Fire season unwritten ru.., p.20
Fire Season (Unwritten Rules), page 20
Her car is sitting in the driveway, pointed outward so she can pull into the road if she needs to leave quickly, its trunk already packed with suitcases and boxes. She greets him at the door, dressed for moving, loose jeans and one of his repurposed shirts. She got her hair cut shorter, and it looks nice.
She thanks him when he tells her that. “It’s a cliché, right? Getting a haircut after a breakup.”
“I guess so.” He’s been visiting the barber regularly, enough to attract attention while he’s there from patrons who want to ask him about the Elephants’ season, and who probably take his mumbled replies as arrogance until he pays for everyone’s haircut.
“I’m glad you came out,” she says. “I could use some help packing up the studio.”
Because he didn’t tell her why he was coming out and she didn’t ask. She leads him back to her studio, which looks the same as when he lived here: a set of worktables, a throwing wheel, a kiln. A large window overlooks the browning backyard.
Her art normally hangs displayed around the room, but most of it’s been pulled down already and set along one worktable. “I guess I could hire movers to do this,” she says, “but it’s different with this stuff versus the furniture.”
She points to a row of dishes, everything from tiny salt cellars to large serving platters, and tells him that there’s paper to wrap them with. He picks up one, a miniature thin-walled cup that feels fragile even as he fills it with a wad of newsprint.
It’s easy to work like this, with music playing through a set of speakers, where his only real worry is if he’s using enough padding. Not like the words pressing against the back of his tongue. I met someone. I want to tell people about the divorce. I want to—and have—moved on.
Her phone chimes, loud; they both jump. “Just a text, not an evacuation alert,” she says, though she looks shaken. “You still got space for me?”
And Charlie is about to tell her that of course he does—that he has an entire unoccupied guest room—when he stops himself. “You should know, Reid’s still living with me.”
“I figured.” She says it without much inflection, like she doesn’t want to pry. Like they’re casual acquaintances. Somehow that hurts more than if she prodded him for answers.
“You should also know—he’s in recovery. He’s been sober for a few years, but I wanted to mention it.”
Christine looks surprised, hand reaching to brush her hair back from her shoulders reflexively, only to find it’s no longer there. “When you brought all that wine back here, that was because of him?”
“Yeah. I mean, I drink when we’re out or whatever. Just not in the house. If you want to stay at a hotel instead, I understand.”
“I don’t want to take a room from people who might not have somewhere else to go. And it’s kind of lonely out here by myself. I’ve been thinking about selling this place anyway and moving back to the city.”
“Oh.” He glances around—at the walls and beams of her studio, the place that’s solely hers within the place that used to be theirs.
“I won’t if you don’t want me to.”
“It’s your house. Or will be once the paperwork goes through.”
“You’re allowed to have an opinion on it. Though I guess it won’t matter if it burns down.” And she reaches for another wad of paper, tearing it and stuffing it into a bowl with more force than she usually uses with her pottery. “It’s funny. This is all stuff that would survive a fire. It’s the rest of the house that would burn.”
He takes the bowl from her and sets it back on the worktable. “Hey, come here.”
She folds herself carefully into a hug, shoulders tense, breathing unsteady. “I just keep thinking about this year, how fucked-up everything is. How I have all this stuff that shouldn’t matter, but I don’t want to leave it.”
“It’s gonna be okay.”
She laughs at that and wipes her nose with the back of her hand. “You don’t know that.”
“Stuff can be replaced.”
“You just gonna buy me a new house if this one burns down?”
“I don’t know. Would you want me to?”
“Jesus, Charlie, some stuff just can’t be fixed like that.” She steps back from him, taking another piece off the wall. It’s an object with no discernible purpose, fringed with fragile clay outcroppings that might not survive the rattling commute between Marin and San Francisco, no matter how well it’s packed.
“I have two guest rooms. Reid’s staying in one”—only in the most technical sense—“so I need to get a bed for the other. But if you wanted, we could bring the one out of here.”
Their old bed, its frame custom-made long enough so he can fully stretch out. The one they christened their first night in the house, slept in, ate breakfast in. One he’d miss if the house burned, even though he hasn’t slept there in almost a year.
She wipes her eyes and gives him a thin smile. “It’s a pretty big bed.”
“Like I said, we have room.”
“Why’d you come out here today anyway? I know it’s not to watch me cry on your shirt.”
“It was...” he begins, and his mind goes a whooshing blank of trying to spin up a plausible excuse. “You know, it’s not important. We can talk later.”
“You always say that.”
And it’d be so easy to tell her: easy and the most difficult thing he’s done in a while. There’s something else. Someone else. It’ll hurt, no matter when he says it, the way he got a flash of Who? when Stephanie mentioned Chris was seeing someone. Something he doesn’t want to say right now with her already upset. Because he wants to both yell it to everyone he knows and tell her carefully. Along with it, the familiar traitorous impulse of Later will be better, later will be easier.
She fills in the blank for him. “Now not a good time?”
He shakes his head. “Let’s get you packed up.”
Chapter Twenty-One: Reid
They’re in bed watching a movie when Charlie mentions it. Or Reid’s watching a movie and Charlie’s pretending to and mostly fiddling on his laptop.
