by Roan Parrish
* * *
—
We stayed in bed until late afternoon, Rhys finally dragging me out from under the covers with promises of coffee and breakfast. My growling stomach liked that idea but there was a small problem.
“Uh, we kinda…don’t have any food.”
“What, all out of Chef Boyardee?” Rhys teased, and I flipped him off, but the truth was that we were.
“Okay, you make the coffee, and I’ll run to the store and grab the essentials.” He dropped a kiss on my hair and tugged on last night’s worn jeans and snap front denim shirt. I loved the way that shirt stretched tight across his shoulders so I could see the play of muscles in his back.
“Anything specific you want?” I shook my head. “Okay, back in a bit.”
The second his foot hit the first step, my heart started to pound and I felt light-headed with panic.
“Wait!” I called, startling myself.
“You think of something you want?” he asked, sticking his head back through the doorway.
“No, I, uh, I’ll come with you.” I scrambled to find socks and jeans, pulled on a sweatshirt. “Okay?”
He gave me this fond, amused look, and smoothed my hair where the sweatshirt had tangled it in my face. “Okay,” he said softly.
It was a gorgeous fall day, warm in the sun, chilly in the shade, the air rich with the scent of dirt and turning leaves. Things decaying and dying, some of them to be born again.
At the store, I trailed behind Rhys as he put things in the cart. The market was bustling with Saturday shoppers, and I couldn’t believe it was the same place I’d been on my own, late at night, fluorescent lights piercing my eyes. Now it was warm and inviting, alive with the promise of good food.
Rhys is back! Rhys is back, and everything is better, even the grocery store.
Rhys teased me gently when we passed the macaroni and cheese, and now the whole salty birthday dinner debacle seemed silly. Nothing to get upset about, just a little mistake. No problem.
“You want a belated birthday cake?” I asked.
“Nah, how about a pie?” We were passing the bakery section and pies with all different crusts gleamed in the window. Latticework and braids and cutouts of leaves adorned the different fillings. My stomach gave an embarrassingly loud growl. “You pick,” Rhys said.
“Uh, pumpkin,” I said. “No, wait, apple streusel. No, pumpkin.”
Rhys got both.
We barbecued chicken and corn on the cob and ate pie as Rhys told me about a mountain range they’d driven through and how he wanted to take me there and go hiking.
“Of course,” Rhys teased, “you’d probably try to hike in jeans and holey sneakers and fall off the side of a mountain.”
I shoved his shoulder. “You’d probably try to high-five a bear and get torn to pieces,” I said, and he laughed and kissed me. Everything was perfect.
Then the sun began to set and the shadows crept in. My stomach turned over like it had every night in recent memory.
Except that wasn’t supposed to happen anymore, because Rhys was back now. I swallowed down my anxiety.
“Let’s bring this stuff in,” he said, gathering up the detritus of dinner and squeezing my shoulder.
“I’ll do the dishes,” I offered, wanting something to do with my hands.
I turned on both kitchen lights and then flicked on the hallway light for good measure. I ran the water on high so I wouldn’t hear the sounds of night setting in. The stirring of insects. The scratching of branches. The clip-clop, clip-clop of the headless horseman’s steed galloping down the wooded path behind the house. The terrified screams of the boy who’d found Malcolm Washington in the bathroom of St. Jerome’s, in a lake of his own blood, razor blade gleaming near his outstretched fingertips.
Fuck.
I jumped at Rhys’s hand on my back, and he wrapped his arms around my waist from behind. I put the last plate in the drying rack and leaned back against him, closing my eyes. When there was only this, I was fine. With Rhys’s arms around me, even with the water off, I didn’t hear any of it. No bugs. No scratching. No chase. No screaming.
“You seem kinda restless. You wanna take a walk?” he asked, and I nodded.
I pulled Rhys’s sweatshirt back on, and we walked toward the river, mostly in silence. We watched the water for a while, and when two trains rumbled past, Rhys took my hand and we headed for home.
“Are you upset with me?” he asked when we were almost home, voice low and nonthreatening.
“What? No. Why?”
“You haven’t said much since I got back. It seems like you don’t even want to look at me.”
I shook my head.
“Then look at me,” he said, halting just outside the front door.
I looked up at him.
“Tell me something,” he said. “Anything.”
There was a line between his eyebrows, and I’d put it there. What could I tell him?
You left me and I know it wasn’t really leaving, but it shook something loose in me—something I thought wasn’t there anymore. A fear that nips at my heels and gallops after me if I turn away from it. And I thought once you were back it would go to sleep again, but…it hasn’t.
“I love you,” I said. And it sounded too much like a question.
“Okay, Matt,” he said. “Okay. I love you too. Maybe it’ll just take a little time to settle back into things again.”
I nodded, and my lips formed the words I’m sorry as he turned away from me to unlock the door.
The next couple of days we circled around each other in the evenings, watchful and waiting. It felt strange now to go to work and come home and find Rhys there. I would catch him sometimes, looking at me from across the room like he couldn’t quite figure out who I was.
