by Roan Parrish
I’d never had my own space. Never had my own room.
The first apartment I moved into after I left St. Jerome’s was just an efficiency that I shared with four other people. Whoever went to bed first grabbed the futon, and the rest crashed in sleeping bags or cushions on the floor, stepping over each other to go about our business. The ones I had after that had bedrooms, at least, but they were always overcrowded, never quiet, and never had any real privacy. I’d developed the habit of roaming the city pretty early.
At first it wasn’t just to escape my roommates, but also to revel in the freedom of being able to go wherever I wanted, whenever I wanted, after the limitations at St. Jerome’s. I’d leave the apartment with my keys and a book and walk around for hours, learning new parts of the city I’d lived in my whole life by moving through them.
When it was cold, I’d just walk, sometimes stopping in the library or the train station to get warm. When it was nice out, I’d sit in a park to read until fatigue or fear drove me back home again. A few nights I tried sleeping in the parks instead, wishing that the restfulness I felt while reading could be pulled over me like a blanket when I slept. But it wasn’t a good idea, and after waking up to someone kneeling over me with a knife and a desperate look, I never did it again.
When I went home with dates who lived alone, I’d relish the peace and quiet. And the shower. Once, a few years back, when my roommate Kyle got bedbugs and we all fled the apartment, I stayed with a guy I’d slept with a few times and he told me I could stay long term if I wanted. But it had quickly become clear that he wanted some kind of live-in sex toy, and that was never gonna be me, even if his shower did have a steam setting that made me feel like I was at a spa. Well, what I assumed it felt like at a spa.
The first time Rhys had brought me to the Sleepy Hollow house, he’d laughed at me because I kept thinking I saw things out the windows into the wooded backyard, kept jumping at noises.
“You sleep in a room with people walking through it all the time and can doze off on the subway or on a park bench, and you’re startled by a birdcall?” he’d teased, poking me in the side but pulling me close.
“Whatever, I got lost in Central Park once and there were just trees and squirrels and birds and it was scary as shit, man,” I’d said. “Someone could be coming at you from any direction. I kept spinning around, expecting to find someone standing right behind me. Nature’s freaky.”
I’d gotten used to it since I’d moved in. Mostly. I wasn’t even sure what I was afraid of here. There was a sense of frightening possibility in a landscape where people weren’t watching. It unnerved me. In the city, there were so many eyes on everything that you didn’t have to worry someone was walking up behind you with a giant ax.
Here…it seemed like anything could happen.
I nuked a frozen burrito and flopped onto the couch. My phone rang just as I sat down.
“Hey!” I said, and Rhys’s happy drawling, “Hey, babe,” made me feel warm.
“You make it to your folks’ okay?”
Rhys’s first show the next night was in Charlotte, so he’d stopped in Raleigh for the night to see his parents and his sister.
“Yep, we just had dinner, and I’m heading out to the tour meeting in about an hour.”
I ate my burrito—molten on the outside, ice cold on the inside, like always—as Rhys updated me on his family.
His mom had adopted a new puppy and his dad pretended the puppy annoyed him but was clearly in love with it. Morgan was planning to ask her boss for a raise, and Doug said if her boss didn’t go for it she should look for something else. Tommy informed everyone that he wanted to be called Captain TomTom and that he was a robot superhero that gained bursts of superhuman strength by being fed cupcakes. Sarah said cupcake and looked so hopeful that Rhys’s mom had driven to the store to get some.
“Typical evening at the Nylands’,” Rhys concluded. Between us hung the unstated Not that you’d know, since you still haven’t met them.
“Your mom’s such a softie,” I said.
“It’s true. Give her something to rescue, feed, or lecture, and she’s pretty much in her glory.”
“I see where you get it from,” I teased.
“I’m only a softie for you, babe.” His voice was low and fond. “Anyway, how are you?”
“I’m okay,” I said through a mouth full of burrito.
“Is that Chef Boyardee out of the can?” Rhys asked suspiciously. I wasn’t sure why eating it out of the can upset him so much. It just saved washing a dish. And it’s not like the stuff tasted better warm. But he always got this pained look on his face, so I’d stopped doing it in front of him.
“Nope, burrito.”
“I bet it’s frozen in the middle,” he said wistfully.
“Yup.”
“You know if you cook it for half the time, then cut it open, then cook it the rest of the way, the middle will—”
“Yeah, yeah, you’ve told me, but I don’t care. It’s a hassle.”
“If I was there I’d do it for you,” he said, voice rough.
“I know—I—thanks. Always tastes better when you do it.”
I could hear the pleased smile in Rhys’s sigh. He liked when I let him do things for me. Sometimes when I was doing things wrong, he just took whatever it was out of my hands with a look that said he couldn’t bear to watch me, and did it for me. Like nuking a burrito, or the time I’d tried to regrout the shower tiles. I liked it too. It felt intimate, like we belonged to each other.
“Hey, maybe you could try one of those meal things that Caleb was talking about.”
Caleb had been talking about his friend Huey, who had begun using one of those services that put the ingredients for meals in a box with directions and delivered it to your door.