“Hey, could you pause this for a second?” Charlie says. Which has the undercurrent of We need to talk. Reid’s stomach twists. “I went out to Marin yesterday. Chris is pretty nervous about the fires. I, uh, maybe told her she could move in here for a while.” He says it in a rush, like he was saving it up. “I can tell her to find somewhere else. If it’s a problem.”
An offer that really isn’t one. A reminder that Reid is, after all, a temporary presence here. What a selfish-ass thought. The world is literally on fire, and they have a spare room. “Of course she should stay here.”
“We’d have to move some stuff around. She’s bringing some furniture, but we probably need to grab one of the dressers out of the other room.”
The other room that’s been gathering dust for almost a month. Or would be if there wasn’t a cleaning service who visited regularly. Something Christine’s bound to notice.
“I can sleep in the guest room if you want.” Unless Reid’s misread the situation. “Or are you getting back together with her?” He picks at a loose thread on the comforter.
When he looks up, Charlie is wearing an expression he usually reserves for bad strike calls from incompetent umpires: unguarded disbelief. “You think I would split up with you just like that?”
Reid had a conversation like this years ago with Letitia when she agreed to follow him wherever he ended up playing. A promise she made without knowing its cost. “You can always change your mind. No hard feelings.”
“No hard feelings?” Charlie’s eyebrows knit. He slides a hand down to cover Reid’s. “I don’t want this to end when the season does.”
Like just wanting things makes them so. “Can we start this conversation over?”
Charlie smiles at that. “Chris is gonna finish packing up her house tomorrow, and I told her she could move in. Temporarily.” He pauses, then adds, “You know you don’t have anything to worry about, right? Even before you, things between Chris and me were over.”
And Reid thought that kind of certainty would make things better, but it only reminds him how little time they have left together. How Charlie, naively, trustingly, can wear his heart on his sleeve like a uniform patch. How Reid promised himself he wouldn’t disappoint either of them, at least for as long as he could help it.
He kisses Charlie on the cheek, mouth lingering on the gradient of stubble there. “We should probably walk Avis before it gets too late.”
“Or we could stay here.” Charlie leans over, kissing him again, longer this time. “In case I’ve given you some reason for doubt.”
“Maybe you could reassure me.” Reid feels a smile tugging at the edges of his lips, one Charlie mirrors.
And when they go for a walk later, none of their neighbors are daring enough to mention the mark on Charlie’s neck, visible above his collar like a claim.
* * *
For the next few days, they rearrange the house like Reid is no more than a roommate, moving his shirts where they’ve migrated to Charlie’s dresser, his stuff from the drawer of the nightstand. A retreat to all of one room away.
Reid sleeps in the other bed the night before Christine is set to move in—or tries to. The room smells like an unused hotel, like clean dust and absence. He gets up in the middle of the night. Just getting a glass of water. Though his feet carry him to Charlie’s bedroom.
He knocks, like a guest, on the open door.
Charlie stirs, sitting up, sheet draped. Avis is asleep on the foot of the bed, her open crate in the corner of the room. “You coming to bed?” he asks.
“If that’s okay.”
Charlie moves over, flipping the blankets up in invitation. The bed is warm, from him, from Avis, from a feeling Reid can’t quite name, a middle-of-the-night feeling. Charlie’s bed, their bed, different from the one he just left, even if they smell like the same detergent.
“You sure this is all right?” Reid asks.
“Anytime you want to come to bed wearing those”—Charlie runs a finger over the elastic waistband of his shorts—“feel free.”
“Should I get you a pair?” Reid teases.
“That’s not what I like about them.” And Charlie kisses him and pulls him close to sleep.
Christine moves in the next day, stationing her car in the driveway and popping the hatch.
“I know it’s a lot of stuff,” she says, apologetically.
She’s not wrong; she brought suitcases, plastic bins, rattling boxes of pottery. More stuff than Reid brought when he arrived, the essentials of his life condensed to the back of his truck with room to spare.
At least if he’s carrying things, they don’t have to talk. He brings up boxes, setting them near the bed that arrived yesterday, a big custom-made thing that dominates the other guest room. Charlie and Christine’s old bed. Memories, no doubt, sunk into the wood like polish.
There’s a thump of a wheeled suitcase. Christine hauls it in, waving off Reid’s attempts to help her. Charlie follows with an armful of boxes he sets in one corner, before turning to Christine. “Sorry, it’s not much.”
It shouldn’t bother Reid. It’s just a room outfitted with a dresser, a laundry hamper, and, of course, that bed. Even if he felt overwhelmed by having this much when he first moved in, only to have Charlie apologize for it not being enough.
“Charlie”—Christine has that tone that’s only earned through years of marriage, a particular kind of fond exasperation—“I’m not going to get a phone alert in the middle of the night telling me I have to leave. It’s great. Thank you.” She presses a kiss to his cheek.
“I should let you get finished setting up,” Reid says, and goes to the other guest room.
