by Roan Parrish
“Oh here, this is more your speed, I think.”
“I love this movie!” Rhys said, as I hovered over Hocus Pocus.
I laughed. “I was kidding.”
“Whatever, it’s great. Morgan and I used to watch this as kids. She was more like Max cuz she was all pouty and I was more like Dani, the little sister who got super excited about Halloween. Have you seen it?”
“Yeah, parts of it.”
He settled in on the couch, finally relaxed, and pulled me close. The movie was ridiculous and dated, but kinda hilarious. And Rhys was so into it I couldn’t help but like it.
“Oh, what about Binx? For the dog?”
“Um.” I didn’t want to mess with Rhys’s childhood joy, but that was a terrible name. “What about Max?” I offered as an alternative.
“Max,” Rhys tried out. “I think it’s perfect. Whattaya think, are you a Max?” he said to the dog. The dog raised its head an inch and then went back to sleep.
We grinned at each other. Max it was.
* * *
—
For weeks, we basked in a kind of post-yay-we-didn’t-fuck-this-to-hell idyll of domesticity and dog. Rhys, being Rhys, seemed hell-bent on convincing me that things were great at every turn. As if he could change my whole world by sheer force of will. It was sweet and hot, and I loved him for it. But.
How long could he maintain it? How long would he be willing to exert such effort just to keep us afloat?
I tried to push those thoughts out of my mind. Rhys would smile at me and it would banish the darkness. Rhys would hold me and I wouldn’t feel alone anymore. Rhys would kiss me and it would make me feel wanted. I tried to concentrate on that.
A few days after Halloween, Rhys started talking about Thanksgiving. His parents had invited us to come, and the idea filled me with dread like someone had poured concrete into my stomach.
I shrugged and said maybe and changed the subject, and Rhys stopped himself from bringing it up again but I could see he wanted to.
He brought it up a few days later, when we were going to sleep. I felt my heart rate speed up and sweat bloom along my spine. I didn’t want to examine my violent reaction, so I grasped at the tool Rhys had given me.
“I–I hear you,” I said. And Rhys said, “Okay, baby.”
He wrapped his arms around me, like he always did, and kissed the back of my neck, like he always did. But it took me a long time to fall asleep.
Because how long would that last? How many times could I say it before he’d push the issue.
In the meantime, I’d been staying late at work, trying to jump-start the art and music supplies funding campaign on top of my caseload. I’d also been trying to convince Imari to let me work on getting shelter dogs to go visit foster care facilities, but the money wasn’t there and she advised against trying to raise funds for two projects simultaneously. I tried to cheer up Noé Caldera (and myself) by telling him about how maybe he’d be able to use a camera from Mariposa soon, but his expression didn’t even change.
I was worried I was losing him.
One day I got home to find Rhys in a pissy mood because the chorus of the song he’d been working on had collapsed, and now he had to rework the whole thing.
I went upstairs and changed my clothes to the sound of Rhys’s guitar. Usually his singing relaxed me, but tonight all the notes sounded harsh, like I could hear his irritation in the music itself. I knew he’d be at it for a while.
I grabbed Max’s leash and said I was taking him for a walk, not waiting for Rhys to answer. I didn’t want to talk. I just wanted to disappear. It wasn’t like I could help Rhys with his music. Hell, I couldn’t even help my own client.
Max and I walked our regular loop and ended up in the cemetery. I let him off his leash to chase squirrels. He never went far. Had he been trained by a family? Did he have people he wished he could get back to? What if he’d gotten lost and now that we’d adopted him he’d never be able to get back to his real family again? Or had they had him and loved him and then abandoned him?
Max barked once and whined at me. I walked over to him and found him sniffing at a dead squirrel. It looked like it had been skinned.
“That’s creepy as fuck,” I said, heart beating fast. Max yipped in agreement.
I clipped his leash back on and headed the fuck out of there. We walked slowly after we cleared the cemetery, Max with his strange, crabbed gait, me not wanting to go home. I turned right instead of left.
“What the hell’s my problem, Max? Why can’t I just go to Rhys’s parents and eat some damn turkey and talk about the weather?”
Max bumped my thigh.
“I wish we could switch and I could be you for a while. No one expects you to talk. Or visit other people’s families.”
Max turned in a circle and then pooped.
“I know, Rhys is a fucking saint and I’m an asshole who needs to get it together.”
Max kind of looked like he was nodding at me.
“Whatever, I pick up your shit, don’t call me an asshole.”
We circled back toward home slowly. When I used to walk in the city, I tried not to think. Now, it seemed like thinking was all I could do.
I knew that something was wrong. I knew that all the attention Rhys and I had been paying to our relationship was good, but also that it had set me majorly on edge. I knew the threat of a holiday with his family had set the whole mess spinning and was making me feel guilty and unworthy of Rhys. I just didn’t know what to do about it, and it was a poisonous kind of not knowing.
The cottage glowed brightly in the dark, homey and inviting. And I had the strangest feeling that if I peered in through the window, I would see Rhys’s other life. The life he was supposed to have.
