“You ever feel like sometimes you’ve maybe bitten off more than you can chew with some of this shit?” The words are tossed over his shoulder as Rhys crosses the dimly-lit kitchen to get to the fridge, and he’s careful to grab it by the door, not the handle — the latter was purely decorative at this point, having fallen off a few too many times for him to keep track of — as he pulls it open. Gaze searches the shelves for a moment before landing on a six back tucked toward the back in the bottom, and he hooks a finger around the box to yank it close enough to pull out two bottles of a local brew from Iron Mule. Turning on his heels, Rhys kicks the door shut and wanders over to the island at the center of the large but clearly very dated kitchen, sliding a bottle across the counter toward Finn.
He’s not even really sure why he’s bringing it up, if he’s being honest — it’s not like Rhys to vent, not usually — but he figures if anyone might understand his current struggle, it’s Finn. “It’s like — I don’t want to leave the South Side, you know? It’s — fuck, it’s home here, whether it’s pretty or not. And I got this idea in my head that I could find a place like this, one that’s still at least a few steps shy of condemned, and fix it up. Turn it into something nice, a fucking — a place for the family, you know?” Rhys shakes his head, turns his attention briefly to the bottle in his hand and cracks it open against the edge of the counter, shaking his hand as the beer spills over the mouth and onto his fingers. “But sometimes I feel like I’m just pouring all this time and this money and this goddamn effort into trying to fix this place up, and I might just as well be pouring it straight into the trash.” He takes a swig from the bottle and looks back up to meet Finn’s gaze. “You been at it longer than I have. Is it worth it?”
