Chapter Five

MATTS IS ON his way to Eli and Alex’s place for an early dinner on Sunday afternoon when Aaron calls him.

He presses the Accept button on his car’s touch screen. “Please tell me you’re not drunk at 4:00 p.m.”

“I don’t only call you when I’m drunk.”

Matts doesn’t respond to that. Aaron is quiet for a moment, clearly trying to think of a recent example he can use as evidence.

“Whatever. I’m not drunk this time.”

“So, what’s the occasion?”

“It’s, uh… Shit, I’m not good at this.”

“Not good at what?”

“Giving people bad news.”

Matts’s stomach sours. “Just fucking tell me.”

Aaron sighs. “Your dad’s been to the doctor a few times this last month. When he went in yesterday, they said it’s cancer. They caught it early, I guess, so that’s good. He didn’t want anyone to tell you, but I figured you’d want to know.”

Matts swallows. “What kind of cancer?”

“It’s in his lungs.”

“From the smoking.”

“Yeah. He’s most pissed about having to stop. And he hasn’t yet, actually. Says he’ll have one last good weekend and give it up on Monday.”

“Of course.”

“Anyway, it doesn’t sound like it’ll kill him any time soon, but since you skipped Christmas”—Matts ignores the judgment in his tone—“I figure he won’t tell you until it’s obvious that something is wrong. Which means late spring. You are still planning to come back for the spring drive, right?”

Every year in May or June, once the snow has melted, they move the cattle from their land in Gunnison up to Gothic. In the late fall, they move them back. Fall drives have been hit or miss since Matts was drafted, but he’s never missed a spring drive. The snow doesn’t start melting until playoffs are well underway.

“Yeah,” he says, “I’ll be there.”

“Good.”

Neither of them says anything for several seconds, and the silence stretches to the point of discomfort.

“In other news,” Aaron says, “Bud got that drone you sent the kids stuck in the big pecan tree. We had to shoot it out. I’ll send you a video.”

“Shoot it out,” Matts repeats.

“We weren’t going to climb our asses up there, and that thing is worth too much to leave it.”

“So you…”

“Shot the limb off where it was stuck. It’s fine, by the way. The drone, I mean. The tree is missing a limb now.”

“Yeah, I got that.” He smiles despite himself. “Send me the video.”

“I will.”

He pulls into Alex and Eli’s garage and rolls down his window to punch in the visitor code.

“Hey, I’ve got to go, but thanks. For telling me. Keep me posted about Dad. About how he’s doing but also—”

“The bills,” Aaron sighs.

“And don’t—”

“Tell them,” Aaron finishes. “I know.”

“Right. Okay. Bye.”

Matts parks but doesn’t get out, hands on his knees, pulling at the fabric of his track shorts, music muted, engine running.

He’s struggling to reconcile the force of a man that is his father with the reality of cancer. He’s not a child anymore; Matts knows his father isn’t the indomitable, all-knowing character he grew up idolizing. He knows, intimately, that his father is fallible. Human. But cancer is a development in that schema that he’s not at all equipped to handle. Especially not in the next five minutes before he’s supposed to go socialize with a good portion of his teammates and their partners. Matts decides he just won’t deal with it now. He turns off the engine and collects the bags of grocery items Eli requested on autopilot. He spends the elevator ride refocusing, trying to go back to the mental state he was in ten minutes before.

When Matts gets to Alex and Eli’s apartment, he opens the door without knocking, yells hello to the assortment of people already there, and makes his way to the kitchen to dump Eli’s requests on the island. Where he pauses.

Because Rome is dipping a chip in some salsa. And Rome is holding a baby. A baby sits in the cup of his elbow, one hand fisted in the collar of his shirt. She’s dressed in a green onesie, and she has a tiny, poofy, whale spout of a ponytail on the top of her head.

“That’s a baby,” Matts says dumbly.

“Excuse you, that’s the baby,” Eli says, moving forward to grab her ankle and smack a kiss on the bottom of her tiny bare foot.

Matts doesn’t think that’s hygienic, but the baby seems to find the foot kissing deeply amusing.

He realizes this must be Finley, the sister Rome’s in the process of adopting. Rome talks about her all the time. But Matts doesn’t like babies, so he typically avoids the conversations where photographs are shared and he might be expected to make commentary about how cute a drooling infant is. This baby is pretty cute though.