The life with a man who told Rhys all about his day when he came home. Who was a good cook and would tease Rhys gently as he taught him to cook too. Who did things like buy birthday presents months in advance because he saw something Rhys would like, and wrap them in real wrapping paper. Who woke Rhys on weekend mornings with elaborate plans for activities and who didn’t sleep with his head under a pillow. Who wanted to spend holidays with Rhys’s family and had a family of his own, so they’d alternate.
Who knew how to do this.
My throat was tight, and I swallowed hard. I wanted it for Rhys. The best. The best I knew I could never be. It was so clear now, the impassable distance between myself and this other man.
But even imagining Rhys with anyone else nearly made me vomit.
Max barked, confused as to why we were lurking on the front porch, and Rhys opened the door. He looked worried.
“Hey, I wondered where you guys’d gotten off to.”
The door was open. Rhys was right there. I loved him so much that sometimes it felt like it could shred me.
I held out Max’s leash to Rhys and when he took it I inched backward. Max looked between us.
“Wanna just order pizza?” Rhys said, sounding tired. “I don’t really feel like making— What are you doing?”
I took another step back.
I don’t know how to do this! I don’t know how to be what you need! Help me, please!
Inside my head, everything was screaming. Owls shrieking, the horse rearing, and that tiny, skinned squirrel screaming and screaming and screaming as we were laid bare.
“I don’t know how to do this.” My voice was so soft that at first I wasn’t sure I’d said it out loud at all.
“Do what?”
“This.” I gestured between us. “I don’t know…what I’m doing. I gotta…”
There was rushing in my ears and darkness at the edges of my vision that blotted out the stars overhead.
I backed up, as if the more distance I put between myself and Rhys’s other life, the more likely it might be to mater
ialize for him.
He’d worked so hard to make things okay between us. He’d forgiven me everything. He’d made me feel at home with him even though I’d had no idea what home felt like. He’d done all this, every day, and I still didn’t know what to do for him.
He shouldn’t have to work so hard. Someone else would be better. He deserved someone sweet and easy and smart and confident. Someone who matched him. Like the puppy at the shelter had matched him. Like a hundred guys out there would probably match him. He was a lion and I was a skinned squirrel. All I’d ever had was quickness and cover, and now that they were gone, I had no choice but to feel everything.
“Matt.” Rhys’s voice was confused.
“I have to…I can’t…You…”
Rhys stroked Max’s ears once and then closed the door, leaving him inside. He caught my arm just as my feet hit the dirt road.
“Matty, stop. Talk to me.”
He sounded so fucking tired, and I felt like I’d woken up on a raft adrift on the ocean, no land in sight.
“Rhys, don’t,” I choked. “Why are we doing this? Why can’t you just let me go?”
“What? What the fuck does that mean, let you go?”
“Don’t you get it? I can’t fucking do this! I’m worthless at this! I don’t know how to be this…this…person. And you deserve the best person because you’re so fucking perfect, and every day I know that I’m fucking up your life and you just, you just let me.”
Rhys’s mouth was open in a stunned cartoon O.
“I thought we’d worked this out. I thought…I thought…Where is all this coming from? Did something happen tonight?”
“It’s coming from me! You shouldn’t have to try so hard to turn me into something okay. I’m not—I’m all—I’m fucking broken, Rhys. I make everything harder for you, and I don’t know how to do the shit that you know how to do. I don’t know how to be married. It’s like a big fucking joke where I’m the little orphan kid who accidentally got made king and I’m sitting on that throne with piles of gold and I’m supposed to like rule a kingdom or something but I. Don’t. Know. Shit. The only happy marriage I ever saw was reruns of fucking Friday Night Lights when I worked at the laundromat!”
I was yelling at Rhys on the road outside our house in the dark. His cottage glowed like a beacon. Like a snow globe. Like a fantasy.
“I thought—I thought things were going really well.”
Rhys’s voice was small and scared. He had truly believed that he could fix me. Turn me into someone he could have a happily ever after with.
And you let him. You let him believe that because you needed to believe it so badly. You did this to him.
I dropped to a crouch and buried my face in my hands. I couldn’t stand to see him hurt. I’d avoided telling him things because I couldn’t stand to see him hurt. But all I did was hurt him anyway.
“I wish I could be like Max,” I whispered. “Someone you rescued and who got to live with you and love you and wasn’t supposed to talk. And then you could find someone way better to marry.”
“What the fuck, Matt!” Rhys grabbed my elbows and yanked me up. “How the fuck can you say that to me? You want to be my fucking dog? The fuck does that make me, your master?”
I blinked at him. That would be so much easier. Rhys must’ve seen it on my face because his eyes narrowed at me.
“God, sometimes I want to slap the shit outta you!”
“You should do it,” I said.
He surged toward me, and for a second I thought he was going to do it. But he grabbed my shoulders and snarled in my face. “No one. Fucking. Touches you.”
He took a deep breath and when he spoke again his voice was choked.
“You know I would never do that. You know that, Matt. So what the fuck are you doing right now? You want to make me hit you so you have an excuse to leave? So that I have a reason to let you leave? Not fucking happening.”
He was glaring at me, his eyes fathomless in the dark, the moonlight turning his hair to a wild halo.
