by Roan Parrish
I was dashing around until the last minute after a delay at work and an infelicitous train downtown colluded to have me rushing in the door only ten minutes before Rhys was set to arrive. I jerked my clothes on over wet skin and scrubbed at my wet hair with a towel, all the while glancing at my phone every thirty seconds to make sure I didn’t miss Rhys’s text and leave him standing on my front stoop.
As I pulled on my socks, though, I heard Rhys’s voice, and then my roommate Cid’s voice answering. I opened the bathroom door to find Rhys sitting on my bed—which, sure, was the couch, but it still sent a pang through me—and Cid perching on the arm.
“Hey,” Rhys said, smiling when he saw me. “You look great.”
“I— You— Thanks, you too,” I said, swiping at my wet hair and steam-limp clothes.
Cid saluted us and disappeared into his bedroom.
“Your front door was open,” Rhys said. “Not very safe.” But he said it absently, eyes taking in the shithole apartment.
“Um, should we go?”
Rhys stood and from behind his back, like a magician, he pulled a bouquet of flowers.
“For me?” I said stupidly. “I…you don’t need to do that.” I shook my head. Cut flowers belonged in a world I’d never set foot in. “It’s a waste,” I heard myself say, the echo of something I sensed I had heard someone else say once. I cringed as soon as it was out of my mouth, because it was such a mean, ungrateful thing to say.
Rhys stepped close, flowers in hand, and pressed his thumb to my lips.
“Nope. Nothing for you is a waste,” he said, voice low and rough. “You deserve everything.”
* * *
—
Rhys was coming home on Friday night, and when I told Imari earlier in the week, she made me agree to leave early on Friday so I could make sure I was home to meet him. I agreed, not telling her that he wouldn’t be home until eight or nine, because I’d decided that I was going to take Caleb’s suggestion. I was going to bite the bullet and call Mona. And then I was going to make Rhys’s favorite meal for dinner on Friday night, and it was going to be perfect.
When I thought about my first dates with Rhys, it was clear what I had responded to so strongly in him.
He had, whether by instinct or happenstance, taken control of every detail, freeing me up to just participate. Whether it was some silly activity he’d planned or a simple walk in the park, everything with Rhys was fun and engaged. Being with him had felt like what I imagined being a kid was supposed to feel like: no pressure, no responsibility, just enjoyment. He had given me exactly what I’d needed. What I hadn’t even known I’d wanted.
And now that he was gone, it was what I missed the most. The ease I felt in his presence. The ease that came from knowing that he’d ask honestly for what he wanted and I’d want to give it to him. Since he hadn’t asked for anything, I was going to use other means to figure out what he’d want.
Which is how I found myself on the phone with Rhys’s mother on Thursday evening, as she ran through a seemingly endless list of foods that Rhys loved. Apparently his hoover-like appetite was not a new development.
“It’s just, um…” How did you tell the mother of the man who married you that the extent of your culinary abilities was stirring in a flavoring packet? “Maybe something on the simpler end of the spectrum? Rhys has probably told you I’m not much of a cook.”
“Rhys has never said a single word about you that wasn’t glowing,” Mona said.
“So he lied?”
Mona laughed. “When Rhys loves someone it doesn’t occur to him to dwell on their weaknesses.”
“Lucky for me, I guess,” I accidentally said out loud.
There was a pause, and I heard a door close on Mona’s end of the line.
“Matt,” she said gently. “Why haven’t we met you?”
“Well, there was that blizzard last year when we were gonna come.”
“Yes, I remember,” she said, and then she waited. It reminded me so much of Rhys. The way he would stay silent but listening, waiting for me to speak.
“The Christmas before…we’d just met,” I said tentatively. “Rhys asked me to come with him but it didn’t seem—it had just been a couple weeks. I didn’t think he was serious.”
