“Good night, boys,” he said, glancing in their direction, at Ben’s hand on Ronny’s arm. Nodded and listened, in the quiet, to a clock that was ticking with a deal of self-importance.

They packed away the card table. There was still one load of dishes to do, laundry to fold, and the upstairs of the house to clean. “It’s starting to look more like it ought to,” Ben said.

“I like your parents. They’re good people.”

Ben stepped close. “Yeah. I guess they are. I can’t believe my dad.”

“He was so cute with the flowers.”

“Fucking flowers. My old man.”

Ben walked around the house, checking doors. Barefoot, half lit, in his tee shirt and jeans, the reality of seeing him here in his house, so ordinary. He touched Ronny’s hand and they went upstairs, climbing past an oval-framed picture of wife and husband, black and white, clouded at the edges. “I feel like such a dick,” Ben said.

“What?”

“How much brains does it take to know my ma would like it if somebody would clean up her house?”

“Baby, you just don’t think that way.”

“Well, if I don’t start, what’s going to happen around here?”

They stood in the doorway of his room. Ronny put his arms around Ben’s tough waist, ran his hands up Ben’s back. “There are options,” Ronny said.

“Like?”

“Like you and me figure out how we’re going to get here as much as we need to the next few weeks.”

“You serious?”

“I’m only working three days a week. So when I’m not working I can be here, too.”

“I hope my sister comes tomorrow, we need to talk to her.”

“No way these two should have to sit in this house by themselves.”

Ben nodded, his hair brushing Ronny’s cheek. “It makes sense. It calms my stomach down.”

Ronny started to say something else and Ben put a hand over his mouth. He took a long breath. His eyes were full of pain but dry, nowhere close to tears. There was a sob in him that he had to keep in there, to prove that he could contain it. Pulling Ronny against him, chin in Ronny’s hair, an intensity in his body, rivers of anger and confusion. “You got to me just in time,” he said. “You know what I mean?”

“The other night?”

“Yes.”

Ronny held still against Ben’s shoulder, their fronts warming, Ronny standing in the doorway looking into the empty hall. Ben ran a hand through his hair. “She looked like she felt better. Did you think so? By the time she went to bed.”

“She hadn’t thrown up in a while.”

“That’s right. She ate.”

“She kept it down.”

Ben pulled him inside and they undressed. Ben walked to the stair landing and listened while Ronny brushed his teeth. Even now Ronny had a hard time looking at anything other than Ben, walking naked in the house, the hair on his legs, the smooth planes of his back, his strong arms. This is the only reward I ever want, Ronny thought, and felt in himself for the first time the stirring of another fear, that he could never pull back from this. That he would fall into Ben and drown.