“I don’t know what to do,” I whispered, stomach roiling. “All I know is that you deserve someone so much better than me, and I feel like shit all the time because I’m ruining your life.”
Rhys started to cry.
“Matt, get in the house.”
For a moment I thought I might bolt. Might actually run away from Rhys and this cottage and our dog and everything. But Rhys was crying and I’d sworn I’d try not to hurt him anymore. I walked to the house and opened the door. Max stood just inside, like he’d been waiting. Like maybe he’d been worried we weren’t coming back.
Rhys unclipped Max’s leash and hung it up. He took off his shoes and left them by the door. I was afraid to take off my shoes. Afraid that then I wouldn’t be able to leave, when I knew that I should.
“Take off your fucking shoes.”
I took off my shoes.
We stood, facing off halfway between the door and the living room. Rhys reached out a hand, palm up. In the half-light he looked exhausted, defeated.
Hopeless.
“I don’t know what else to do. I’ve tried everything I can think of to show you how much I love you.” His voice broke. “To prove to you that I’ll never leave you. That you’re everything to me. I—fuck, I’ll do anything. I would do fucking anything in the world if it would convince you that I’m not going anywhere. Just—what can I do? Tell me! Tell me and I’ll do it! Anything, please. Just tell me what would make you believe that I will love you forever! Tell me what would make you believe that I want you and only you. Please, Matty.”
Tears were streaming down Rhys’s face and his voice was choked and he was reaching out to me like a supplicant. Something crumbled to dust inside me.
I wanted to make it better. I wanted to lie and tell him something. Anything. Give him a task to perform, a feat to undertake. Give him anything to hold on to. But I couldn’t.
“I-I-I don’t know.”
Rhys stumbled forward and collapsed into me. He pulled me to him and squeezed me like a rag doll as he cried.
I was too wrung out even for tears. Just a husk with nothing living in me at all. But Rhys sobbed and clung to me, and I squeezed him back as tightly as I could. He clutched me like I was something to hold on to. Like I wasn’t just a shambles of dark basements and dusty corners and spider infested attics full of things I shouldn’t want and would never get.
I breathed in his smell. It always reminded me of walking in the sunshine. Fresh and alive. I sank my fingers into the smooth, heavy strands of his hair. In the morning light, in our bed, it was always lit up like gold.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. My words felt like clunky things I couldn’t quite navigate. “I know you love me. I do believe you. I just don’t know how to…I don’t know why I feel so horrible.”
“Do you still love me?” Rhys’s voice was so small. I might be able to lie about some things but I could never lie about that.
“More than anything. I don’t even…sometimes I think if I l-let myself feel how much I love you I’ll actually d-die.”
Rhys shut his eyes, tears spilling down his cheeks.
“I’m sorry too,” he said.
“What? No. Why?”
“You know what I thought, that day you called me from Sid’s funeral, so upset?”
“That you couldn’t believe how you’d gotten stuck with such a fucking mess?”
“No,” Rhys snapped and gave me a sharp look. “I thought: You failed again.”
“What?”
“I’d failed again, just like I did with Caleb. I was so oblivious and trusting that I didn’t notice the person I loved most was in trouble.” Rhys raked a hand through his hair. “I couldn’t believe it had happened again because after Caleb I swore to myself that I’d never be that…useless.”
“No, no, it wasn’t your fault,” I said. That was ridiculous.
“Of course it was, Matt. When I looked back on it, I thought of a hundred things I should have realized meant you weren’t okay. A hundred ways that you were acting like you did when we first met, before you trusted me. But I was on tour, and I was playing big shot, and I was busy, and I wasn’t fucking paying attention.”
He slammed his fist into his thigh and shook his head.
“I let you down cuz I didn’t notice. Just like I did Caleb. Man, do you know how much he was using before I noticed it was a fucking problem? I watched it all happen, and it took fucking months before I put it together. He was my best friend. My lover. We made music together. And he was in deep shit, and I didn’t even notice. Do you know what total shit that made me feel like? How fucking stupid it made me feel? That if I’d just paid better attention, I could have stopped it before it ever got bad.”
I had no idea he felt that way.
“He probably worked really hard to keep it from you,” I said.
Rhys’s expression was shrewd. “Yeah. He did.”
“He wanted you to think he was fine.”
Rhys nodded.
Oh. Secrets. I hung my head and we stood in silence.
“I should have come home,” he said softly.
“I told you I was fine. I needed you to believe me.”
“No,” he said. “You wanted me to believe you because it was easier. You needed me to do the right thing. I think…I think deep down I knew that you weren’t okay and I chose to believe you anyway. Because it was easier for me not to cancel the shows. Because I was afraid to make you feel like I didn’t trust you.”
He shook his head and took my hand.
“I’m so sorry, Matty. Can you forgive me?”
I gaped at him. “There’s really nothing to forgive.”
“There is!” His tears had given way to a look of guilt and regret. “You needed me, and I let you down.”
“I didn’t tell you.”
He grabbed me, looking desperate.
“But now you will tell me,” he demanded. “Right? Because you promised. Because, because—” His voice broke, turning his demands to begging “Because you’re my husband and you belong to me. Right? We belong to each other.”