by Roan Parrish
I nodded slowly. “Being honest is really hard,” I said.
“I never thought it was before.”
“Well, aside from this one thing, your truth was easy to tell because you’ve always been proud of it.” I bit my lip and then made myself stop. “It feels different when you’re ashamed. Or scared.”
“Fuck,” Rhys said. He still looked a little uncertain. But beneath that burned something sharp and bright. Something just for us. “What if…what if you don’t like it?” he asked.
“Then I’ll tell you to fuck off.” I smiled at him. “I already, uh…You get that I really like it, right?”
His lips parted.
“It makes me feel safe, but it also…like, it really gets to me.”
I shivered. Rhys’s eyes went dark, and he ran his fingers over my lips and nodded. I slid closer, letting his heat consume me.
Chapter 13
Over the next week, Rhys and I slowly began to relearn the shape of our life together.
We talked more than I’d ever talked in my life. The first few days, it felt as if we were living a nightly version of our first date at the diner.
He was home during the day, working on some new songs, and would scrounge up something for dinner so it was ready when I got home. We’d eat and then take a walk around town. And we’d talk. Not just about me, thankfully. We talked about his songs and about my ideas for the project at Mariposa to fund art and music supplies for our clients—which Imari had loved and approved; it would be my first solo project.
Yes, Rhys seemed bound and determined to talk about every single topic under the sun, like he was prepping for The Newlywed Game. It was charming and endearing, and irritating and exhausting. Sometimes I got tired of talking. Sometimes I got nervous that Rhys’s sighs at the things I revealed meant it was getting to be too much for him, which made me get even quieter. When I got too quiet, Rhys got nervous; when Rhys got nervous, I freaked a little.
“You need shortcuts,” Rhys said one night. “Something you can say that means you hear me and you don’t want to talk about it right now because it’s hard.”
“Couldn’t I just say, ‘I hear you and I don’t want to talk about it right now because it’s hard’?”
Rhys looked at me sharply. “Yeah, you could. But you don’t say that, babe. You go all quiet on me instead. Maybe it’d be easier if it was just a word, and we both knew what it meant.”
“Like a conversational safe word?”
Rhys chuckled. “Exactly.”
“Fuck, where’s that been all my life. Okay. But nothing weird.”
“I thought maybe ambidextrous or cuttlefish. You know, something that wouldn’t be likely to come up in conversation.”
“Says you. I could be ambidextrous for all you know—”
I broke off when I realized I’d just proved Rhys’s point, and he gave me a tired smile.
“Okay, how about just ‘I hear you,’ ” I offered.
“Sounds good. Want to try it out?”
I elbowed him and rolled my eyes.
“That’s great nonverbal communication, Matty. Okay, now tell me all about your feelings when you were—”
“I hear you!”
* * *
—
We had Caleb and Theo over for dinner. I was worried it would be awkward to see them after they knew how much I’d hurt Rhys. After Caleb basically heard me lose it on the phone. So I was quiet and nervous. But then Rhys warned them against leaving applesauce unattended, if they were thinking of making any with the apples we’d given them, and Caleb laughed and Theo grinned at me and winked like he assumed it was my fault, and everything seemed okay.
And all week I could almost see Rhys flexing his possessive muscles to see how I’d respond. On Tuesday night, when I stripped out of my work clothes, ready to jump in the shower, Rhys stopped me. He pulled me to him and sniffed me. “I love the way you smell,” he said. “Don’t shower.” My heart pounded, and he dropped to his knees and put his nose to my crotch, breathing in until I shuddered. I didn’t shower.
On Thursday morning, he woke me with a blow job and then fucked me. “I want you to feel my come dripping out of you all day,” he said, and then he kissed me soft and sweet, and I got hard all over again. Practically speaking, it wasn’t great, but I did think of him all day.
And I loved it. I felt like I was learning about a Rhys I didn’t know before. And I felt a pang of sadness that I hadn’t met him sooner.
That’s how Rhys feels about you. That’s what he means when he says he wants to know all of you. I thought about that for a long time.
On Friday I met with Noé Caldera in the morning, and he was really down. It set a bad tone for my whole day. Then the train got backed up on my way home, so I was hungry and annoyed.
I grumbled hi at Rhys and went to stand under the shower until the water ran cold.
“I’m so fucking glad it’s Friday,” I mumbled, and draped myself across Rhys’s back where he stood in front of the stove, stirring something. “What’sat?”
“Chili.”
“You made chili? I love chili.”
“I know, babe, that’s why I made it.”
I buried my face in Rhys’s back and let his words seep into my skin.
Sometimes it was too much.
“You love me,” I whispered into his back.
He squeezed my arm. “I love you so much.”
I relaxed as we ate. Rhys had gotten cornbread from the market stand outside the grocery store, and we ate outside, with sweatshirts on against the chill.
“So, do you still want to give out candy for Halloween?” Rhys asked. We’d talked about it when he was on tour, but that felt like a lifetime ago.
“Do people trick-or-treat here?”
The Halloween before we’d been in New York at a show that some of Rhys’s friends were playing. The audience and the musicians all wore costumes.
