Matty paused, taking in the room. His hesitation made Shaw take a second look, and now he glimpsed the space through fresh eyes. He stumbled over to the bed and tried to shake the sheets out of the tangled ball they had become. “The sofa’s really comfortable,” Shaw said, twisting the knotted bedding. “And the bathroom—” If anything, he was making things worse, so he dropped the balled-up sheets and sprinted over to the standing mirror, plucked the sock from the top, and hid it behind his back. “The bathroom is right there, first door, so you can . . .”

Instead of moving toward the bathroom, Matty walked a circuit of the room. He glanced at the dresser and the two translations of Faust that Shaw had propped on the top—why, Shaw groaned inwardly, why had he left out the 1821 Boosey and Sons, why? Because he was a pretentious fuck, of course. Because he liked it when North asked questions. When North wrinkled his forehead and pursed his lips and really concentrated, focused a hundred percent on what Shaw was saying. He liked it because North was probably the smartest person Shaw had ever known, and Shaw liked it when he got to show off. But of course Matty would probably think the books were boring and stupid, and he’d be right—

But Matty had already moved on, lingering at the built-in bookshelves, studying the titles, tracing a finger along the spines of the three paperback editions of Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals, and then drifting forward again, shuffling through a pile of bright red briefs that Shaw had worn and forgotten to wash—there had been an article about the psycho-sexual energy of colors; red briefs had seemed like a surefire way to get past the fucking Berlin Wall of hangups that Shaw had constructed after Carl was killed, but North had somehow wheedled the explanation out of him and laughed so hard that he had actually slid out of his chair, and after that Shaw hadn’t even bothered to pick up the underwear, and now Matty was literally trampling it—

And Matty kept going. He bumped into an extra yoga mat that Shaw had bought for North, and it unfurled ahead of him like a red carpet, and Matty touched the frame of a painting of the Mississippi—Shaw forgot the artist’s name, but he had picked it up at one of the street art festivals. North had told Tucker how much he liked it, and Tucker had laughed and said they could get the same thing online for fifteen bucks. In another year or two, when Tuck wouldn’t remember, Shaw could wrap it and—

Matty had come to a stop in front of Shaw. He’d shoved back the unruly wave of blond hair, and his amethyst eyes were wet. He was shaking, Shaw realized, and clasping his elbows as though he were holding himself together.

“Are you cold? Are you—Matty, are you ok? You’re safe here, I swear. Nobody’s getting through that door, and even if they did, they’ll have to deal with me first, and you remember what I promised you, right?”