“I still don’t understand how people who are hungry don’t just take those boxes off people’s stoops and eat what’s inside. Easier than dumpster diving.”
“I hardly think people would take it off our stoop in Sleepy Hollow.”
“No, I know, I was just saying in general. Um, yeah, I wouldn’t ever do one of those.”
“Yeah, I know,” Rhys said, and we lapsed into silence. “I just worry about you. I know it pisses you off, but I do.”
“It doesn’t piss me off, I just…All the stuff you worry about is so…” Minor. All the shit that Rhys worried about—was I eating out of a can, did I get some vegetables today, was I well rested—it felt so inconsequential compared to the life I’d had before I met him. But I knew that to him, it wasn’t. It was how he showed he cared.
“Okay, baby, I get it. I know you can take care of yourself. I just wish you could see what I see.”
“What do you see?” I asked.
Rhys’s voice on the phone was steady, calm, but he always got this soothing lowness to his voice when he was telling me things that he felt deeply but knew I might not want to hear. Like he was talking to a frightened animal.
“You were so used to things being out of your control for so long that sometimes you forget that now you have the power to make decisions. That you don’t have to be cold because you can turn up the thermostat. That if you hate everything in the fridge you can order food. That if you feel sad or upset, you can say so and I’ll try to help.”
I couldn’t help the noise that escaped me at that last.
“I’m not saying I can make you not sad, Matty. Just that you could tell me because I’d want to know. And I’d want to help if I could. I’d want to try.”
I stared at the half-eaten burrito on my plate, cheese congealed into a grainy slick of oil, some kind of processed chicken in a cold chunk in the middle, tortilla gone hard and curled at the edges. It felt like concrete in my stomach. You could eat something else. That’s what Rhys just said. You could order pizza. Or Thai. You could have cere
al.
I made a sound so he’d know I hadn’t hung up, but I didn’t have anything to say.
I could hear the chair or couch Rhys must’ve been sitting on groan under his weight as he settled in to tell me another story about his family. It was one of my favorite things about Rhys. He threw his not insubstantial weight around like a little kid or a big dog, with the certainty that he’d be held. It was a kind of radical trust that I watched like a magic trick, hoping to see how it was done so maybe someday I could replicate it.
After I hung up the phone with Rhys, I choked down the rest of my cold burrito and half watched part of a movie about aliens that infiltrated a spaceship. When it got gory I flicked the TV off. Silence settled over the house, making each sound echo ominously. The electric hum of the light above the sink. The churning of the air conditioner. The flit of a bug hitting the window. The rustling of leaves.
Out there, some thirty miles south, was the city. I strained to hear it—the comforting rush of cars, crush of people—but I couldn’t. I knew I couldn’t.
I washed my plate and fork by hand. Rhys had a dishwasher but I never used it. I wandered through the quiet house again. I didn’t know what I was looking for. Maybe I wasn’t looking for anything. Maybe I was just confirming that I really was alone.
In the tiny guest room, the new bed, dresser, and night table stood, ready for visitors. I tried to imagine Grin coming to visit. Tried to imagine saying, “Let me show you to the guest room.” It was absurd. Grin would laugh his ass off.
I found myself back in the living room, gazing at the bookshelves. It was pretty easy to tell my books from Rhys’s because mine were the sci-fi and fantasy paperbacks with white-slashed broken spines, half-torn-off covers, and yellow pages. I’d plucked some of them out of free boxes on the street, gotten some at library book sales, and picked some of them up off tables in cafés or benches at the train station where people had simply left them when they’d finished. One of my roommates had worked at a bookstore for a little while, and he’d brought home some stripped books for me—stock that didn’t sell got the covers torn off and shipped back to the publisher as proof rather than shipping the books themselves, but my roommate couldn’t bear to throw them away and rescued them instead.
I only kept the ones I thought I’d want to read again, leaving the others for people to pick up just as I had, so I hadn’t held on to that many.
Then there were the books of mine that were indistinguishable from Rhys’s. Books Rhys had bought me, bringing one home after he’d heard me mention it, or taking me to the bookstore on my birthday and telling me we weren’t leaving until I picked out two books I wanted. I’d balked when he’d tried to get me to buy more than that.
“I can only read one at a time,” I’d told him, and he’d given me a sly look like he thought I was being purposely difficult. But I didn’t want to have to choose among them. I wanted to enjoy getting to read a book without making any choice at all.
It was one of these that I slid off the shelf now. It was the most recent book he’d bought me, after hearing a friend of his rave about it as they killed time between takes in the studio. I’d read it twice, liking it so much I’d gotten to the end and flipped right back to the beginning to start it again.
I breathed in the clean smell of new paper and glue, and told myself that I was just appreciating how nice books smelled when they came from the bookstore instead of a free box and not trying to detect the scent of Rhys on the book—his hands as he’d chosen it and carried it home, his clothes as he’d grabbed it from me and teased me by shoving it under his shirt when I wouldn’t pay attention to him because I was reading, inviting me to come and get it.
But it just smelled like paper.
It was only nine, but I took the book upstairs, stripped out of my clothes, and climbed into my side of the bed. Even though it was warm, I pushed the blanket into a circle around me and turned on only the bedside lamp, like I was in a cocoon of light even as the house was dark and quiet around me.