“Yeah, if we leave our light on, we’ll probably get trick-or-treaters.”
“Sure, let’s do it. If you want to?” Rhys was looking at me but he seemed distracted. “Rhys?”
“Matty.” He grabbed my hand, and when he spoke his voice was intense. “Let’s get a dog.”
“Uh. What?”
Rhys ran a hand through his hair. “It feels like we’re starting our life together all over again. In our home. And when I picture our life, I…I see you rolling around in the grass with a dog. I see us sharing that. Something that’s both of ours. Have you ever had one?”
“No.”
I felt something crackle between us. Some acknowledgment that maybe we were talking about something beyond dogs.
“Um. What kind of dog?” I finally choked out. Rhys’s smile lit up his face. He started talking about different dogs, naming breeds, talking about dogs his friends had. I didn’t know what he was talking about but he made me so fucking happy I almost couldn’t breathe.
“What do you think?” he said finally.
“I think…great.”
“I mean, what would you want in a dog?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know, man. I know fuck-all about dogs. But maybe I’ll know it when I see it?”
* * *
—
Because Rhys was Rhys, we ended up at the shelter the very next morning. Rhys hesitated to get out of the truck.
“Listen,” he said self-consciously. “I didn’t mean to steamroll you with this. This isn’t a thing I should be all possessive and growly about. We don’t have to do this.”
It was rare to hear Rhys second-guess himself.
“Did you change your mind?”
“No! I just, um.” He bit at his thumbnail, and I climbed back in the truck. “I was at Caleb’s the other day when we were working on the song. He asked how you wer
e, and I was telling him how shitty I felt that I didn’t come home early from tour. I didn’t tell him anything about you, babe, I promise.”
“It’s okay.”
“I just told him you were having a hard time, and I should’ve come home. And I said, um, something like, ‘I’d give Matt anything he asked for.’ ”
I blushed at the thought that he could say things like that to Caleb.
“Caleb said, ‘It’s great that you would. But a lot of the time people can’t ask for what they want.’ And I realized how right he was. That a lot of the time you can’t ask me for what you want cuz you’re not used to getting anything you want. Or it just doesn’t occur to you that you could.”
I looked down and nodded.
“Like with Mal.”
“What about her?”
“When I asked her what she wanted on the tour bus and she said she didn’t want anything.” He looked chagrined. “I…babe, I really thought because I had asked her it meant she could just answer. Because…”
“Because you could.”
He nodded.
“I feel so stupid. It really never occurred to me that there could be so much stuff in the way.” He traced my mouth. “In the way of being happy. In the way of even trying to be happy. I’m…hell, I don’t know. I’m really lucky. I’ve always been so fucking lucky.”
He looked guilty, and my heart ached for the truth of it.
Before I could say anything, he brushed my hair behind my ear and kind of rolled his eyes at himself.
“So anyway, I started thinking about all the things you might want but never think to ask for. And then I started picturing you with a dog. Which I really do want, in case that wasn’t clear.” He grinned. It was definitely clear. “Uh.” He narrowed his eyes. “That sounded insulting, huh?”
“Yeah. But pretty accurate,” I said.
I leaned across the console and smelled Rhys’s freshly washed hair and kissed his cheek.
“I wouldn’t have thought to get a dog. I don’t really think to get anything except, like, groceries. Well. Not even groceries, often. But now that you brought it up, it seems good?”
“I just didn’t mean to push you into it.”
“You push me into everything. It’s good. I need it. Otherwise nothing would ever happen. I’d still be sitting on that barstool two years ago as you walked out the door, wondering who that hot, smiley guy who bought me a drink was.”
Rhys tipped his forehead forward to rest against mine.
“Rhys, I like it. I…I love it. Knowing that you want me enough to push for things. That you care enough that you want me to go places with you. I…you saw that in me the first time we met. Yeah?”
He nodded, eyes soft and bright.
“I didn’t notice it at first. The way you’d ask me to do such randomly specific things. But you made it so all I had to say was yes or no. Which was about the only thing I could handle then. It was just ‘Do I want to be with Rhys or not?’ And the answer was always yes.”
“Fuck, baby,” Rhys murmured, and he tipped my chin up and kissed me, his mouth sweet and warm. “That makes me so happy.”
“It’s still always yes. I still always wanna be with you.” The warmth of my flush had spread to my neck.
Rhys hauled me over the console and hugged me tight. “I always want to be with you, Matty.” His eyes darkened, and his voice got low and intense. “I would drag you with me on tour, if you’d go. I’d go explore with you during the day, then set you up in a seat for the show, then take you back to the hotel after and fuck you until you screamed my name louder than the audience.”
I swallowed hard, and he pressed a kiss to the hot skin of my throat, hand playing there loosely. My heart was pounding. I wanted him to talk like that forever.
“I would do it,” I murmured.
“Really?”
I nodded. Work had given me a life, and I hated to miss it. But Rhys was my life. I didn’t want him to leave without me again.
“Maybe next time you can get some time off work,” he said. He kissed the corner of my mouth, both of us trying to calm down. “I really wanna jerk you off in our truck in the parking lot of this shelter, so I can smell you all day.” My eyelids fluttered at the thought. “But if we end up getting a dog, I don’t think that should be part of the story,” he muttered, and I started cracking up.
