Chapter Text
Two weeks after Christopher leaves for Texas, Eddie gets dragged kicking and screaming out of his house.
Okay, he’s not actually kicking and screaming. He’s a grown man with dignity to maintain, so the most he does is mutter complaints under his breath. And he isn’t exactly dragged either— he’s simply being herded out into the too-bright sun, like a sheep who lost its way.
It’s kind of an apt metaphor. Maybe two years ago, his sister sent him this ridiculous video of a sheep. It was some distance away from its flock, wandering around like it couldn’t tell where they were. The weight of its fleece kept making it tip over onto its back. Every time the shepherd would lift it back up on its feet and urge it to rejoin the flock, it would just do another circle and tip over again, like it couldn’t hear him at all.
Eddie showed it to Christopher, who threw his head back and laughed — wild and bright. For a good few months, that video was on repeat in the Diaz home: the sheep, falling onto its back repeatedly and never finding its way, in some strange, humorous, Sisyphean cycle. Eventually, his other sister had shared a video of a baby panda going down a slide and crashing into another baby panda. The sheep was soon forgotten after that.
So Eddie doesn’t know much about sheep, but yeah. With that as a frame of reference, he thinks he definitely does feel like one — vacant and stumbling in circles.
Buck, though, is taking way too much joy in being a shepherd.
“Come on,” Buck says, tugging him down the front steps. His hand is secured around Eddie’s wrist, like he’s afraid Eddie will run away if he lets go. Honestly? He’s been debating it.
“I’m really not in the mood, Buck,” he warns for the dozenth time.
For the dozenth time, Buck pays him no mind. Eddie huffs out a breath, squinting into the sun as he gets pulled down the driveway. He’s half-hoping his neighbours aren’t witnessing this, even though he doesn’t really care that much. If they want to judge him for his bedhead, his oversized t-shirt and basketball shorts, his unkempt scruff that will break LAFD regulations if he goes two more days without shaving— so be it.
Actually, he thinks, it might be better if they bear witness to this. If they give him critical looks in the future, he’d like to be able to pin it on this sunny Saturday evening, where the human embodiment of a golden retriever is dragging him, pathetic and disheveled, into the waiting world. Otherwise, he’ll have to assume it’s because they saw his parents leaving with Christopher — saw him shattered in the doorway — heard the way he wailed that night and the nights after. He’ll have to assume that they know he’s an unfit father; a shrieking banshee; a broken man.
Buck opens the passenger door of the Jeep for him, like a true gentleman, and Eddie gets in. It feels surprisingly normal being in the passenger seat of Buck’s car—fabric seats and piña colada-scented air freshener and two plastic water bottles in the cupholders. Neither of them are labeled, but Eddie’s done this enough times to know that the one furthest from the gear-shift is his.
“Legally,” Eddie says, after Buck’s pulled out of the driveway and navigated to a busy main street, “I think this can be considered kidnapping.”
“That’s not a very nice thing to say to your personal chauffeur,” Buck complains. His eyes are on the road, but he turns his head just enough so that Eddie can see the ridiculous, exaggerated pout he’s wearing.
“I wasn’t trying to be nice,” Eddie mutters. He stares out the window; counts the cross-streets; thinks that’s the turn to Christopher’s school and that’s the turn to Christopher’s friend Dylan’s house and that’s the turn to the Wilson house—
Buck doesn’t flick the turn signal on. The car slides right by Hen and Karen’s street.
Eddie looks to his left. Buck’s got one hand on the wheel, the other trying to twist the lid off his water bottle.
“The turn was back there,” Eddie says dumbly.
“I know,” Buck says. “We’re taking a longer route this time.”
Eddie takes Buck’s water bottle, pops off the cap, and hands it back to him. “Why?”
“Maybe I just wanted to enjoy some tunes,” Buck replies, and cranks up the volume for emphasis.
There was something in the air that night, the stars were bright, Fernando—
Eddie lowers the volume, wincing. “Enjoy some tunes? Or burst your eardrums?”
Buck laughs. The wind rakes gently through his curls. He’s facing the road, as he should be, but Eddie catches the slight turn of his head; the way he’s sneaking glances at the passenger seat.
“I thought,” Buck says after a moment, “that some fresh air and light conversation would be nice before all the chaos.”
Eddie slides downward in his seat. He hates that he’s not looking forward to this.
