Page 11 of Ring Rust

“You gotta get up, bud. It’s been a week of this.”

He shook his head into the rug. “I can’t.”

“Why can’t you?” she asked softly, pushing his shoulder with her foot.

“I have no reason to get up.”

“Just because you and Jasper are having some problems doesn’t mean you?—”

“It’s more than that,” Ryan said.

“What else?”

As if she didn’t know. Ryan grunted again. “We’re not havingproblems.He said we’re over. So, I don’t have a job. Or a plan. Or a home, or a… person.”

“You have a person! I’m a person.”

“You know that’s not what I mean.” He considered getting up avoid listening to his sister imply she was the same as a partner, because that was gross. Also, Beni was way more annoying than Jasper, and now he was destined to live his life crying into her living room rug instead of cuddled up with the man he loved, enjoying his retirement.

“I know it’s not the same. But I love you, and you’re just lying there like a really big, weepy bump on a log. I have to try.”

“I just don’t know what to do,” Ryan said. “I have nothing left.”

“What do you usually do when you have time off?”

“Hang out with Jasper. Check on him if he’s sick. Make chicken stock to make him soup.”

“Okay,” Beni said. “But when he’s not sick. What if Jasper’s not in the picture at all?—”

Ryan made a pathetic noise before Beni interrupted him.

“Hey! No, forget I said that. What would you do if you could do whatever you wanted, not related to Jasper?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t had to figure that out in a long time.”

“What about a miniature landscape?”

“I was working on one for our fifteenth anniversary. It’s a little model of the park, with the pigeons we liked to feed and the bench where we exchanged rings…” Ryan twisted his ring then, memories of Jasper removing his slamming into him.

Beni pinched the bridge of her nose and muttered under her breath, then smiled at him sympathetically. “Okay. You need a project.”

“Soup? Soup is a project.”

“You need a project that isn’t feeding your ex or making a model of your ex’s theme park.”

Ryan pressed his face into the rug again. “You said we were just having problems! Now he’s myex?”

“I mean… kind of,” she said, standing and pulling on his arm. “And I think it’s time for you to get up and do something other than cry into my rug. The salt from your tears will make it all crusty if you don’t stop.”

He wiped his eye on the rug before turning his head slightly. “I can buy you a new one. I have nothing else to spend my money on now.”

“Get up.”

Ryan finally hauled his body from the floor, grimacing at the flattened shag in the shape of his body. “Sorry.”

“That’s okay. How about some breakfast? Have you eaten?”

“No,” Ryan said, suddenly concerned she might see the state of the kitchen. “Why don’t I make some eggs? I’ll bring them to you. Just, um. Stay out of the kitchen for a bit. Give me fifteen minutes.”