I read for hours, until my eyelids started to droop. Then I shut off the light and pulled the covers around me, waiting for the familiar lassitude of our bed to take me. I stretched out my arm unthinkingly, for Rhys, but of course he wasn’t there.
Suddenly I was wide awake. I pulled Rhys’s pillow over and held on to it, squeezing my eyes shut because with closed eyes the darkness disappeared. I counted the seconds.
This is what it feels like to be alone again. Remember?
I pushed the thought aside. I wasn’t alone. I wasn’t that person anymore. I had a husband and friends and a house and a job and people who would notice if I disappeared off the face of the earth. I wasn’t that kid anymore.
But I still clung to the pillow because there was one truth I couldn’t push aside: I’d never spent a night by myself before.
Chapter 4
The first time I saw Rhys perform live, he was playing guitar and singing backup for a band he’d known for years and toured with twice. We’d been dating for about a month, and I could tell he wanted me there.
He always seemed to want me around. It was taking some getting used to. Hell, even using the word dating had taken some getting used to.
The venue smelled of beer and dust and the still-clinging echo of smoke, and I claimed a spot near the wall so I wouldn’t have to deal with a bunch of strangers bumping into me.
The band was good, I thought, but I only had eyes for Rhys. He looked alive and carefree and effortlessly cool. Worn denim hugged his muscular thighs as his boot heels stomped the stage, and a faded plaid snap-front shirt and his brown leather guitar strap stretched across his broad chest. Blond hair glowing under the stage lights and blue eyes snapping, Rhys sank into the music like it was the most natural thing on earth.
He sang confidently, voice full of life and texture, but never once did he overpower the lead singer, never once did he pull focus. Not on purpose, anyway. It was a testament to the man he was, as well as the musician. He was passionate about what he did, but he wouldn’t let his passion for it diminish anyone else’s. It wasn’t grasping or greedy, but respectful. And I admired the shit out of it, especially since I knew he wanted his own shot.
He was a fucking star, even if the world didn’t know it yet.
Backstage after the show, Rhys’s face lit up when he saw me, and he dragged me into a huge bear hug, arms so tight around me he lifted me off the ground. I could feel the heat coming off him through his clothes, and he was damp with sweat.
“Hey!” he called to the rest of the band, grinning. He slid his palm to the back of my neck, callused fingers playing with my hair for a moment before he pulled me tight to his side. “Come meet my guy.”
* * *
—
The rest of the first week after Rhys left for tour was busy days and sleepless, empty nights. On Wednesday I took the train into the city earlier than I usually did, and took a later one home. By Friday, I was out of the house at six and wandered around Harlem after work until nine before I headed home. Bonus, off-peak ticket prices.
When Rhys called on Thursday before his show and heard the city in the background, I told him I had stayed late to get caught up on some work. When the same thing happened on Friday, I said it was because I was going to see a movie.
How could I tell Rhys I was twenty-five years old and I didn’t want to be in the house alone?
Although we’d spent a lot of time talking about his tour, this was the part I hadn’t let myself consider. The alone part. Rhys had brought it up a few times, mostly at night, with the lights off and his hand in my hair.
“I don’t want you to be lonely,” he’d said, and I’d buried my face in his neck.
Because I’d told myself that wasn’t me anymore. I told myself that there was a before and an after. Before, I was Grim, with no family, no prospects, no future. Never precis
ely lonely because I didn’t know any other way.
But this was the after. Now, I was Matt Argento, with a job I loved, a husband I loved, and a home. Like, a for real house with a backyard and a fence and a grill that had a cover for the winter. And that meant I had a future. Yes, Rhys might be leaving on tour for a little while, but he would come back. He’d promised he would come back. So I just had to float through the time he was gone, and everything would be okay again.
I told myself over and over that I was fine. I was Matt. I wasn’t Grim. Not anymore. And I had truly believed it.
But now, things that I had pushed down so deep I thought they had collapsed under the weight of my disregard were beginning to scratch at the corners of my mind.
On Saturday morning, I dragged myself out of bed and stumbled into the kitchen. As I was stirring sugar into my coffee, my phone chimed with a text from Rhys.
Don’t be mad at me! I love you and I wish I was there to kiss the shit out of you.
I sat, staring at the screen, trying to figure out what I’d done to make him think I was mad at him. Had he known I was lying about seeing a movie the night before? Sometimes I did things that I thought were nothing, and Rhys thought they meant I was angry, or upset, or depressed. So it wasn’t unrealistic that I’d done something.
Then he sent a picture of himself, blue eyes sparkling and lips pursed like he was kissing me, and I thought maybe mad had been a typo.
The chime of the doorbell interrupted my self-scrutiny. I ignored it because unexpected visitors either meant deliveries, which they’d eventually leave at the door, or people selling something—magazines or Jesus or solar paneling, it didn’t matter; I wanted nothing to do with any of them.
But just as I was relaxing back into the seat, a voice came from the other side of the door.
“Matt? It’s Theo. I know you’re in there.”
“What the fuck,” I muttered.