Raze (Riven 3)

Tonight would be my first date since Rachel and I broke up seven years ago. Rachel had been kind, and smart, and funny, and I’d fucked things up between us, more desperate to prove everything was fine than to make it so.

My first thought when I’d seen Felix in the bar the other night was that he was there to ask for a favor or make a threat involving Theo. I’d heard horror stories about fans using any means necessary to get close to musicians or try to extort them—not just from Theo, but from Caleb and other musicians I knew. Instead, he’d been sweet and nervous. Vulnerable when he asked for exactly what he wanted.

It wasn’t the kind of vulnerability I was accustomed to—the painful need of my sponsees that I knew intimately. Usually they needed my help, support, comfort, or advice; on much rarer occasions they wanted sex. I obliged the former if I could and ignored the latter.

* * *

—

I showered quickly and considered what tonight’s words should be. I stared at my reflection, torso littered with days of faded words like scattered bruises. My eyes looked wary and lines bracketed my mouth from the tension in my jaw. I experimented with a smile, but it just looked like a rictus.

Christ, when Felix had looked up at me after asking me out, nervous, hopeful, and daring, had I smiled like this?

His invitation, delivered in a jumble of blinks and curls and shuffling feet, had been wholly unexpected. I’d run through ways to say no. Saying no had become an art form.

But although no echoed in my head, something had stirred inside me, covetous and hungry.

I uncapped the Sharpie and wrote across my stomach, Hope clouds observation. The stink of the marker clung to my skin.

When the knock came, my heart lurched, and I pressed my palm to my stomach for five heartbeats before I opened the door.

There stood Felix, hand awkwardly in his hair like he’d been messing with it a moment before. I stepped aside to let him in. He flashed me a weak half-smile and shuffled around me into the living room, careful not to brush against me. When I closed the door he startled.

But when he said, “Hi,” he was smiling fully. He had a sweet fucking smile.

“Your place is…wow.” Felix looked around the kitchen and living room. “Extremely, uh…clean.” He ran a finger over the spines of my books, lined up precisely with the edge of the shelf.

When I’d first moved in, the apartment had been a riot of years’ old paint, Reggie’s tattered board games, shoddy built-in shelves in the corners made out of unsanded pressboard, and closets full of shelf liner curling at the corners where it had lost its stickiness and sticky in places it shouldn’t have been. I’d cleared out everything sticky and broken, then stripped the place down to its cleanest layers before repainting a glossy white that seemed like it couldn’t hide any shadows. It had been a good nighttime distraction for the month it lasted.

Now there was the necessary furniture and nothing more. A couch, a coffee table, a bookcase, free weights in the corner. A bed and a dresser in the bedroom. A table and two chairs in the kitchen.

Standing in the middle of my white apartment with nothing out of place, Felix looked intensely alive. He wore jeans somewhere between purple and black. They were tight and showed off his slim legs and the curve of his ass. His short-sleeved button-down was worn soft and clung to his body. It was a faded pink with black geometric designs on it, and it was buttoned up to his throat.

His hair was in a ponytail and I thought he might be wearing eye makeup again. His big, dark eyes looked almost bruised, in a way that made them glow. He plucked at a yellow string bracelet and chewed on his lower lip.

Everything about him looked soft and touchable, and I pushed down the urge to slide my fingers into his hair and press a hand to his back to see if he felt as good as he looked.

The beep of the oven timer made Felix startle.

“You hungry?” I asked.

“Yeah. Um, can I do anything?”

I shook my head and set two white plates on the table, poured water, and dressed the salad.

Felix still stood in the center of the room, arms crossed like he was hugging himself.

I couldn’t think of anything to say.

He tugged the elastic out of his ponytail and his hair spilled down around his face.

Dread crept through me. I pictured a night of stilted conversation, awkward silence. Felix’s hurried leave-taking and his relief at being away from me.

“Sorry,” Felix said sheepishly, “I’m really nervous.”

I blinked at him.

“Why?”

“Why?” he asked, eyes wide. “Because. I don’t know you really, so I’m not sure what we should talk about first, and you’re all…” He gestured vaguely at me. “And I feel like a mess, and I don’t want you to think I’m an idiot. And because, um.” He cleared his throat. “You’re hot and you kind of make it hard to maintain eye contact and I get all shaky, and, uh…then I ramble.”