“We’ve got her for the next month,” Rome explains. “It’ll be the first longer visit in the transition process, and Damien is being very chill about it.”

Damien has a diaper bag slung across his chest and holds his phone in one hand and a stuffed lobster in the other. He’s staring at the baby as if Rome might yeet her across the room at any moment. Damien does not look particularly chill.

Eli kisses Finley’s other foot, grins at her giggles, and then sighs, an overloud, dramatic thing. “Alex. I want one.”

Alex pats Eli’s back consolingly. “And you’ll have one in approximately three to four years.” He says it like it’s something he repeats often. “Your parents still want to kill me over the elopement. We need to give them some time to acclimate to the idea of becoming grandparents. And you need to finish college first.”

“Curse you and your logic.”

“So, hey,” Damien says, coming to stand next to Matts. “I brought you something.” He digs out a book from the bag on his hip and hands it over.

No Fear Shakespeare: Twelfth Night

“Uh,” Matts says. “Thank you?”

“It’s what Syd was quoting from last night,” Rome adds. “Maybe read the first few pages. See if it interests you.”

“Or, literally, just the first page,” Damien murmurs.

Matts is pretty sure they’re both insane. “Sure, yeah. Thanks.”

The baby lets out a shriek and reaches two sticky-looking hands toward him.

Rome proffers the shrieking, sticky child to Matts. “You wanna hold her?”

“No, no,” Matts says, taking a step back, gripping the book with both hands. “No, I’m good.”

Finley shrieks again, and Rome bends to set her on the floor, where she promptly crawls to plop herself between Matts’s feet.

Matts freezes as she gets a handful of his leg hair and tugs experimentally.

“Dude,” Rome says. “She’s a baby, not a bomb.”

This is true. He’d know what to do with a bomb. Tossing a child out the nearest window is likely frowned upon though.

Blessedly, Hawk chooses this moment to amble in from the living area, and the baby abruptly loses interest in him in the face of a dog.

Within minutes, they’re playing something like tag, in which Hawk follows Finley in an army crawl before switching places and letting Finley chase her. Damien follows them both, watchful.

Eli hoists himself up to sit on the counter next to Matts. “Hey, so, speaking of Syd,” he says, even though they aren’t anymore. “Are you planning to see her again any time soon?”

Matts takes a second to reorient himself. “Tonight, actually.”

“Oh, really .”

“Just for a jam session.”

“Uh-huh.”

Matts knows what Eli—more specifically Eli’s eyebrows—are implying. “She’s not interested in me.”

This draws objections from several people present, including Jeff and Jeff’s wife, Jo, who weren’t even there yesterday .

“She isn’t,” Matts argues. “She straight up said to me that her flirting doesn’t mean anything, and she wasn’t interested in a hookup.”

“Implying she’s interested in more than a hookup?” Alex suggests.

“ No .”

“But if she was, would you be down?” Alex asks.

“If she was interested in a hookup? Yeah, probably.”

“What about more than a hookup?”

“I mean. Also, probably.”

If he’s being honest, Matts is still not sure how he feels about the whole trans thing. But Sydney is—Sydney. There’s something almost magnetic about her. And yeah, he always says he’s only interested in hookups, but that’s because a hookup is easier than dealing with the whole “mortifying ordeal of being known” thing. He thinks he might want to know Sydney though. And if that means being known in return, well, maybe the vulnerability would be worth it. Maybe it wouldn’t be a disaster.

“But she’s an actual rock star,” Matts says, more a continuation of his internal thoughts than the external conversation.

“And?”

“And. Hypothetically. If I was going to try and shoot my shot, how would I…do that?”

“You’re acting like you’ve never hit on a girl before,” Alex says.

“I usually just hook up with whoever hits on me . And she’s not some girl. Have you met her?”

Eli gives Alex the significant look that Matts has found married people often use with one another. He’s not sure what it means though.

“You could compliment her teeth again,” Eli says. “That seemed to work yesterday.”

“Lean against something,” Jo says wisely. “Everyone knows the sluttiest thing a man can do is lean against something.”

“Preferably while wearing a button-down with the sleeves rolled up,” Eli says.

“Oh, yeah, good,” Jo agrees. “Work the forearms.”

“French tuck your shirt,” Eli suggests. “And something on your wrists—like those bracelets you have, the jade and tiger’s-eye ones?”

