like the cologne that still lingered in parts of the apartment. And all together, combined with the knowledge that, once again, he had screwed up things with Rufus, it threatened to overload Sam.
So he stood under the spray, the water hot, and he soaped up with good old neutral-as-Switzerland Dr. Bronner’s, and then, when it was time to rinse, he turned the temperature down by degrees. He didn’t want to think about Rufus, so he fiddled with the tuner in his head until he got the Bartman game. Cubs. 2003. He’d been twenty-one, posted at Bragg, and drinking the way twenty-one-year-olds do while he watched his team go for the National League pennant. When the asshole fan in the front row—Bartman—snagged a fly ball moments before Alou would have caught it, preventing an easy out and turning the advantage to the Marlins, Sam had knocked a bowl of peanuts off the bar with his elbow and spent five minutes shouting at the umps—along with everybody else he could think of. It was a good game to replay when he was mad, but he didn’t like how that frozen camera still in his head, the one showing Bartman grabbing for the ball like a greedy fuck, kept morphing into a certain redheaded asshole Sam wanted to yell at.
It wasn’t until he was shivering under the cold spray that Sam realized he hadn’t heard Rufus come back. He turned off the water and stood, dripping. And listening.
Nothing except the plink plunk plink.
When Sam rolled back the shower door, it rattled so loudly that he gritted his teeth. He hooked a towel around his waist, dragged his feet on the mat like a dog, drying them enough that he wouldn’t slip and fall on his ass, and went out of the bathroom.
“Rufus?”
Still nothing. Water—cold water, because he’d turned the handle all the way to C, hadn’t he?—snaked down the back of his neck. Sam fought a shiver.
At the studio’s front door, he paused, put his ear to the wood, and listened again.
Nothing, nothing, nothing.
Pulling open the door, Sam stuck his head out into the hall and glanced both ways.
“Rufus?”
Another fat, cold drop slid down his nape; this time, Sam did shiver.
He closed the door and bolted it. How far to the mailboxes? A two-minute walk? Five minutes tops. Five minutes if Rufus waited for the elevator and got stuck because Mrs. Peabody or whoever the hell in 6B got her shopping cart stuck. Five minutes was an absolute outside. And it had been longer than five minutes. It had been double that, maybe triple, because Sam had taken a shower, had played the Bartman game, had sung a few verses of fuck Rufus.
Possibilities.
Rufus had finally had enough of Sam, and he’d left. He’d walked out the door never intending to come back; checking the mailboxes had been an easy excuse.
The thought was tempting. After all, guys had been walking out on Sam—figuratively, when they couldn’t get away literally—his whole life. And, of course, self-pity was a nice, easy slide.
But, honestly, Sam didn’t believe it. Fight or no fight—asshole or no asshole—he didn’t think Rufus had been angry enough to leave. Not like this, anyway. And Sam didn’t think he’d been wrong in feeling a connection, something real, with the redhead.
And then, in the middle of padding around the perimeter of the apartment, Sam froze. On the sofa, Rufus’s beanie lay discarded. The beanie Rufus wore every time they went outside. The beanie Rufus wore in spite of the brutal July heat. The beanie Rufus wore even though it made his messy hair even messier.
If Sam wanted to, he could believe that Rufus had left because he couldn’t put up with Sam. But he wouldn’t believe Rufus had left without the beanie. Rufus wouldn’t have set foot outside the building without the beanie, not unless he had a very good reason.
Or unless he was forced to.
Dropping the towel, Sam jogged to the bathroom. He pulled on the fresh tee and grabbed his jeans. Socks, too, folded inside out and ready to wear. And then he pulled on his boots and grabbed his Beretta, not bothering with the holster, just tucking it into his waistband in spite of how it felt and pulling the loose tee over it.
He took the stairs two at a time, sometimes three, careening around landings. When he hit the ground floor, his heartbeat ran in his ears at a steady drone.
He had to move more slowly now. He had to