“There are four—no, nowfivepeople on the fucking planet he has allowed to touch his carpentry shit. I am one of them. His dad was another.Mydad is the third, and Henry is the fourth. And now you, Seth Mays. Two of those people have known him since the day he was born, and the other two of us have known him since he was five fucking years old. And you, my special-ass snowflake, have known him since goddamnMarch. And he’s letting you touch his shit.”
“Uh…” I wasn’t sure what to do with that. I mean, it did sound important when Hart said it that way, but it certainly hadn’t seemed momentous at the time. Just like,hand me the hammer.
“He won’t say a goddamn thing about it because he’s short a few emotional braincells,” Hart continued, and it took an act of will not to ask if he was the pot or the kettle. “And he’ll just swallow it down until it fucking chokes him. He won’t even tellmewhat he’s feeling, but if he let you use his tools, and I mean his fuckinghammerandscrewdriverandlatheand whatnot, then you’re important to him.”
I let out a breath. “Okay.”
“So two things, and then we never have to speak of this again. One, you break his heart, and I will be the last person you ever see because your body will be chopped up into a hundred pieces and scattered all over the north woods in places that even a bloodhound couldn’t fucking find.”
Okay, then.
“Two,” he went on, as though he hadn’t just threatened to murder and dismember me, “you’re going to have to be the one to speak first. Because he won’t. And I can’t tell you if he loves you yet, but he definitelycares. So if you want this to be something, you’ll have to start it.”
I was trying to figure out what to say to that when Hart spoke again.
“And three?—”
“I thought you said two things.”
“Shut the fuck up and listen, Mays.” He didn’t sound angry, though. “I like you. I honestly think you’d be good for him.” He sighed, but I could tell it was the kind of sigh that was leading somewhere, so I stayed quiet. “Elliot is the second mostimportant person in my life, and I want to see him happy. But he’s a goddamn badger and takes the whole solitary mustelid thing a little too seriously, so he’s going to react badly. Maybe badly enough that you’ll have to sleep on somebody else’s couch.”
Which probably meant the break room at work or under my brand-new-to-me desk. Hooray.
“You need one, I’ll call my mother, and she’ll absolutely take you in, but if I do that, you’ll remain her surrogate child for the rest of your life, so deploy that chute only in a fucking real emergency, you got me?”
I swallowed, terrified and oddly touched and a little warm-feeling because Hart was offering to introduce me to hismom, and that meant that he actually liked me. Not in that way—but you know what I mean. “I got you.”
“Good. And Seth?” There was my name again.
“Yeah?”
“I’m rooting for you.”
10
Seth Mays
Are you okay?
It’s like 1am and you’re not back, so…
I guess come wake me up if you need something when you do?
Elliot Crane
I’m fine.
But thanks.
I was not convincedhe was fine at all, but he came back at some point before I woke up—the messages were timestamped at 2:57 and 3:14. Which meant that he’d added the last part as an afterthought, although I wasn’t sure that I was glad he’d come back to it and added the ‘thanks,’ or whether it was actually more hurtful that he’d realized he was being a little bit of a dick, since that suggested that the dickishness was intentional.
I shook my head and told myself to stop over-thinking it.
I had no idea where he’d been, what he’d been doing, or who he’d been with, if anyone. He’d left a post-it on the counter inthe kitchen that I’d found when I got home around dinnertime that saidWent out, although his truck had been here, so I didn’t know if he’d called a ride or been picked up by a date or walked or what. I hadn’t heard when he’d come in, so I knew nothing.
Even though I’d agreed to the Rules—One, no kissing; Two, no emotions; and Three, not a relationship—I wondered if that meant that Elliot thought it was okay to sleep with other people while also having sex with me. It wasn’t something we’d talked about, and I stupidly hadn’t asked him if he’d had sex with anyone else between March and now. It had been over four months since he’d left Richmond. Given how quickly we’d fallen into bed together, I couldn’t really expect Elliot to not have slept with anyone else.
And I hated how that felt. A sick, nauseating feeling that rolled in my intestines.