“And do the swoopy thing with your hair,” Jo says, reaching up to run her fingers through it, pushing it to one side rather than slicked back. A loose curl falls into his eyes.

“Better,” Eli agrees. “And she always wears all those rings. You could use that.”

“Ohhh,” Jo says. “Nice. Like, ask her about a particular ring. Use it as an excuse to hold her hand. If she responds well, ask her out. Jeff did that with the scar on my knuckles the night we met. It was smooth as hell.”

Matts thinks about the strangely fraught moment at the cookout when he was holding Sydney’s hand in his, her rings cold, his palm hot. He thinks about the pads of her fingers pressed to his calluses. She has a ring that looks like a dragon on her right index finger, wings folded, neck lying alongside its own tail. It’s noteworthy. Matts could point it out. Could reach for it.

He could do that.

“The important thing,” Eli says brightly, “is to be yourself.”

Except Matts knows that’s not true. He learned early and he learned well that his best options for socializing were silence or parroting something someone else had already said that received a positive reaction. But that only works up to a point. That works with acquaintances and business relationships and small-talk interactions. The necessary vulnerability of a relationship is a different, more terrifying monster than talking in the locker room or shaking hands with a sponsor. Because he doesn’t have to imagine how devastating it would be to share all of himself with someone and them to find him lacking. It wouldn’t be the first time someone preferred the edited, curated version of Justin Matthews to the messy, raw file.

The problem, of course, isn’t that he thinks no one would date him. The problem is that he’s sure people would, but they wouldn’t be dating him for him . He’s attractive and a professional athlete, and perhaps most importantly, he has money. He knows these things make the rest of him more palatable. But he doesn’t want to be tolerated because he can afford an enviable lifestyle. He doesn’t want to be a pretty prop in social media posts and otherwise ignored at home.

The question is if he can find someone who would love him for who he is rather than what he can provide.

The fear is that the answer is no.

That night, Matts puts on a button-down shirt and rolls it to his elbows. He wears the jade and tiger’s eye bracelets. He swoops his hair. He has to google what a French tuck is, but in the end, he’ll admit he looks pretty good.

When Matts gets to the ranch, a large, shiny tractor unit of a semitruck sits in the yard that was not there during his prior visit. He parks next to it, and when Matts gets out, he can hear the semi engine ticking as it cools down. Whoever it belongs to only preceded him by a few minutes.

Matts doesn’t have to wait long to figure out who that someone is.

The front door opens before he’s even up the porch steps, and Sydney ushers him inside while shouting something about blasphemy down the hall.

“Uh, hi?” Matts says.

“Sorry, sorry, come in,” she says. “My uncle, Wade, just showed up unannounced, as he is wont to do , and he’s already dispensing heretical takes. Come meet him and help me settle this.”

Matts has no idea what this is, but he follows Sydney obligingly into the kitchen.

She’s wearing an oversized, age-faded Judas Priest tour shirt and either very short shorts or nothing underneath it. For his sanity, he decides there are shorts in play.

“Wade, Matts, Matts, Wade,” Sydney says.

Wade is a sixty-something, six-foot-something Black man who bears no resemblance to Sydney or the rest of the family Matts has met.

“No biological relation,” Wade says, perhaps accurately interpreting Matts’s confusion. “Syd adopted me when she was ten.”

“And he kept her from becoming a missing person. Or a dead person,” Devo says from where he’s sitting at the table reading. “So, we adopted him.”

Matts has questions.

“And since he’s incapable of settling down,” Sydney continues, “we’re currently his only family in the southern United States.”

“I have a nomadic spirit,” Wade says gravely.

“You have no game is what you have. And also shit taste in music.”

“Young lady, I provided your musical education.”

“And now the protégé has surpassed the master.”

“Sounds like the protégé is getting too big for her britches.”

“He thinks the new Edge Land single is good ,” Sydney tells Matts as if that’s supposed to mean something to him.

Matts looks to Devo for help, and Devo shakes his head minutely.

“Is it?” Matts asks.

Sydney gives him a look of utter betrayal. “Ugh. I forgot you only like music by men who write about tractors and beer and girls in cut-off shorts sliding into the passenger seats of pickup trucks.”

“Don’t forget the songs by women about wives murdering abusive husbands,” Devo says, eyes still on his book.