The other day, at work, Buck pitched activities for the two of them to try out— an unsubtle way to fill Eddie’s near-empty schedule. He suggested disc golf and rollerskating, neither of which sounded particularly appealing, but Eddie was trying to be diplomatic in his rejections. Apparently, the suicide joke he’d made in relation to Yahtzee that morning was a little too far. Buck had taken it very, very seriously.
Well. Maybe his reaction was fair, given that Eddie remembers laying on the floor of his dark kitchen just last week, all the tears wrung out of him, whispering to his ceiling maybe it would have hurt Chris less if I’d just died instead — and Buck prying the half-empty bottle of rum out of his hand stammering out you can’t say that, Eddie, don’t ever say that with a gutting amount sorrow on his face. Seeing that reaction just added to his tidal wave of devastation. He wished he was dead all over again.
Point is: Eddie was being way, way too nice about all of the ridiculous ideas Buck was coming up with. When Buck suggested some ‘wine and paint night’ that he’d seen on Instagram, Eddie took a moment to formulate a polite absolutely not.
It was a moment too long. Hen turned her head towards them so fast that it had to hurt her neck, and immediately started talking about how Karen has wanted to do a wine and paint night for so long, and they had a ton of paint from all of Denny’s art projects, and they could even make a game out of it with just two canvases for four people: two people drink, two people paint, and they switch every ten minutes.
Buck added it to Eddie’s pathetically sparse fridge calendar after their shift. Therapy with Frank, once a week; his shifts at the firehouse; and then, written in bright red: wine + paint night with hen/karen!!!!
Eddie personally thinks the four exclamations points were overkill. He isn’t feeling very !!!! right now.
“I don’t know if I’m gonna be good company,” Eddie admits quietly. It’s as close as he can get to turn the car around and cancel our plans without feeling bad.
“Doesn’t matter what kind of company you are,” Buck says easily. “We just want to hang out with you.”
Why? Eddie wants to ask. Look at me. Look at what I did to my son. Look at my life. Why do you want any part of that?
He’s been to therapy three times in the past two weeks. Frank would call that a biased thought, and urge him to reframe it. Eddie just bites it back and stays quiet.
Buck, though, has a special knack for seeing inside his head— for responding to things Eddie can’t bring himself to voice.
“Eddie. Seriously. Hen and Karen care about you. They want to spend time with you.”
The car slows to a stop. Red light reflects off Eddie’s hands, palms digging into the meat of his thighs. A futile search for pressure, pain, something to stave off the empty feeling in his chest. It does the trick, maybe, for half a second— and then that hopelessness is back, coloured by another all-too-familiar emotion.
Eddie knows guilt well — he’s become even more acquainted with it since Chris left. It’s made a home inside of him since he was a child, bony knees on a thin cushion, sacrament heavy and dry on his tongue.
He can feel Buck’s eyes on him. Slowly, he looks up.
“Eddie,” Buck repeats, ducking his head to catch Eddie’s gaze. Like always, the world rattles back into focus when their eyes meet. “I wouldn’t be doing all this if I didn’t want to.”
That’s the problem.
He appreciates it— this— Buck — endlessly. He thinks he might cry if he voices that.
“Buck—”
“Yeah,” Buck says, “always.”
Eddie looks down at his lap again. He lets the tension bleed out of his hands.
“You’re gonna have a good time once you’re there,” Buck continues, and Eddie knows he’s right— knows that any time spent with Hen is enjoyable; that Karen, though he hasn’t hung out with her in this capacity before, is a delight; that he could really use a distraction from the misery that is his life.
Right now, though, Eddie wants to curl into a ball, tuck himself underneath the passenger seat, and decompose right into the Jeep’s recently-refurbished car flooring.
That wouldn’t be fair to Buck, though.
Lately, Eddie’s felt like his entire existence has been unfair to Buck.
Buck’s always around. Always. At the firehouse, of course, but afterwards— driving him home from shift; sleeping on his couch. Dragging him out of bed. Dragging him to therapy. Telling him he needs to eat something, Eddie, even if it’s small, and waiting patiently at the kitchen table with him for the hour it takes him to choke down a dry piece of toast. When he needs a distraction, Buck is there, cracking jokes. When he needs an outlet, Buck is there, offering suggestions. When he needs his son— Buck is there, sitting with him in his grief.
Two days ago, when Chimney suggested post-shift drinks, Buck had looked at Eddie — understood, in a single moment, that he wouldn’t be in attendance — and made a poor excuse about being too tired. During that same shift, Eddie had overheard Buck telling Hen: yeah, things with Tommy just kind of fizzled out. I don’t really have time for that, you know?