The more uncertain he seemed, the more I needed to be reminded of what we had. I wanted him to hold me down and show me who I was. That I was his. But he touched me with too-gentle fingers, like I was something elusive and breakable.
On Friday night Rhys called as I was getting home to say he was at Caleb’s and they’d been working on a song, and I should come over to their house for dinner. But I wasn’t sure how I’d get there since he had the truck, and I said I was tired from work. Rhys said he’d be home later and I hung up the phone with his absence echoing through my bones.
He was gone again.
You cannot be this weak, I told myself. You can’t feel this way. Because if you’re not okay being alone anymore, then what will you do the next time he leaves?
I shoved the question down deep in my gut as the sun set and pulled the blanket onto the couch. I’d only meant to watch TV for a while, but I must’ve fallen asleep because I woke to Rhys’s hand on my cheek.
“Hi,” I said sleepily, reaching for him.
“Hi, baby,” he said and kissed me. I could taste ketchup on his lips and knew Caleb must have cooked hash. I wound my arms around his neck and held him to me.
“Want to come to bed?”
I nodded and let him pull me to my feet.
“What’s up with the couch?” he asked gently.
“Nothing. Just fell asleep.”
Rhys turned me in his arms and looked at me closely.
“Were you sleeping there when I was away?”
“Sometimes,” I muttered.
Rhys ran his thumb over my cheekbone. “How come, babe?”
“Cuz I missed you and the bed was sad without you.”
That look—that tender, possessive look—made my heart beat faster.
“Come to bed, Matty. It’s not sad now, right?”
I shook my head. Rhys looked tired.
In our bed, Rhys kissed me, hands running up and down my ribs and back like he was worried if he wasn’t touching me I would dis
appear. I worried about the same thing.
I ground my hips into his, thrilling at the press of his hard flesh against my own. His hand was in my hair and I bit at his neck to feel him rear against me. I didn’t know what I was doing. I bit him again and his eyes were surprised, but heated. His erection was steel against mine.
I swallowed hard and he grabbed my ass and squeezed. I shuddered at the delicious force.
“Make me,” I breathed and something flickered in his eyes. I didn’t know what I wanted, exactly.
Make me come, make me do what you want, make me stay here with you. Make me.
Rhys wrapped a rough hand around my cock and tightened the other in my hair, and jerked me off with hard, searing pulls. I cried out and buried my face in his neck, trying to reach his erection and failing.
He aligned our hips, his back bowed, and jerked us together, his lips hovering a breath from mine. I thrust hard and he held me down at the hip and I wrapped a hand around his. I could feel where his cock pressed into mine, heat against heat, and I let his hand set our pace, wild with desperation and need for something I couldn’t name.
When Rhys came with a shout, his lips parted and his eyes squeezed shut, I felt like I slammed back into my body. This was Rhys, my Rhys. I pulled him to me and felt his strong shoulders tremble as he said my name.
Then he was kissing me, and his come slicked the way for my own. He pulled my orgasm from me in white-hot flashes that left me clutching him.
Rhys said my name again and gathered me to him, and I thought the trembling in his arms lasted longer than it usually did after he came. I fell asleep with him still stroking a hand through my hair.
I came awake thrashing in the dark. Something was holding me down, and I pushed at it hard, fighting blindly.
“Matty!”
I rolled off the bed and nearly knocked over the lamp. I was breathing hard and the dream clawed at me. The open grave, Rhys standing above me, face composed in an expression of utter neutrality so gutting that when the dirt hit my open eyes I was glad for it to be blocked out. Another shovelful. Another. Rhys’s distant voice asking about the weather.
I ran into the bathroom, slammed the door, and threw up.
I must’ve only been asleep for an hour or so because it was still full dark out. I brushed my teeth until the toothpaste foamed pink.
Rhys stood at the door when I opened it, and he looked stricken.
“Are you okay?” He reached a hand out to me, from the darkness into the light of the bathroom. I nodded.
“Just had a bad dream,” I said, my voice rough from puking.
I pushed past Rhys and down the stairs and started to make coffee. The clock on the microwave told me it was only 1 A.M. but no way was I sleeping any more tonight.
The familiar rough spot on the ceiling of the living room seemed like it had gotten bigger. I walked into the living room to look at it more closely.
I heard my name and then Rhys was there. His face was drawn, his hair a mess.
“You need to talk to me,” he said. “What’s going on? Please, Matty, you’re fucking scaring me. Just tell me something.”
“I—I love you,” I said, because it was all I had to offer.
Rhys flinched.
“Goddamn it, Matt,” he said. “I love you too, more than anything. But you can’t use that phrase to get out of having a conversation with me. You can’t just say you love me and think it’s enough.”
I cringed and swallowed hard. “What do you want to know?”
Rhys reached out a hand to me and I took it. He warmed it in both of his, and for once it seemed like he didn’t know what to say.
“Why didn’t you call me when you found out your friend died?”
“I don’t know. It…you and Sid, it’s like you’re two different lives. I didn’t even think about it really.”