“Those are okay, actually,” Syd says. “I rescind my complete disdain for the genre and redirect it to the aforementioned sort.”

“I don’t only listen to country music,” Matts argues. “I was listening to Black Sabbath on the way over here. And obviously, I like your music.”

“Respectable,” Wade says.

“Suspicious,” Syd mutters, eyes narrowed. “Are you trying to ensorcell me with good taste?”

Matts doesn’t know what “ensorcell” means, but he can guess from context that it’s a good thing. “Is it working?”

“Yet to be determined.” Syd pulls herself up to perch on the counter. “Anyway, Edge Land is a punk band. Their new single is terrible, but Wade says it’s important cultural commentary or whatever and not just antiestablishment pandering sitting precariously on a couple barre chords.”

It’s probably bad that Matts finds her curled-lip disdain so endearing.

“So,” he says, to make sure he understands, “you don’t like Edge Land, or you don’t like this particular song?”

“The former. I’m not a huge fan of punk in general—I prefer rock and metal—but I can respect the bands that are actually trying to be agents of social change and manage to do so with a modicum of musicality. Black Flag, Dead Kennedys, The Clash, Petrol Girls, Bad Breeding. But Edge Land is far from their ranks.”

“Aren’t rock, metal, and punk basically the same thing though?” Matts asks.

“Oh, kid,” Wade says.

“Here we go,” Devo mutters.

“Maybe don’t say that in front of, literally, anyone ever again,” Sydney says. “Who taught you about music?”

“No one with sense,” Wade says.

Matts didn’t realize music was a thing that was supposed to be taught. “No one, yeah. But…maybe you could? If you want.”

Sydney’s legs, kicking idly at the lower cabinets, go still. “Dangerous invitation, Matthews. Words like that will get you a syllabus of listening homework.”

“Don’t threaten me with a good time.”

“I shall consider that gauntlet thrown , sir.” She’s grinning.

Matts is proud to be responsible for it.

“So,” he says. “Am I allowed to ask how Wade prevented you from becoming a missing and-or dead person?”

Sydney meets Wade’s eyes, shrugging.

“Well,” Wade says. “It was ten years ago, and I was at a truck stop in Mississippi. Had just woken up, 5:00 a.m., and was about to get on the road. I was walking back from the showers when this wisp of a thing, not even yea high”—he holds a hand to his hip—“comes walking up, bold as you please, eating candy and asking where I’m headed. I says Nevada, and she asks if I’ll pass through Texas. I says yes, by way of Dallas and Odessa. She says Dallas’ll do and asks for a ride.”

“She was ten,” Matts clarifies.

“She was ten,” Wade agrees. “Said she was twelve when I asked, not that twelve would have been better.”

“So, you took her?”

“Not at first. I said no way no how, she needed to get home to her family. She said her family was in Texas. I asked where she started from, and she said she’d taken a Greyhound bus from Georgia and then walked to the truck stop from the bus station. Said if I wouldn’t take her, she’d keep asking around until she found someone who would.”

“Georgia?”

“She was lying, of course, but I didn’t know that.”

“The truck stop was just over two miles away from my house,” Sydney explains. “I figured if Wade thought I was already far from home, he’d be more likely to take me where I wanted.”

“And she was right. As soon as she started walking to the next truck, I agreed. It was stupid and could have got me in a whole hell of a lot of trouble, but I didn’t know what to do, and I knew she’d be safe with me until I could figure it out.”

“He was playing Metallica in the cab,” Sydney adds as if this is an important part of the story. Then again, for her, it probably is. “It was the first time I’d ever heard secular music, much less metal.” She sighs, pretending to swoon. “It was life-changing.”

“So, I plied her with beef jerky and good music and tried to figure out if she was a runaway or in some nasty custody battle situation, and she was extremely unhelpful.”

“But he wore me down, and I gave him Mom and Dad’s phone number,” Sydney says. “I mean, not my biological parents. Mom and Dad are technically my aunt and uncle.”

“I called,” Wade says, “and they got in the car and met me in Fort Worth. Where I handed Sydney and most of my CD collection over and promised to visit the next time I was passing through the Houston area.”

“Which he’s done ever since,” she says, pointing to him. “Exhibit A.”

Matts has potentially more questions than he started with.

