Page 34 of Lost and Found

“WHAT THE FUCK!” he cries.

I explode into a maniacal laugh, the candy rolling off my tongue onto the concrete at my feet. If I look half as unhinged as Silas, I could be used to frighten children at Halloween. I try to wipe at the drool falling out of my mouth and more takes its place.

I can’t catch my breath. I barely eke out “Water” before rushing into the house, Silas hot on my heels. We take turns at the sink with our mouths open beneath the faucet.

“That,” I say, “could not have been meant for human consumption.”

“I feel like I just washed my mouth out with diesel,” he complains.

Our laughter eventually dies down, but my pulse jumps again. Alone together, in a quiet house at night. . . . It’s jarringly intimate.

I start looking around for something to busy myself with, thinking I may as well start to desensitize. Exposure therapy, trial by fire. But then my eyes land back on Silas, and I find him looking down at me with that patient sort of smile again. Hair mussed, cheeks still flushed from laughing.

“I don’t know about you,” he says, leaning a hip against his counter, “but I’ve got energy to burn, all of a sudden.”

The gears in my brain screech to a halt. “Pardon?”

“We should just get it over with, don’t you think?” He palms the back of his skull with both hands, leans back a little, stretching . . . studying me through his lashes. The overhead lights in this kitchen are doing things to all his angles and making him unfairly beautiful. I catch a sliver of his torso and completely forget what we were talking about. “I just think if we took care of it, we’d feel so much better.”

“I’m confused.” I’m addled is what I am. We just made a deal tonight, and here he is talking about having energy to burn and how good we’ll feel and something about inevitability. I’m hot in the backs of my knees and heavy-limbed.

“Just put me to work,” he says.

“Excuse me?”

His lower lip juts out, and his big hands drop down to his sides. “Let’s finish unpacking? Get your furniture set up? I’m off tomorrow, and I want to help,” he adds. “I could go all night.”

Of course he could.

We put together the minimal furniture I brought with me; a dresser, two nightstands, and a full-length mirror. I unpackmost of the essential, smaller things that were tucked away in boxes.

At one point, after we’ve gone quiet for a few minutes and he catches me looking at a photo of Merritt, he asks, “Was it hard? Packing up her things?” He looks away and starts tightening the screw on something I know is already tight. “When my mom died, Ellis had to be the one to handle all of her clothes and stuff. My dad couldn’t.”

“Not . . . not really. That part wasn’t too bad for me. At least, not the worst part,” I answer honestly. “Merritt’s mom came and got all her furniture from her room pretty soon after. Her sister has a couple of boys and wanted it for them, and I was just glad someone could use it. You know they all moved back to Portland a few years ago?”

“Yeah, I’d heard that,” he says. “Is she . . . er . . .”

A laugh tumbles free when he tapers off. “It’s a little disconcerting when you try to ration your nosiness, Silas. You can ask.”

His hand whisks over his jaw. “Is Merritt’s mom excited? I mean as excited as she can be expected to be.”

“Yeah, actually, she is.” A smile pulls at my mouth when I think of my last text from Bonnie. A picture of Merritt and me around age thirteen. Braces and oversized headbands and our hands perched on popped-out hips, looking ready to take on the world—or a surprise Jonas Brothers concert my mom and Bonnie sprang us out of school for.

A twinge of guilt, thinking of Mom. We haven’t spoken at all in the two weeks since she gave me the boot. “There were a few months right after, where I wasn’t doing great,” I confess. “I wasn’t even doing okay. . . . Honestly, Silas, I wasn’t evendoing. My mom was over a lot and saw the worst of it, and I think—I think that’s why she’s having a hard time with this.”

He picks at a callus on his palm, a single line bisecting his brow. “Everyone does grief differently,” he says thoughtfully. “I was nine by the time my mom died. We’d known it was coming for more than a year, and we were supposed to be prepared, but I still just . . . couldn’t. People say kids are resilient and I guess that’s true, but I remember thinking my bones were breaking from everything in me every day. Even compared to—this.” He gestures flippantly at his scarred hand. “And even after all this time, I’d still say that was more painful.”

For the blip of a second, he’s limned in so much profound sadness. It ripples through him like a current—I think I feel it in the floorboards connecting us. But as soon as it’s there, it’s gone, replaced by one of his mellower grins.

“I wish I’d known you better back then,” I say.

“It’s good you didn’t,” he’s quick to say. “I was an obnoxious, troublemaking little shit. I was me, but I was barely contained in a smaller package. Mom called me her ‘irascible rascal.’ She always had funny names for shit.” His forearms come over to rest on his bent, spread knees and he chews his bottom lip, one dimple winking at me. And I know it’s late by the way my melancholy nose-dives into something hungrier. The way I want to say something to reveal that other dimple, too.

I grab my phone from my back pocket and check the time. “It’s almost twelve. I think we better call it.”

He punctuates my sentiment with a yawn. “Good idea. I hear redheads turn into pumpkins after midnight. Or is that ogres?”

He shrugs off my first thank-you when I walk him to my door, but when he starts down the dark hallway toward the stairs, I decide to push the point. I need him to know I’m grateful.