Page 74 of Break the Rule
“I would tell you she will, but I don’t wanna lie to you. She has a mixed relationship with my parents and my brothers. She won’t let my mom or dad hold her. She loves Alec. Shewantsto love Andrew, but he hates cat hair, and she tolerates Jason.”
“How many brothers do you have?” Eden balks.
“Just the three. You’ve met Andrew, obviously. The other two you’ll either love or hate because Alec is like me, and Jason is a fucking puppy. You’ll meet them eventually,” Charlie says before adding, “you know, if you want.”
If you want.As if Eden has a choice. As if Charlie expects he’ll be around and it’ll be up to him to decide if he wants to meet them and not an accident or something to avoid.
“How about it?” Charlie prompts, holding Agnes out midair. Her purring has stopped, but she seems pretty docile about her current position. “You want to hold her? She makes a great cuddle buddy. Though between you and me, I’m better.”
“I’m not going to cuddle you,” Eden grumbles, accepting the cat because it’s the easiest thing to do.
“Relax,” Charlie tells him, because yeah, Eden is holding her like she might explode. In his defense, he’s never held a cat before, or any animal for that matter. The closest he’s ever come to pets was the small pet store that used to be in the shopping center he passed on the way to elementary school back in Illinois. They had all kinds of animals in there, despite being in a tiny little corner store. Eden used to detour there while walking home from school to stare in their cages, knowing exactly how it felt to be waiting around for someone to want to buy you. Knowing how it felt to be gawked at and paraded around for potential parents.
Eventually, he was sent to a different foster family in a different part of town and forced to transfer schools. He couldn’t get away with walking across town after school because he’dbeen deemed a flight risk and got shuffled onto the after school bus before he could escape.
“She loves her head scratches,” Charlie tells Eden, very carefully and slowly guiding one of Eden’s hands to the top of Agnes’ head. He mimics scratching between her ears, and when Eden does it, Agnes lets out a low purr, the rumble of it reverberating against his chest. “Look, she likes you.”
“She obviously has questionable taste, like you.”
“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that.”
Together they pet Agnes, the weight of her in Eden’s arms and the gentle vibrations of her purring soften the sharpest edges of Eden’s unease. At least slightly. That unease rises when Charlie reaches towards Eden’s face. For a second, he thinks he’s going to touch his hair, and a knee jerk panic floods his senses, making him squeeze Agnes a little too hard. She yelps, jumping from Eden’s arms and running away the way he wishes he could.
The look in Charlie’s eyes is impossible to read, and Eden isn’t sure he wants to even, if he could.
“Can I have some water?” Eden asks, needing an escape.
“Sure, you want me to get it for you or?—”
“I can get it myself if you tell me where it is,” Eden insists, desperate for a few seconds alone. Maybe if he’s not surrounded by Charlie, he can breathe.
Whether Charlie senses that or just doesn’t mind Eden wandering his home is unclear. What is clear is that Charlie is too damn nice, offering Eden free roam of his kitchen and house and whatever he wants to eat or drink while he puts the animals to bed. This apparently includes putting television on for them which is some rich people shit. Eden didn’t even have his own room until he was seventeen and had been living with Addy for over a year. He’d taken the couch until he’d been able to make enough money for them to put down a deposit on a bigger two bedroom. He can’t imagine owning an entire housefor one person and a few pets. Pets that apparently have their own bedroom and television.
Noisily, Eden makes his way to the kitchen, tracking every stray odd and end in the house that screams Charlie, from the random art on every wall to the strange assortment of knick knacks ranging from what appears to be expensive ceramic vases to old tin cans being used as vases with crocheted flowers in them.
Like the rest of the house, or at least the parts Eden has seen so far, the kitchen screams Charlie in every way. Like the rest of Charlie’s place, it’s clearly older. Rather than remodeling though, each cupboard is painted a different color making it a vibrantly colored eyesore. None of it matches, but something about it works in the same way Charlie’s hideous clothes work—because they’re Charlie’s.
As if the cupboards weren’t colorful enough, there’s a garish yellow backsplash on the walls behind the sink and stove. The counters are covered in random shit: from piles of mail, a coffee can filled with soda tabs, and for unknown reasons, the ugliest jeweled chicken statue he’s ever seen.
While everything outside the cupboards is chaos, inside them is a different story. The first cupboard he opens has matching storage containers with cereal and snacks, all labeled. The next has alphabetized spices and the third has cups—the top shelf full of ceramic coffee mugs and the bottom filled with various drinking glasses that don’t match but have been arranged by size. It’s not hard to imagine the why, or rather who, that’s responsible for this. Andrew. Over the last week, they somehow started texting, and Eden found his over-the-top sarcasm matched with Andrew’s dry humor and endless patience, somehow leading him to acquiescing to the idea of showing up here while he and Charlie were gone.
Andrew’s a persuasive fucker. Or maybe it’s just that Eden likes him, likes them both. Not romantically but deeply nonetheless. Andrew’s big brother vibes are so damn strong that everything about him screamssafein a way Eden has only ever experienced with Addy.
Things get more complicated where Charlie is concerned because Eden’s attraction and burgeoning feelings for the older man make him infinitely less safe, because the possibility of this all blowing up in his face is astronomical. There’s no way a man like Charlie, with a solid family and job and life, is going to want to stick it out with someone like Eden. Yet like the misguided, despaired man he clearly is, Eden is here.
Mood suddenly tanking, Eden grabs a glass and fills it with water. He chugs it down, focusing on the ice cold sharpness of the water and not his crashing emotions. It’s not long before he hears Charlie’s incoming footsteps.
So much for getting a moment alone to compose himself.
14CHARLIE
“Miraculous as my kitchen is,this is not what I wanted to show you.” Charlie announces, leaning against the doorframe and peering into his kitchen. He spent so long getting Birdie and Agnes settled, refilling the outdoor food and water bowls for Biscuit and Oreo and then changing into a fresh pair of boxers and a clean, or moderately clean, t-shirt that he worried Eden might be gone. Or if not gone, perhaps wandering his house snooping. If the roles were reversed, he would definitely be snooping.
Instead, Eden is standing in his kitchen glaring at Charlie’s colorful kitchen like it's personally offended him. For some reason, this makes Charlie smile.
“Do you have a proclivity for cabinetry?”
“No,” Eden frowns. “It reminds me of your clothes.”