“Anyhow,” Wade says. “I know you two had plans, and I’m running on fumes.” He nods down the hall. “We can finish discussing your lapsed musical taste in the morning, Syd.”

“Yeah, yeah. Clean towels are in the cabinet as usual. Sheets aren’t fresh, but you’re the one that slept on them last.”

Syd shrugs on her jacket and grabs Matts’s wrist to tug him toward the back door. “You ready?”

The katydids are shrieking as they make their way down the tire-pitted gravel road from the front house to the equipment barn. Matts has to watch his feet in the darkness. Clouds almost entirely blot out the moon, with only a few bright stars visible in the slashes of black sky, and they move quickly in a dizzying, dark-blue wave. Matts stumbles over his feet looking at them, and her hand reaches out, just for a second, to steady his elbow.

“So, you’ve got questions,” Sydney says.

He takes that as tacit permission to ask them. “Why did you run away from home?”

He’d considered it a few times. Knew his reasons. But Matts figures hers are probably a little different.

Sydney exhales, long and slow. “My biological parents were— are —pretty hardcore religious. So you can imagine they didn’t take it well when their five-year-old son started insisting he was a girl.”

Matts can imagine. He doesn’t like it.

“I learned I couldn’t say anything out loud when they were around, but Devo called me his little sister when it was just the two of us. And he managed to steal some girl’s clothes from the church’s lost and found for me. Bought some nail polish from the dollar store, stole some makeup one time, though that was never my thing.”

Sydney shoves her hands deeper into her pockets, kicking a stone to skitter farther down the road in front of them.

“When I was ten, Devo was twelve. And he was allowed to walk to the library by himself. He found some books about transgender kids, and he checked them out and smuggled them home to me. But my parents found them, and it—”

She kicks another rock. “Well. A lot of things happened. But they cut off my hair. It was long and pretty much the only thing I liked about my body. They buzzed it. Said they were going to send me to a place that would fix me. And I didn’t want to be fixed. So I left.”

“How did you know you’d be safe here?”

“I knew my biological parents hated my aunt and uncle. I didn’t know why, just that they were a ‘bad influence.’ Enemy of my enemy and all that. And I didn’t know where they were in Texas, but I had their phone number, and I figured I’d call once I was in the state. I didn’t understand how big Texas was.”

“Devo wasn’t joking,” Matts realizes. “Wade might have saved your life.”

“Yeah. Ten-year-old kid trying to hitchhike across multiple states. Pretty stupid, right?”

“I don’t know. I think it was brave.”

Sydney’s a few feet ahead of him, and she turns to face him, walking backward, hands still in her pockets. The wind tosses her hair in her face. “It’s not bravery if you’re incapable of being any other way.”

Matts disagrees but says, “So they let you stay? Once you got here?”

Sydney makes an inelegant noise. “My biological parents were insultingly willing to get rid of me, and Mom and Dad were…weirdly willing to take on the shit show that was a surprise traumatized kid.”

“What about Devo?”

“Devo—” Sydney pauses, starts again. “That took longer. He wanted to come immediately. But he was still their perfect son, so they fought a little harder for him. Until he realized that if he stopped being perfect, they stopped caring so much.”

“Conditional love is really something.”

“It was more than that.” Sydney spins suddenly so her back is to him again. “He was pissed and thirteen, and he pushed them too far on purpose. Antagonized them. Worse than he should have. When CPS got involved, they finally agreed to let him come. I don’t think even my biological parents liked the people they’d become at that point.”

“Well. Shit.” Matts isn’t sure what else to say.

“Yeah.”

Motion-activated lights flick on as they approach the barn, and Sydney pauses to type in a code on the door before pulling it open. She ushers him inside, turning on lights as they go.

The practice space is clearly differentiated from the rest of the shop, with black foam-paneled plywood walls wrapped around a drum kit, a selection of guitars on stands, a keyboard, mics and amps and pedals, and a sound mixing table. Black cords spill everywhere, and notebooks and loose sheets of paper lay stacked on the ground, beside the turntable, and on the ripped couch against the wall by the drum kit. A dozen boxes line the opposite wall, one on top of the stack half open and spilling out merch shirts. It smells like weed and sweat. He loves it.

Matts sets his guitar case on the couch and pauses to look at a series of Polaroids decorating the space between foam sound panels. One in particular catches his eye: Sydney, Rex, and Sky sit on bleachers together. They look young and different, while still recognizable as a unit.