Rhys had held a hand out to me from his bed as I jerked my clothes back on. Come meet my family, he’d said. Please, I’m so crazy about you. I’d shaken my head. The offer was extended as easily as Rhys’s hand, and it had turned my stomach. I couldn’t think of anything I wanted more than a family at the holidays, but the idea of spending time with his…I didn’t know how it worked, didn’t know how I could feel anything but broken amidst a houseful of Rhyses.
“Then, I dunno, I guess there wasn’t another time?”
His parents had come to the city to see one of his shows not long after that, but they’d only stayed for the weekend. His sister had stayed with him for a few days a couple months later, but I hadn’t been living with him yet.
Now that I thought about it, Rhys had planned to go for his dad’s birthday and then his sister’s. I knew he’d mentioned it, but somehow the plans had never quite materialized. Why had he changed his mind?
Mona started to say something, then cut herself off and said, “Well, I hope we get to meet you, dear. All right, about this dinner. How about baked mac and cheese? Rhys always loved it as a boy.”
Promising visions of Kraft boxes danced in my head. “That seems okay.”
As Mona talked me through the recipe, I scribbled madly on the back of a junk mail envelope, trying to get every word of her instructions, Kraft boxes quickly replaced by things like béchamel and roux.
“You can’t go wrong,” she said cheerily, and I didn’t have the heart to regale her with all the many, many ways it wasn’t true. “Must be nice having the house to yourself while Rhys is gone,” Mona was saying dreamily, as I underlined the parts of my scribbles that were ingredients I’d need at the store.
“Oh, um, yeah, it’s okay.” I glanced around and all I saw were creeping shadows and scratching branches and an emptiness that threatened permanence.
“Or maybe it’s just lonely?” She said it so gently.
“I’m not really used to having much space to myself,” I admitted. “But, um, Rhys’ll be home tomorrow so.” My voice sounded thin and anxious and embarrassing. “Anyway, I guess I should run to the store and get all this stuff.”
“Just remember, good cheese makes all the difference.”
I chose not to tell her that I wouldn’t know good cheese from Kraft Singles on a sunny day.
“Okay, thanks. Thanks a lot for this.”
“You call me anytime, sweetie.”
“I—okay, bye.”
Once I’d hung up the phone, it seemed like the shadows crept closer and the branches scratched louder. I shoved my phone and wallet in my pockets and grabbed my keys. I took off toward the store on foot out of long habit, only thinking I could have driven after walking for half a mile. But it was a nice night, and it felt good to have somewhere to go.
Under the fluorescent light of the supermarket, all the cheese looked like white and orange chunks of sameness. But if Mona thought this was the most important part, I didn’t want to fuck it up before I’d even started. I googled all the cheeses on my phone but words like waxy and grassy didn’t really give me much to go on.
Finally, I picked the three most expensive chunks of cheese in the display, wincing at the cost and playing Rhys’s voice in my head, telling me what he always told me if we were at the store together. Get anything you like. Get anything you want to try. Then, ever since I’d told him it wasn’t just the money, If you don’t like it, I’ll eat it. I promise it won’t go to waste.
I put the cheese in my basket and wandered up and down the aisles, gathering the rest of the items on Mo
na’s list. Near the checkout line were a few bunches of flowers.
You deserve everything.
I smiled at the memory of the first time he’d brought me flowers, and added a bunch to my order. That had been the night Rhys had told me what his album would be like if he ever released one. His face had glowed as he described it. I’d told him what I could remember about my mother. About my cousins whispering that she might have been deported. I’d choked on the word, and before I could say anything else, Rhys had slid his fingers through mine on the white tablecloth, and held my hand for the rest of dinner, smoothly changing the subject as I gulped my whole glass of ice water.
On the walk home from the grocery store, hands numb from the handles of the bags, I thought I saw someone walking a little ways in front of me down the highway, but the beams of passing cars showed no one was there.
* * *
—
“Hey.” Noé hung in my doorway tentatively on Friday morning. Relief spread through me. I’d thought he was gone for good.
“Hey, come in,” I said.
He flopped into the chair. He looked wrecked.