Buck is nothing but not devoted. Buck is a loyal dog at the foot of his bed. Buck is trying too hard to fix something that’s beyond repair.
And Eddie—
Eddie was a complicated birth; a greedy creature clawing at life and nearly taking his mother’s own. His first act in this world was to harm someone who loved him. Eddie has been broken since the day he was born — and he’s spent his entire life breaking himself more and more and more.
He’s shattered into a million pieces, and if Buck keeps trying to fix him, if Buck keeps trying to pick up all these sharp-edged fragments of Eddie and put them back together, he’s only going to end up with bloody hands.
The fact that Eddie is selfish; that he wants and wants and even when he won’t let himself have something, he doesn’t stop wanting — that he’s clinging to the best friend he’ll ever have and trying not to dig his nails in too tight — that Buck doesn’t even know this is the way Eddie is, that Eddie’s entire life is quicksand and Buck’s already knee-deep — it’s not fair at all.
“And if you’re not having a good time,” Buck is saying, thumbs tapping in time with the quiet music, “then that’s what the wine is for.”
Eddie digs his teeth into the inside of his cheek until the tissue breaks. He swallows down the blood; swallows down the guilt.
Buck thinks Eddie needs this — an outing, some company, a reminder of what it’s like to have a good night with friends. He’s probably right. But Eddie thinks Buck needs something out of this too — a sign that not all is lost. That Eddie’s not about to join a street-fighting ring again, or isolate himself from everyone, or go completely off the rails. That Eddie’s still able to joke around and laugh and be the person Buck knows him to be.
He owes this to Buck. And besides, it’s easy slipping into that same banter with him as always. It makes him almost forget, for a moment, that nothing will ever be the same as it was before.
“The alcohol might help me have a good time,” Eddie offers, keeping his tone light. “The taste of it definitely won’t.”
Buck shakes his head, smiling. “You and your sweet tooth,” he says fondly. “What’s your ridiculous coffee order again? Iced latte, almond milk, four shots of vanilla syrup, hold the coffee?”
“You forgot—”
“The sprinkle of cinnamon on top,” Buck adds quickly.
“You know me so well,” Eddie says.
It’s meant to come off as a joke. Faux-dramatic, with some truth behind it. Instead, it’s quiet and earnest as it leaves his lips.
“I do,” Buck agrees.
The light turns green. Buck starts driving again, the warm evening wind growing stronger as he picks up speed. Eddie turns his head to look out the window, and they settle into silence.
-
“Ready?”
Eddie hesitates, fingers flitting from paintbrush to paintbrush. Hen’s brushstrokes, while thick and messy, are layered into a glowing, orange-to-purple sunset. He doesn’t want to ruin it. He doesn’t think he knows how to add to it without ruining it.
“Ready,” Buck confirms, looking thoughtfully down at the canvas he’s sharing with Karen. His elbow digs gently into Eddie’s forearm in question.
Frank says that he’s supposed to be voicing things. Saying what he needs, what he wants, how he feels. It’s stupid, really, but the more Eddie thinks about it, the more he reluctantly finds merit in it. When he doesn’t voice things — when he shrinks into himself and denies everyone’s help — his friends get this look on their faces that he can’t bear. And here, now, even though this is insignificant in the grand scheme of things — if he doesn’t say this, he probably really will fuck up Hen’s painting.
Eddie takes a long sip from his glass of wine and confesses: “I don’t know how to do this.”
“It’s pretty simple,” Karen says, amusement threaded through her words. “You pick up the paintbrush, like so, and dip it into your chosen color of paint…”
“I remember kindergarten art class, thank you,” Eddie snarks, trying to keep his tone light. “Hen’s sunset is so nice, though, I don’t…”
Buck gets what he’s not saying. “It’s art. It doesn’t have to be perfect. It doesn’t even have to be good.”
“Besides,” Hen teases, “if you mess it up or make it look bad, I can fix it when it’s my turn again.”
“Oh, I’d like to see you try,” Karen laughs, leaning into her wife. She gives Eddie an amused look. “That basic sunset is the best Hen can do. There’s a reason why Denny never asked her for help with arts and crafts.”
“Excuse you, I can draw a damn good stick figure,” Hen snipes back.
Karen raises an eyebrow at Eddie. “Stick figures and sunsets,” she says knowingly. “It’s a pretty low bar.”
“Somehow, I don’t know if I’ll clear it,” Eddie replies dejectedly.
“Again, the point isn’t making something good,” Buck stresses, gesticulating wildly with a paintbrush in hand. He’s already tugged over the reds and oranges to his side of the table. “It’s about having fun.”