“Why, do you think the dog would be embarrassed when it had to tell all the other dogs at the park?”
Rhys snorted, but helped me back over the console.
“Oh shit,” I said, “are you one of those people who thinks dogs understand English? Or, wait—will you not fuck me if the dog is watching? Because we are not getting a dog if you’re gonna be all ‘Fido can’t see me naked.’ ”
He laughed and shook his head. “Get outta the truck, smartass.”
He locked the truck, then pressed me against it. He tipped my chin up. “Nothing will ever stop me from fucking you.” He kissed me deeply. “I would fuck you with a hundred dogs watching.” He kissed me again.
“That’s—fuck—really weird.”
He leaned in and kissed me on the cheek, breathing in my smell for a minute. We both had to adjust ourselves before we went inside.
“We’ll just look,” I said, suddenly nervous. “Okay?”
“Sure.” Rhys took my hand, and the woman at the front desk pointed us in the right direction.
It was like walking a gauntlet of dogs, every size, breed, and personality. Were they consciously waiting to be adopted? Did they long for homes and yards and people to love them? Did they know that was a thing they could have? Did they know when they weren’t picked?
There was a lump in my throat as we walked past their cages. It seemed so unfair. Weren’t there places they could all live? Big farms where they could run around, or hospital courtyards where people who needed something to cheer them up could spend time with them?
“Oh my God, babe.” Rhys was crouched in a cage holding a wriggly puppy with fur the same golden color as his hair. It was the cutest fucking thing I’d ever seen. The puppy sniffed at Rhys’s chin and tried to lick his shoulder, then sneezed.
“It’s allergic to you.”
He grinned at me, stroking its ears and holding it like a baby. My stomach flipped at the sight of them, but I kept walking.
There was a black and gray dog with wiry hair that snarled at me through the bars, a tiny dog with bulging eyes that ran around in excited circles as I passed, and a few big, curly haired dogs that stood there and watched me with their tongues out.
It was sad. It was all so unbearably sad.
I walked quickly to the end of the row because I didn’t want to distract Rhys from his puppy. He was playing with it, and it was running around his ankles. They were perfect together.
The last cage was empty, so I crouched down in front of it to get my shit together. Rhys would love that puppy. We’d take it on walks, and it would run around the house destroying furniture, and we’d laugh and occasionally yell. It would get bigger, and when we were out people would ooh and aah over Rhys and his matching dog. I would love them both. I could picture it.
Movement in the cage I’d thought was empty drew my eye. The dog was hidden in the very back corner under a pile of crumpled newspapers.
“Hey,” I said softly. “Who are you?”
It nosed toward me a little, and I hooked my fingers in the cage so it could smell me. The paper fell away, and the dog inched slowly toward me, sniffing. The second I waggled my fingers, it froze.
“Aw, buddy. It’s okay.”
I left my fingers there and sat for a few minutes. The dog came a little closer. I slowly unhooked the door and sat in front of it, still outside the cage. I hummed and looked around at other dogs, and as I pretended not to pay attention, the dog ca
me closer.
It was brown and white and medium-sized. One of its ears stood up, and the other was half torn away. Its eyes were sad, but the shape of its mouth looked like it was smiling. It looked a little lopsided.
“You’re a mess,” I whispered to the dog, and it dropped its chin on my knee with a resigned huff. “Yeah, I know.” I slowly stroked its head and then down its trembling back. I could feel it relax as I touched it. I patted it gently and felt little patches of rough fur on its side, like cigarette burns in synthetic carpet. “What happened to you?”
“I see you met our newest arrival!” The woman’s voice rang out in the echoey room and the dog tensed at the sound. She was talking to Rhys. “Yellow Lab, about two months old. She just arrived last night. Someone found her running around. Probably got away from a litter on a nearby farm. She’ll be snapped up quick, so you’re lucky you found her. What do you think?”
“She’s awesome,” he said, grinning.
Rhys looked around for me, and when he saw me, he closed the door of the puppy’s cage and walked over, the woman following him.
“You made a friend, huh?”
The dog lifted its chin from my knee just enough to look up at Rhys. I could feel it start to tremble.
I reached up for his hand and tugged him down so he was crouching behind me. Rhys balanced with his hands on my shoulders.
“That guy’s been with us awhile,” the woman said. “Dropped off about a month ago. We think he’s six or seven. He’s a bit of a fraidy cat with people. Usually hides when folks come through. He’s a fighter, as you can see. Looks like he warmed up to you, though. You guys just come grab me when you’re ready.”
“You want that puppy, huh?”
“She’s adorable,” he said. “But I want you to pick.”
We stayed like that for a minute, then Rhys reached down and put his hand over mine on the dog’s back. He closed his eyes.
“Rhys, someone else is gonna take the puppy. She’ll get adopted, probably later today. Everyone wants puppies.” The dog let out a whuffling breath. He knew the score. “No one’s gonna want this guy. He’s all busted up and scared, and he hides, and people won’t take the time to try and make him feel safe, and—” I shook my head. “He needs us.”