“You okay?”
He nodded and muttered, “Sorry.”
“It’s cool. I’m glad you came back. I’m really sorry I upset you.”
“Wasn’t you,” he said, shrugging.
“Yeah, I know.”
“I don’t have an appointment. But I just wanted to say…I like to take pictures.” He addressed the words to his sneakers, but his voice was soft. “It’s why I took that photo job. I kinda thought maybe if I got good at all the boring crap then Chester might let me use a camera. Fucked that up good.”
“Do you have a camera now?”
“Just on my phone.” He shrugged. “Doesn’t matter anyway. Everything I take pictures of…” He bit at his lip and shook his head. “It turns to shit.” When he looked up his eyes were haunted, and my heart stuttered in my chest. “I try to take a picture of a bird and the angle makes it look broken. Or kids playing basketball and the shadows look like hands trying to grab them. Took a pic of my friend and he looked…wrong.”
My heart pounded, and I saw branches turned to eerie fingers and heard the chirps of birds twisted into screams.
When I spoke, my voice was deceptively calm.
“The way you see the world, even if it feels grim…there’s value to it, Noé. And maybe if you take enough pictures, someday it won’t look that way to you anymore.”
“Yeah, maybe,” he said, but his voice was flat and his eyes were gone.
* * *
—
“Mother fucking shit fuck!” I yelled, jerking the pan off the burner. It was the third time the butter and flour in the pan had gone from an uncooked blob to a foul-smelling black lump in the space of what seemed like one second, and at this point I was as concerned that I’d run out of butter as that I’d burn the house down.
I fumbled with my phone, shocked at myself as I dialed. But I wanted it—needed it—to be perfect. Mona answered on the second ring, voice bright. She sounded legitimately thrilled to hear from me.
“Matt, hello! How are you, dear?”
“Hi, Mona, um, hi. I have this—well the—I mean, how are you?”
“Béchamel blues?”
“What? Oh yeah. Yes. The flour and butter thing. That’s important? Cuz mine keeps burning.”
“It can be a little tricky if you have your burner too hot. How about if I talk you through this bit?”
“Yes, please,” I said, so relieved it almost blotted out my irritation at myself for not being able to do something so simple on my own.
I added more butter and more flour and stirred consistently, Mona on speakerphone. I stirred in the milk and as it began to thicken, I sighed. “Fuck, thank you. Uh. I mean, not fuck. Just thank you.”
Mona’s laughter echoed in my head after I’d hung up the phone. I added the cheese to the pot and turned to the pasta. This I could do, no problem. When the pasta was cooked, I poured it into the cheese sauce. Mona had used the word enrobed to describe how the sauce should cling to the noodles. Fuck if I could tell whether those noodles were enrobed, but it looked fine to me. I poured the whole thing into the casserole dish I’d found under the sink, sprinkled more cheese on top, put it in the oven, and went to take a shower so I wasn’t covered in butter and flour when Rhys got home.
Under the hot water I recognized my flitting thoughts and the pit in my stomach for what they were: nerves. I was nervous about Rhys coming home. I’d been low-key nervous all day and I wasn’t sure why, when all I wanted was to see him.
The door slammed as I was pulling on my underwear and I flew downstairs, heart pounding.
Rhys was standing just inside the door, shabby duffel bag and worn guitar case at his feet. His hair looked longer, and he seemed taller somehow—bigger than I remembered.
When he saw me, those impossible blue eyes flared with light and he grinned. “Goddamn, I didn’t think I said the part about you being wet and nearly naked out loud, babe.”
I threw myself at him, and he held me, those strong arms squeezing me so tight I lifted my feet off the floor and wrapped my legs around his waist. Then I just clung to his shoulders, breathing him in. His smell. That was what I had missed the most.
“I missed you,” I mumbled into his neck. His lips found mine, and we kissed until Rhys sagged back against the door under my weight.
As our mouths parted, Rhys sniffed. “Are you cooking?”