“And drinking,” Karen adds. “It’s also about drinking.”
She raises her glass. Hen and Buck follow her lead.
Karen’s expectant look gives way to a grin when Eddie finally concedes, clinking his glass against theirs in cheers. They all collectively take a sip.
“You can paint anything,” Hen says. “Whatever comes to mind.”
Christopher. Always Christopher. That’s the only thing on Eddie’s mind these days.
“You just have to go for it,” Karen adds, and then asks again: “Ready?”
“Ready,” Buck confirms, shooting Eddie an encouraging look.
He takes a breath and echoes: “Ready.”
-
Eddie paints a city.
Christopher was six years old when they moved to Los Angeles. It was a long road-trip, but Chris, even at such a young age, was more patient than anyone else Eddie knew. He didn’t get it from Eddie, that’s for sure. Shannon — who Eddie had to convince multiple times not to drop out of high school, run away to California, and become a starving artist — had never believed much in delayed gratification either.
Chris didn’t complain as Eddie drove them out of Texas and through Arizona. They stopped at motels and gas stations and diners, collected three new stuffed animals along the way, and listened to Don't Stop by Fleetwood Mac so many times that Chris knew all the words by the time they entered California.
They got to LA on a balmy summer evening, traffic thick and frustrating in the last legs of the journey. Eddie followed the navigation, GPS volume turned low as Chris slept in the backseat. His new stuffed animal — an antelope — was nearly falling out of his grasp, small fingers curled loosely around its antlers.
The house looked like it did in the pictures. Yellow stucco, a terracotta roof, enough space to plant some flowers, which he knew his Abuela would insist on. Unlike the photos on the real estate website— it was backlit by a pink-and-orange sky, the sun setting over the city to mark their arrival.
It was a fresh start. A new life for Chris to wake up to. Eddie hadn’t felt that sense of hope in years.
When the timer dings and he shows Hen his work, she asks: “Do you mind if I destroy this?”
“Go ahead,” Eddie says with a grimace, though he refuses to actually take it personally. “It’s not very good. You probably should paint over it.”
“No, no,” Hen says, “I mean destroy it. Add fire and smoke and disaster.”
“Why would you want to do that?” Karen asks, baffled.
Buck shrugs. “You can take the girl—”
“Woman.”
“— out of the firehouse, but you can’t take the firehouse out of the girl?”
“Woman, ” Hen corrects again, “and no, I thought we could do a post-apocalyptic kind of thing. I know you love that Kurt Russell movie.”
“Escape From New York,” Eddie supplies, beginning to smile. “Yeah, okay, I see the vision.”
“Well, at least now we both have a coherent theme,” Karen says, though there’s still a little confused indent between her brows.
“And yours is space,” Hen remarks. “Why am I not surprised?”
“Just you wait,” Buck reassures them, flicking paint everywhere as he gestures broadly. “It’ll be more than space.”
Karen gives Buck a doubtful look. “It will?”
-
Eddie’s never particularly been a wine person, but he can see the appeal. His chest is warm, his thoughts are fuzzy, and he’s gladly matching the sappy smile on Hen’s face.
Buck is leaning into him, trying to get a close glimpse at Hen’s reaction as she reviews their final products. Eddie and Hen’s canvas is filled with oranges and grays and reds, an on-fire city with crumbling buildings, distant little stick figures with speech bubbles that say ‘AAAAH!,’ and a 118 engine coming to the rescue. Buck and Karen’s artwork is more detailed— precise planets painted over a rich blue-and-purple background, complete with tiny little stars and—
“Are those… cats?” Hen asks, frowning in confusion.
“Cat astronauts,” Karen corrects proudly.
Buck shakes his head, rapidly waving his hands in the air to call attention to himself, and announces: “Catstronauts.”
Karen cackles. Hen groans.
“Terrible,” Eddie says, but he can’t help his fond smile.
“Castro— cats— catter—” Karen attempts, scowling when she can’t get the word out.
“You’ll get it,” Hen reassures her.
“Catstronauts? Catstronauts.”
“There you go.”
“Catstronauts,” Karen says a third time, “and post-apocalyptic LA. We definitely made some interesting choices.”
“We made art,” Buck corrects.
Eddie raises his near-empty wine glass in agreement. “These should be hung in a museum.”
“Or on our walls,” Hen says. She narrows her eyes at the canvases, deliberating. “Maybe we get one and then you guys share custody of the other?”
