Page 12 of Ring Rust

“Okay. But turn off this playlist, please. I feel likeI’mheartbroken and I haven’t been on a date in three years.”

Ryan nodded and shoved his phone in his pocket before dragging himself into the kitchen to attempt another meal—and after washing about forty plates and a handful of burned pans, he was successful. But not at cooking up the eggs and toast he’d promised Beni. He’d found a whole chicken in the fridge, butchered it, thrown the bones and skin in a pot with various herbs and vegetables and then set it to simmer.

By the time Beni walked in, he’d been in there half an hour with no breakfast to show for it, but a great start to a stock. She sighed. “That chicken was going to be my dinner.”

“The meat is still there,” he said, pointing at the plate where he’d stacked the pieces. “I’ll make dinner later.”

Beni nodded. “Okay. So, you’re staying here tonight?”

Ryan glanced at her, his eyes red-rimmed and puffy. “Is that… Do you want me to go back to Boston? I still have my apartment there. I can, if you–”

“No!” she said. “No, no. Stay as long as you need, of course. But I have some work to do for the rest of the day. Will you be okay in here?”

“Yeah,” Ryan said, staring at the pot.

Beni squeezed his arm and left him to brood in front of the stove, grabbing a sleeve of crackers before she left. Ryan heard her office door open, then the soft sound of her voice on the phone. Tragically, it sounded like a work meeting, not secret plans to bring Jasper by later.

He pulled a chair into the kitchen and sat near the stove, standing occasionally to skim foam and fat from the pot. Beni floated through now and again, grabbing water or snacks, complaining about some lady named Carol who refused to mute her microphone during an all-hands meeting, tasting the stock and nodding her approval. Most recently, she’d placed a basket of clean towels at his feet and asked him to fold them and put them away. He alphabetized the spices, skimmed the fat, deep cleaned the refrigerator, skimmed more fat, made himself a sandwich. Somehow, he’d managed to keep his emotions in check the whole time.

But by late afternoon, the air in the kitchen was full of warm, comforting smells—herbs and chicken and every autumn he’d ever spent with Jasper. If this was any other year, he’d be pouring the stock over egg noodles and soft mushrooms and bringing it to Jasper in bed where he’d be wearing a big sweater, surrounded by tissues. Instead, Ryan was standing over the pot, pouring broth into old jars, burning his hands and trying to avoid seasoning it with fresh tears.

“What are you doing?” Beni asked.

Ryan jumped slightly, splashing broth on his hands and dropping the jar, spilling the liquid inside. “Shit, ow,” he hissed.

Beni grabbed a rag to wipe up the mess. “Shoot. I’m sorry, are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Ryan said. And hewasfine, technically. His hand didn’t hurt. But pain or not, he was an unemployed, unwanted, forty-four-year-old man with a bad back and tired hips. Instead of being at home, he was standing in his sister’s kitchen watching a quarter of the broth he’d made for someone who didn’t love him anymore run across the counter and drip onto the floor.

He grabbed a canvas bag and started placing the jars inside. Three of them now, instead of the four he’d hoped to make.

“What are you doing?” Beni asked.

“Nothing. I just thought maybe I’d get out of the house for a bit.” Ryan kept his eyes on the bag, moving the jars around to look busy so he didn’t have to look at her.

“Okay. But leave the bag.”

He looked at her then. “What?”

“Leave the bag. The jars. The very special stock you definitely made Jasper after I told you not to.”

“He needs it!” Ryan said. “He’s sick!”

Beni rolled her eyes as her phone buzzed in her pocket. She pulled it out. The message was unreadable to him, but he watched Beni’s eyebrows rise before she coughed out a short laugh.

“What?” Ryan asked.

She turned the phone and showed him a snapshot of a counter with at least four different soups, the plastic containers telling Ryan they’d been delivered. In the middle was a pathetic bowl of canned soup—he could tell because the noodles looked mushy and the chicken chunks were gray. The attached messageread,He said he wanted soup. Can’t get him to eat any of it. Ready for him to succumb to this illness, tbh.

“Okay, I saidlmao,with four Os for good measure,” Beni said, tapping away on her phone. She glanced up and smiled. “See? You’re not the only one struggling. Laugh at his pain, it might help.”

He narrowed his eyes and snatched the bag of broth from the counter, bundled it up to his chest, and headed for the door.

Chapter Five

The cold Jasperhad developed a few days earlier had finally won, forcing him to hide out under a thick blanket in his bedroom while Stevie puttered around the house he’d let fall to pieces without the threat of the tidier Ryan showing up.

His eyes had drifted shut and he was nearly asleep when he heard a familiar sound, eyelids creeping open against attempts to keep them closed.