“Oh, shit!” I pushed off Rhys’s chest and bolted for the oven. The back left corner had blackened on the top, but the rest of it looked okay.
Rhys was peering into the oven over my shoulder. “Huh. Guess that’s why one slice of the pizza always tastes burnt,” he mused.
I slid the casserole dish onto the stovetop and turned off the oven.
“Where’d you get that?” Rhys asked absently, paying far more attention to twining his fingers in my damp curls.
“Made it.”
“Wait, for real? What is it?”
“Baked mac and cheese. I uh. Your mom told me you used to like it.”
“No shit, you talked to my mom?” I nodded. “What’d she do, call to check in on you?”
I shook my head. “I called her. I wanted to know what your favorite food was. I wanted tonight to be perfect.”
“Aw, husband,” he said, leering at me even as his eyes went all soft. “Did she tell you this was my favorite?” My heart sped up at the word husband.
“No. The consensus seems to be you’ll put just about anything in your mouth.”
“Is that right,” he murmured. I sucked in a breath as he dropped to his knees in front of me, pushing me back into the counter. He dragged my underwear down my thighs and leaned in until I could feel his breath on my crotch. “Wouldn’t want to make my mom a liar.”
“Oh my Lord, don’t talk about your mom when you’re—fuck.”
He licked up my cock and grabbed my hips, going down on me like he was fucking starving. His mouth mapped every inch of my dick, my balls; his scruffy cheeks rubbed the insides of my thighs; and he held me against the counter so all I could do was clutch at his hair. I was hard and trembling for him almost instantly, and I let my mind go blank of everything except the feel of Rhys’s hands and mouth and hair.
In minutes I was a panting, shaking, gasping mess, screaming out my orgasm and coming in Rhys’s mouth before collapsing on the kitchen floor with my underwear around my ankles. Rhys loomed over me, looking very pleased with himself.
“So did you really cook for me?” he asked, like that simple act of domesticity got to him as much as sucking me off had.
I tried to talk and it came out “Ngha.” I reached for him, still shaky and uncoordinated, but Rhys understood what I was going for.
“You gonna jerk me off, baby? Or suck me?” I groaned, his words making me feel exposed, vulnerable. I nodded avidly, trying to say Whichever you want with my eyes and my body. Rhys shoved his jeans and boxers down and his erection sprang up, huge and ruddy. “Do you know how often I’ve thought of you like this?” Rhys’s voice was dark and velvet and made my heart pound.
“On the kitchen floor, with macaroni and cheese on the stove?” I rasped and winked at him. He got that look that meant I acknowledge you don’t know how to talk about how much I want you so you make stupid jokes. Then he leaned down and kissed me deeply. I could taste myself on his tongue and slid a hand around his neck. This, this with Rhys kissing me, the weight of him above me, was what I had missed most.
When he broke the kiss, I opened my mouth in protest, and he slid his thumb between my lips, gazing down at me. Then he straddled me and cupped my jaw, expression tender and hot just before he breached my lips with his dick. My eyes fluttered shut, and I let myself feel every inch of him. He was already leaking, so turned on from going down on me that I knew it wouldn’t take him long. I let my hands fall open on his thighs, so it was just him, controlling the thrusts, and me, lying there naked, letting him. Peace washed over me.
He thrust gently at first, moaning as I curled my tongue along his length. After a minute, though, I squeezed his thigh in encouragement and opened my eyes.
“More?”
I nodded immediately, and Rhys cupped my jaw gently, then thrust deep, cock sliding into my throat. His breath stuttered as I choked a little, then I let my eyes drift shut again and adjusted the angle of my neck. I loved this, loved the feeling that Rhys could do anything to me and I could take it, loved the way it felt to put myself in his hands, for his pleasure. This was what I’d missed the most.
“Oh fuck, babe,” he groaned, thighs shaking. On his next thrust, I swallowed around him, then the next and the next, and then he froze, shooting down my throat with a helpless gasp.