“The band in its infancy,” Sydney murmurs from his shoulder. She’s close enough he can smell her hair. He tries not to let on that he’s taking advantage of that.

“How did the band happen?” Matts asks. “You were, what, sixteen?”

“Mm. Fifteen. And freaks flock together.” Sydney pokes her own face in the picture. “Especially in rural schools. I showed up in a Megadeth shirt and skinny jeans first day of freshman year, with a trans Pride patch on my backpack. At lunch, there was only one table I figured I could sit at without potentially endangering my life, and there they were.”

Matts gets a sudden, unwelcome sense of vertigo because there was a very similar table at his school cafeteria. And he was never kind to the people sitting at it.

“Rex started arguing with me about music before we even exchanged names,” Sydney continues. “And I ended up going over to his house that night for a jam session. We talked Sky into learning drums later that week.”

“Wow.” Matts is still trying to imagine how he would have treated the kids in the picture when he was fifteen. He’s not enjoying the exercise.

“We probably should have convinced some of the others to join us too.” Sydney sighs. “Because now we desperately need a second guitarist, but finding one has been hell.”

“I thought hell was your thing.”

She punches him in the shoulder, but it’s gentle, and she’s smiling again. “You know what I mean, smart ass. Any chance you want to audition?”

“Pass.” He steps to the side to look at a series of articles featuring the band. “Maybe if I retire early.”

“I thought that word was off-limits for professional athletes. According to Eli, he can’t even think it too loudly or Alex will get hives.”

“Oh, I guess it’s not the same for me.”

Sydney falls backward onto the sofa and tucks herself against the arm, legs to her chest, chin in the valley between her knees. “What do you mean?”

“Only that”—he unfolds the bent edge of an article from Rolling Stone —“I probably don’t love hockey the way most of the guys do. Alex loves hockey. For him and Rushy and Kuzy and Rome, hockey is part of them. It’s not like that for me.”

“So what is it like?”

“I…like being good at hockey. And when I was younger, I liked the attention it got me. The validation. And I like what hockey gives me now. Money and a team and friends. But I wouldn’t be destroyed if my career ended sooner than expected, you know? It’s something I do. Not something I am.”

“That’s shockingly healthy.”

“I guess.”

Matts pauses as he unfolds another wrinkled article because it’s not an article; it’s a photo spread.

Of Sydney.

She’s reclining in an empty bathtub, wearing leather pants, a few strategically placed chain necklaces, and not much else. Kohl smears her eyes, and her hair looks like someone’s run their damp fingers through it. Her head is tipped back, eyes barely open but staring directly at the camera. A cigarette dangles between two black-nailed fingers as a waft of smoke drifts from her bruised-looking mouth.

Half of him is turned on, which Matts thinks is fair. The other half is too focused on the cigarette to fully appreciate that, apparently, Sydney has even more tattoos hidden by her oversized shirt.

“You smoke?” he asks.

“Oh Jesus, don’t look at those. I do not smoke. That was one of many artistic choices I wasn’t super comfortable with that day. I don’t typically wander around with my tits out either.”

The relief Matts feels is palpable. “It’s a good picture.” He feels he can appreciate it more, knowing she doesn’t have a pack of cigarettes in her back pocket.

“But it sets a bad precedent, right?” Sydney says. “Like, it glamorizes smoking. But also”—she waves a hand—“I do look…annoyingly badass. Which is probably me internalizing the idea they’re wanting to perpetuate, but—”

“It’s a good picture,” he repeats.

“Yeah.” Sydney sighs, then stands with a sudden lurch, picks up one of the guitars, and ducks to slip the strap over her hair. She nudges the amp with the toe of her boot. “You wanna tell me why you looked like I killed your dog for a second there? Did a smoker break your heart or something?”

Or something.

Matts turns to face her fully. “My dad smokes. Always has, as long as I can remember. And I just found out a few hours ago he’s got lung cancer. And my mom was— Cancer killed her a few years back. So I guess that’s…fresh.” Saying it for the first time out loud makes it feel suddenly, viscerally real in a way it hadn’t up until this point.

“Well shit,” she says.

“Yeah. Sorry.”

“What are you apologizing for?”