We’re good at sharing custody is on the tip of his tongue. He swallows it down with the last few drops of wine.
“They should stay together,” he suggests instead. “A pair. You guys keep them.”
It’s almost impressive how quickly Buck starts pouting.
“We should make prints of them,” Hen says diplomatically. “That way, everyone gets a copy.”
“But you guys get the originals?” Buck asks, staring at the canvases with puppy-dog eyes.
“They hosted,” Eddie points out. “And supplied the paint. And the wine. Thank you both, by the way.”
Karen raises her eyebrows, nudging Hen. “Well-mannered and generous. I like him. Why have you been keeping him from me?”
“I haven’t been keeping him from you,” Hen scoffs. “You’ve known each other for years.”
“Yeah, and I’ve had all of two conversations with him!”
“Three conversations,” Eddie corrects instinctively. “You congratulated me at my shield ceremony, I congratulated you at your vow renewal, and we bitched about PTA moms for five minutes before Buck started vomiting up blood.”
“And I gave you a dog once,” Karen points out.
“And you gave me a dog once.”
Chris had campaigned to get a pet for weeks afterwards. Eddie managed to talk him down from a dog to a hamster— provided that Chris demonstrated responsibility by becoming the primary caretaker for the pets they already have: Fishtopher 1, Fishtopher 2, and Ed-sea.
It’s probably the alcohol talking — or maybe the emptiness of his home is getting to him — but Eddie’s starting to wonder if he should get a dog. Maybe, then, Christopher would consider coming home.
“Well,” Karen says, breaking him out of his thoughts, “here’s to us having a normal interaction for once.”
“You have paint on your face, baby,” Hen tells her. “I don’t know if this is exactly normal.”
“Fine,” Karen huffs. “Not normal. Fun, and uninterrupted, and the first of many.” She raises her glass towards Eddie. “Cheers.”
Eddie’s glass is empty. He grabs Buck’s instead, ignoring the dramatic sigh that follows. “Cheers,” he echoes, clinking his glass against hers.
The wine is dry and sour and not at all something he prefers. The feeling it gives him — and the company he’s in — is well-worth it.
-
The hollowness that Eddie’s become accustomed to — the cavity where his heart should be — creeps back in right when he expects it to.
Karen and Buck have vanished after an energetic conversation about astrophysics. Buck was trying to keep up, but his Wikipedia rabbit-hole knowledge wasn’t quite cutting it, so Karen offered to lend him some books.
Only let him take however much he can carry, Eddie warned her before they disappeared down the hall. If given free reign, Buck would take her entire collection.
It’s just him and Hen, now, wine glasses drained; paint splattered on the newspaper-covered table. His heart folds in on itself. The void in his chest expands — swallowing up all his happiness and joy and fondness for his friends; leaving nothing but misery behind.
Hen looks at him, and it’s like she knows, so before she can ask him how he is, he blurts out: “Where’s Denny tonight?”
Pain flashes over Hen’s face for a moment. Guilt stirs from where it was sleeping within him. He couldn’t have said anything else?
“At Chimney and Maddie’s,” she answers, tone carefully neutral. “He and Mara wanted to have a sleepover.”
Eddie digs himself deeper into this hole, knowing that he’s giving Hen free reign to question him about Chris later.
“How’s Mara doing?”
“It’s been… difficult,” Hen admits.
Her gaze flicks across the room. The far wall is covered in kids’ art — from Mother’s Day cards made in school to stick figure crayon drawings. Most are signed by Denny. A few of the looser, more scribbly pieces have ‘Nia’ printed at the bottom in Karen’s careful penmanship. There’s at least one that reads ‘Mara’ in big, blocky blue letters.
“But she’s settling in. Karen, Denny, and I are there a lot, you know, trying to make the transition easier,” she continues. “Trying to remind her that we are her family, even if the law doesn’t recognize it. And we’re still fighting pretty damn hard to get the law to recognize it.”
“If there’s anything I can do…”
It must feel like an empty offer, coming from him — the guy who can barely keep himself alive, let alone stable, let alone functional — the guy who lost his kid for worse reasons. Still, he means it. Hen is one of his closest friends. He would do anything to help her, even if there isn’t much he can really do; even if he wouldn’t be a great witness to her character by virtue of his own.
“Yeah,” Hen says, exhaustion creeping into her voice. “Yeah, I’ll let you know.”
Eddie leans back in his chair. “And how are you doing?”
“Me? I’m fine,” Hen answers, waving him off.