He closes the door, setting the timer on his phone. Thirty minutes. He can make it. He lists his familiar impulses: That he wants to drink, because that’s what he does when he’s happy, sad, stressed, calm. That he shouldn’t. A word that’s never quite can’t. Thirty minutes. He counts the beads on his bracelet. He could call his therapist, his grandmother, both of whom will ask if he’s in crisis, who might frown over the line if he says, When am I not?
Charlie ducks his head in seventeen minutes later. “We’re going to play a board game. If you wanted to come join us.”
At least if Reid’s figuring out which card to play, he won’t think about drinking. Or why it is he wants to. “Sure.”
It’s early evening, the product of a day game in which neither of them pitched. Christine is already on the couch, laying out the game, stacks of tokens and other game trinkets. The directions, big as a road map, are unfolded on a couch cushion. Reid seizes on them, trying to remind himself what this game is about—even if it’s the one he bought—when she says, “Would it kill Charlie to own a deck of cards?”
Reid laughs. “Not your type of game?”
“I thought I was marrying a jock. Instead everything has dragons.” She laughs, big and fond. “I hope you know what we’re supposed to do ’cause I have no idea.”
“I’m sure Charlie’ll explain it,” Reid says.
“Oh, he will. Mostly what I hear is the adult voices from Peanuts.” She makes a little motion with her hand, thumb against her forefinger in a blah blah blah. “Let me get something to actually do.”
She returns from the guest room holding a skein of wool and a long hooked needle. She readies it on her lap, then begins looping it with the kind of distracted attention that Reid associates with petting a cat.
Charlie comes back in, flushed from all the hauling and carrying, a fuzz of chest hair above the veed collar of his T-shirt. Hot. From Christine’s appraising look, she agrees. He drifts around the room, picking up and putting things down, eavesdropping like a reporter.
Christine notices it too. “Whatever you all normally do, don’t let me interrupt it.”
But what they normally do is walk Avis, eat a late dinner. Reid jokingly suggests a movie that Charlie probably won’t like. Then they end up in bed or on the couch or, once, memorably, in the kitchen, Reid going to his knees on the hard tiled floor.
Charlie flushes, sudden, visible in the low living room lighting like he’s thinking about the same thing. “We should play.”
Christine looks like she’s biting back questions. As if she’s kenned onto the false staging of the guest room. Other worse things, a catalog of accusations: if Reid’s there because of Charlie’s fame. His money.
The room goes slightly airless. Reid forces himself to breathe. He nods to the half-finished project in her lap as an escape. “What’re you knitting?”
The wrong question to ask, or the right one, because he gets an explanation as long and as detailed about crochet as Charlie explaining his pitching.
“I’ve been thinking about getting into mosaics,” she says. “Or maybe welding.”
“Welding? Like with the mask and the—” Reid mimes using an acetylene torch.
“You don’t think I can weld?”
He puts his hands up in his own defense. “Letitia—my ex—she’s a chef. She used to toss around fifty-pound bags of potatoes.” Something she teased him about: That she was working longer hours than he was, which she did with pride, then weariness. That she could lift more than he could, a provocation for him to pick her up, to let her twine her legs at his waist. Then an insult, after his shoulder blew out.
“What kind of chef is she?” Christine asks. It’s a polite question, one matched by her posture, which is good even as she’s sitting on their couch. Something about her says money, not just Charlie’s money but being born into wealth, perhaps in the careless waves of her hair or that Reid can’t tell if she’s wearing makeup.
“She loved the food in New Orleans. We met there when I was playing in triple-A.” A city he took her away from, an accusation later hurled like a glass. “But we moved around. The good thing about restaurants is there’s always an opening somewhere, even if it isn’t the same kind of food.”
“Sounds like a difficult lifestyle.” Which is the kind of sympathetic thing people say when they really mean Glad that’s not me.
“Yeah, it’s hard to understand it until you’ve lived it. Especially not knowing where you’re gonna end up the next year.” Reid puts on a smile he uses with reporters. “Okay, if I want to learn to crochet, how do I do it?”
He ends up on the couch with her, holding a spare crochet hook and laughing as she adjusts his technique. “It’s not knitting,” she says, when he pulls a loop too tight. “You want it to have more give than that.”
By the end of a few minutes, he’s produced a more or less even line of stitches, one that he holds up in victory.
Charlie glances up from where he’s reviewing the game instructions, making notes on a notepad that he’s calling a cheat sheet and ignoring both their sighs. “Let me go change and then we can play.”
After he leaves, Christine pauses in her endless accumulation of stitches. She turns to Reid, cheerful expression dimmed. “He’s doing okay, right?”
“Charlie?” Maybe he should have called him Braxton, the way guys do in the clubhouse. “He’s, uh, fine.”
“Fine or fine? Because Charlie would say he was fine with his foot caught in a bear trap.”
“Yeah, I’ve noticed that.” But it makes Reid breathe a little lighter. You’re not the center of the fucking universe, Giordano. “He’s good. For real.”
She does a few more crochet stitches, like she’s gathering her thoughts. “Look, we don’t know each other well. It turns out you don’t stop caring about someone when you get divorced.” She laughs a little ruefully. “I looked you up. Maybe I shouldn’t have, but I wanted to know who was living here.”