Matts shrugs. His mouth is dry and his eyes are wet and his throat suddenly feels hot. He turns to look at the wall of articles again. He hasn’t cried in front of someone else in a decade, and he’s not going to start today in front of Sydney Fucking Warren, of all people.

“What are your thoughts on hugging?” Sydney asks after a moment. “Because you look a little devastated right now, and I’m shit at talking about feelings, but I give excellent hugs. Like, top tier. I can provide references if you’d like.”

“I…like hugs,” he says, and it would feel embarrassingly childish if not for how she nods seriously, slinging the guitar around to her back, and steps into him.

She’s right. She gives good hugs.

Sydney tucks her face in the space between his chest and chin, her hair brushing his jaw, and she smells like vanilla. Like leather cleaner. Her arms are tight around him without being too restrictive, palms pressed to his flank and shoulder, fingers splayed and firm.

Matts doesn’t know what to do with his hands, so he mimics her, avoiding the guitar as best he can. But then, Sydney shifts even closer, tightening her hold, squeezing an exhale from him, and his hand on her shoulder blade moves of its own accord, sliding up beneath her hair to cup the back of her neck. It feels right; the curve of humid skin fits perfectly to the space between his thumb and index finger.

“Jeff says you have to hug for ten minutes for it to be effective,” Matts murmurs, mostly for something to fill the silence.

“Ten minutes ? How is Jeff an authority on hugging?”

“His wife has a PhD.”

Sydney tips her head up to look at him incredulously. “A PhD in hugging?”

“Uh, bats.”

“She has a PhD…in bats.”

“She did her dissertation on bats. The degree was something biological.”

“And this gives her credibility regarding the science of hugging how?”

“I’m just saying she’s smart, so she probably knows stuff. Which means Jeff probably knows stuff.”

Sydney narrows her eyes. This close, he realizes they’re hazel, not brown. “Hey, Matts,” she says. “What’s sixty-seven times ninety-four?”

He thinks for a few seconds. “Six thousand two hundred and ninety-eight.”

“Right. And what’s the difference between active and passive voice?”

He looks at her blankly.

“You are, literally, the poster child for the concept that just because someone is smart in one aspect doesn’t mean they’re smart across the board.”

“I can’t tell if that’s insulting or not. But also, what’s the worst thing that could happen? You can’t overdose on hugging.”

Sydney looks like she wants to argue but can’t seem to source a rebuttal. Matts is strangely pleased by that.

“Well, I’m not hugging you for ten minutes,” she says. “Part of the appeal of my hugs is that they leave you wanting more, which would not be the case if we stood here for ten minutes.”

He’s pretty sure that’s not true. Matts is also pretty sure he shouldn’t tell her that.

“But,” Sydney continues, “I can do a solid minute.”

She rocks a little, and he rocks with her. She turns her face so her cheek is pressed to his chest again. The rocking turns more into a barely discernible sway, and Matts hazards moving his thumb, just a little, where it’s resting on her neck. He can feel the downy whirl of baby hairs trying to curl beneath her ear.

It occurs to Matts that he’s never been afforded the luxury of just enjoying another human so close to him before—not without the anxiety, the expectation of what’s happening next. Hookups are such hurried things. He’s never been allowed to linger. To touch. Sydney feels so alive against him, her lungs expanding with each breath under his hands and against his chest, and she’s so warm and her skin is so soft and she smells so fucking good .

Matts walks his fingers down the terrain of her spine, knuckles bumping against the back of the guitar. He considers that she’s the one who offered to hug him. That has to be greater than or equal to a positive hand-holding response. Maybe, at the end of the night, he’ll ask her to get dinner next week. Maybe she’ll say yes.

“So, we’re leaving for the spring tour on Wednesday,” Sydney says.

“Oh.” His hand pauses its exploration. His fingers curl into the age-softened fabric of her shirt. “How long will you be gone?”

“Until May. But we’ll be back for at least a week around Easter between the two legs.”

May. That’s four months. That’s fine. He can be patient.

Sydney loosens her hold, hands sliding from his back to his sides to his belly, pushing just enough to create space between them. “Okay, I think that’s enough.”

It’s not. But if the goal is to leave him wanting more, it’s certainly effective.

“We should play,” she says, stepping back, and it feels like a loss.

Matts lets go with a degree of reluctance he doesn’t want to examine.

“We should,” he agrees.

And they do.