He gives her a look. She raises her eyebrows in response. He starts counting down in his head: five, four, three, two—
Hen relents with a heavy sigh.
“I keep having to remind myself that this is really happening,” she confesses, voice low. “I’m not just gonna wake up from a bad dream with my family back together. It’s real, and it’s awful, and I just have to keep holding onto the hope that we might get her back someday.”
Eddie can only nod for a moment. It’s like she’s pulled thoughts from the swirling mess inside his head and expressed them with precision.
“Holding onto hope,” he says, “it’s… it isn’t easy.”
“No. It’s not.”
There are at least five texts he’s sent to Christopher over the past month that have gone unanswered. There are dozens more drafted in his mind that he won’t send. He doesn’t want to overwhelm his son; to push him further away — not when Christopher wouldn’t even look at him as they said goodbye.
Hen might be fixated on that light at the end of the tunnel, but Eddie…
His entire life is filled with worst-case scenarios. He can’t see past it sometimes. And with Christopher across state lines — with Christopher gone — he can’t see past it at all, right now.
Despair lathers his tongue and lets the words spill out — slippery and unbidden.
“I don’t know how much of it I have left.”
Hen’s face falls. The look in her eyes turns his despair into guilt, thickening in his throat. It’s sour, like the wine they’ve been drinking all night, and it makes his stomach churn. He remembers the last time his sadness turned to guilt so quickly — Chris walking into the house, looking so much younger than his thirteen years, the question spilling out of his mouth: Mom?
Eddie fucked up. Eddie ruined everything. And Hen— Hen didn’t. Hen did her job and did her best and still got her kid ripped away from her. If he aligns himself with what she’s going through — if he talks to her about grief and hope and things only parents can understand — he’s absolving himself.
He doesn’t deserve many things, but most of all, he doesn’t deserve absolution.
“I’m sorry,” he says after a long moment. He shakes his head; tries to get it to stop spinning. “I shouldn’t… this isn’t about me.”
Hen’s brown eyes bore into his — microscopic and intense. “It is,” she asserts, frowning in a way that makes him feel like he’s missed something. “It’s about both of us. We’re going through something similar. If you’re here for me, then I’m here for you.”
“But you didn’t—” Eddie swallows down the shame rising in his throat. That specific spiral would only make Hen more concerned than she currently is. “What you’re feeling, though, is…”
“What,” Hen says, “valid? Justified?”
The word escapes Eddie’s lips in a hiss. “ Yes.”
“And your feelings aren’t?”
“I fucked up,” he repeats. “I fucked up, Hen, I’m just—”
Reaping what I’ve sown. Getting what I deserve. Being rightfully punished.
“I made him leave,” he ends up saying.
The rest remains unspoken. Hen gets it, though, at least some of it. Devastation gathers in the furrow of her brow and she lets out a slow breath, trying to collect herself. She reaches out a careful hand across the table; places it on his forearm. The softness of her touch throws him off balance, for a moment. If he’s not careful, he might start believing he’s allowed such kindness.
“You made a mistake,” she insists, “and you clearly don’t feel good about it, and you’re already taking actions to remedy it. You’re giving Chris the space he needs. You’re taking time to work on yourself.”
His eyes sting. He doesn’t want to cry right now.
“This is what matters, Eddie,” she says softly. “It all comes down to how you handle the aftermath.”
“And what if I don’t handle it well?” His voice comes out in a whisper.
“You will,” she promises. “You already are.”
Eddie lifts her hand gently off his forearm and squeezes it tightly. He wants to say thank you.
Instead, he says, “I’m sorry.”
“What are you apologizing for?”
“Dampening the mood?” he tries.
Hen huffs out a laugh, letting go of his hand to gesture to the empty house. “Please. We’re all going through it right now.” She sighs. “Well, you know what they say.”
“To live is to suffer?” Eddie guesses dryly.
Hen’s hand hits his arm with a resounding smack. “Misery loves company,” she corrects.
He can’t argue with that. Lifting his empty wine glass, he says, “well, here’s to being miserable.”
She sighs, clinking her empty glass against his. “To being miserable.”
There’s a scoff from the doorway. Karen is frowning at them; Buck, behind her, is laser-focused on juggling the large stack of books in his arms.
“Well,” Karen says, swiping another empty glass from the table, “I can always trust you both to look on the bright side of life.”
The look on her face is skeptical, but she still joins them in cheers. Hen laughs, bright and vibrant, and Eddie—
Eddie is grateful for her. He’s grateful for all of them, really.
For the first time in two weeks, he laughs too.