The flicker of hurt in Rhys’s face told me that wasn’t the right answer.
“I just didn’t want to interrupt you when there was nothing you could do about it,” I said.
He narrowed his eyes. “Well, I couldn’t have brought her back from the dead, no, but I could’ve been there for you.”
“Sorry,” I muttered.
“It’s kinda why I’m here, ya know?” He squeezed my shoulder.
“Yeah well you weren’t here.”
It was out of my mouth before I was aware I’d said it, and Rhys snatched his hand back like I’d burned him.
“Thought you said you weren’t upset?” he said mildly.
I ran my hands through my hair.
“Fuck. I’m not, I just—” Fucking say something, Argento. “I…it’s hard for me. To talk to you when you’re not here.”
I’d meant that it was difficult to make myself talk on the phone, but Rhys’s expression flashed anger.
“Well, I’m not sure what to tell you, Matt. Maybe if you’d talk about what was going on instead of bottling it all up, you wouldn’t end up having a panic attack on the street.”
I flinched away from him at the memory of cradling the phone to my ear, wishing more than anything that Rhys were there to touch me.
“Are you seriously going to hold that against me?”
“I don’t hold it against you! I was fucking horrified that you were so upset and I couldn’t get to you. I felt totally powerless, Matty! Like you could be dying on the other end of the line and there was nothing I could do. I didn’t even know your fucking friend had died.”
He grabbed my hand and held it in both of his, and said, softer than he usually spoke, “You scared me.”
I scared myself.
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry! Tell me that next time something like your friend dying happens you’ll call me!”
He let go of my hand to run his own through his hair. It was a gesture of exasperation.
His words—call me, not tell me—conjured images where Rhys was gone. On tour. Away. Always away. Leaving me in this haunted house where silence was so loud and the dark was exposing and I wandered from room to room like a ghost in my own fucking life.
I could smell the coffee brewing, murky and burnt.
I realized suddenly that I was sweating. A cold sweat under my arms and down my spine. Along my hairline. I wiped a bead of sweat from my upper lip and stared at the book of stories on the coffee table, the card marking “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.”
Poor Ichabod Crane. He never had a chance. No one could outrun a ghost.
“Matt. Fuck, Matty, are you okay?”
I didn’t notice I was shaking till Rhys took my hand again and I could feel it vibrate against his steady one.
“Uh-huh.” I wiped my forehead with my sleeve. Fuck, I was drenched in sweat.
Rhys’s eyes were wide.
“I should have come home that day. I should have, shouldn’t I?”
“What? No. Course not, I told you.”
Rhys bent down and looked at me. Cupped my face and really looked at me. His brow furrowed, and his eyes lost their spark at whatever he saw in mine.
“Fuck,” he said. “Fuck, baby, I should have come home.”
It wasn’t a question this time. There was guilt in his eyes and in his voice. Guilt because he hadn’t dropped everything and run back to his pathetic fucking husband who couldn’t spend a couple weeks alone.
“I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have—”
“What?” I snapped. “Shouldn’t have believed me when I told you I was okay?” Because I knew it was what he’d been about to say. I also knew he was right.
“Look, I appreciate that you respect my tour schedule—”
“I was fine, really.”
Rhys’s eyes flashed.
“I know, I know, you never want me to go to any effort because of you, right? It’
s only okay if I do things because I want them. Why can’t you understand that what I want is to do things because of you? It’s not a hardship, it’s not a fucking inconvenience. I’m your goddamned husband. This is what being married means!”
Husband. Married. Usually the words filled me with such pleasure. Husband meant I belonged to someone. Married identified me as being part of something. They were official and legal and ours. Now it sounded like a prison sentence to him.
My head felt like a balloon, and I didn’t know where all this sweat was coming from.
“I didn’t force you to be!” I yelled and watched Rhys freeze. Shit. I didn’t even know where that came from.
Rhys was looking at me like he hardly recognized me.
“No,” he said fiercely. “I was so damned in love with you that I basically begged you to marry me after two months. What is going on with you? Where the hell are you right now?”
I blinked to keep the room in focus.
Where was I?
“I don’t know.”
My voice sounded alien in my ears.
“Baby, please talk to me.”
Rhys’s eyes were too much. His scared voice was too much.
I felt a gulf between me and Rhys that made talking feel impossible. Every time I grasped for words, they were harder to find, like squeezing in my fist the thorny stem of the rose Sid had brought me once from the flower shop. The harder I held on to it, the deeper it cut me.
“I–I–I think…” I choked out. But nothing else came.
Rhys’s pinched expression turned to concern.
Help me, I wanted to say. Please help me, I don’t know what to do. I opened my mouth again and nothing came out.
I was choking on all the nothing that was coming out.
“You think what?” Rhys encouraged.
“I think…I think your house is haunted.”
Not that, idiot.
“What do you mean?” Rhys asked.
I shook my head, sweat sliding down my temples. “Just, uh. I…when you’re not here, there are sounds, like things trying to get in. And the light’s all wrong.”