Robbie laughs. “Coffee?” When Lance nods, he turns toward a pot next to the sink, reaching into the cabinet underneath and straightening back up with an empty mug. “The only thing up here that I actually bought at a real furniture store was the bed. There are some things I’m just too old to get chintzy about, and a mattress is one of them.”

“You’re not old,” Lance says automatically, and then adds thoughtfully, “but you seem old when you say things like ‘chintzy.’”

Robbie turns back, his grin wide and making Lance’s heart wobble. “Nice. Johnny would be impressed.”

“How is Johnny?”

A complicated look passes over Robbie’s face, like a cloud skating over the sun. “I think he’s doing just fine. He’s definitely doing whatever he wants to do. Can’t be anything too unpleasant about that.”

Lance thinks about what he knows of Johnny’s life just from what’s on the internet, and wonders. But then again, Lance’s own internet presence hardly paints an accurate picture.

He chooses his words carefully. “You said you set up the hayloft for him?”

Robbie nods. “Yeah, got about this far with it before he decided to take off. That was two years ago. He’s an actor now, kind of. Did you know that?”

Lance nods, concerned he’s going to have to confess to the occasional, guilt-stricken internet search of all three Chases. But in Johnny’s case, there’d been some news Lance hadn’t had to go looking for.

Robbie nods with a strained smile. “I’m not sure, but…well, I hope he’s happy, that’s all. And that if he’s not, he knows he just needs to pick up the phone.” Robbie fills their mugs, then scoots one of them across the counter in Lance’s direction.

Lance forces himself out of bed. He’s wearing some of the old clothes of Johnny’s that Robbie offered, and they’re loose and comfortably soft. “Only coffee could get me out of this bed,” he murmurs, hoping a stupid joke can lighten the melancholy mood that fell during the subject of Johnny. “Seriously, it’s the best.”

Robbie laughs again, this time sounding a little more self-conscious. “I tried a bunch of mattresses.” He steps back and leans against the counter behind him. The kitchen is sort of galley-style, but without walls. It just has two parallel stretches of countertop over lower cabinets, but no uppers. The materials all look high quality, but Lance notices that there aren’t drawer pulls or knobs on the cabinets, and where a dishwasher is probably meant to be, there’s just a chasm.

“It’s a work in progress,” Robbie says, apparently noticing the direction of Lance’s gaze. He said the same thing the day before, Lance remembers, when Lance first saw the hayloft.

“I think it looks amazing,” Lance says honestly, perching on a stool and picking up the mug. He inhales the steam and groans. His eyes fall half-closed in dreamy anticipation, but he happens to see Robbie’s face over the rim of his mug, how his lips part and his gaze zeroes in on Lance’s mouth as he tips the mug against his lower lip to drink.