving hum. “So he’s okay then?”
“He’s okay,” I confirmed.
“Good.” Chase let out a long breath, and we sat together in silence for a while before he dug an elbow into my ribs. “Do you think he’s hot?”
“No!” I elbowed him back. “Fuck off.”
Chase got an arm around my neck and pulled me in for something that was half hug, half wrestling move. “I’m sorry!”He was laughing, though. “I’m just trying to think of why you’d want to spend all day at his place.”
I untangled myself from him and straightened up. “Because the dog is there, asshole.”
Do you think he’s hot?belonged in the dumpster fire in my brain where I was already keeping the question of whatlikingmeant when it came to Mason. I couldn’t answer because I didn’t know, and thinking about it just confused me even more.
