Raze (Riven 3)

I’d said yes to him every time I should have said no. Already he was making me shatter my routine into a thousand pieces. A routine that was the only thing that had held me together all these years.

Yes, he’d offered to come with me today, but he wouldn’t be enthusiastic about accompanying me to the gym forever. He wouldn’t appreciate dinners being interrupted by the calls I always took from my sponsees, or the late hours I kept some nights at the bar. He’d understand for a while, probably, because he was kind. Rachel had been kind too. But eventually, he’d want someone funnier, prettier, younger. Easier.

I grabbed the Sharpie out of habit after drying off, but nothing seemed right. With Felix in my apartment, the need to buoy myself up with words was less pressing. He was the first thing in forever that made me feel good rather than fine.

Back in the living room, Felix startled sheepishly when he saw me. He was watching Secaucus Psychic.

“Hope you don’t mind,” he said.

“Help yourself.”

When I crossed behind the couch, he dropped his head back and reached his arms up, palms open to me. Everything about him was open. Unsure exactly what he was asking for, I slid my hands into his. He tugged and closed his eyes. I let my lips meet his, a strange, disorienting upside-down kiss that was all sweetness. But everything about him heated my blood, and the gentle ease of his mouth was no different. Neither was the long stretch of his smooth throat or the way he squeezed my hands as he deepened the kiss just a little.

With a satisfied “Mmm,” Felix pulled away and smiled at me.

“I’m starved. You wanna eat?”

My stomach gave an embarrassingly loud growl, which Felix took as assent. He turned off the TV and climbed over the back of the couch, like he was taking the fastest possible route to me. My skin buzzed with his proximity the moment before he snaked his arms around my waist.

I froze, then my skin heated as he gave me a tight squeeze. His cool, damp hair brushed my throat and I could smell my soap on his skin.

“What do you wanna eat?” I asked.

I felt him shrug and he turned his face into my shirt, relaxing in my arms. I let my hand hover over his hair. I had the urge to slide my fingers into it and press him so tight against me he couldn’t move away.

“C’we stay here?” he asked, words muffled against my chest.

“Yeah.”

“I could make something,” he offered, but his delivery was undercut somewhat by the way he was currently nuzzling into my shoulder, as if attempting to climb inside my skin.

“I got it,” I said.

He let go of me reluctantly. There was no stool at my kitchen counter because no one else was ever in my kitchen, so as Felix kept me company he alternately leaned his elbows on the counter and hoisted himself up onto it.

“So you lifted weights in high school, huh?” he asked, mind clearly still on the gym.

“Mm-hmm. Played football.”

Felix’s mouth fell open, and he let out a snorting giggle that made him choke. I raised an eyebrow at him.

“You were a high school football player. For real?”

“That funny?”

“Noooo? Well, yeah. I mean, it’s funny to think about us going to high school together ’cuz you wouldn’t have even talked to me.”

Joking with the guys, fraternal back slaps at the lockers, the crush of two hundred pounds of muscle slamming me to the muddy grass, sweaty foreheads pressed together, the armor of a letter jacket stretched across my shoulders as I walked down the hallway.

“That was a long time ago.”

“Not that long for me,” Felix said.

I winced. Maybe it was the onions I was chopping.

“What was it like?” he asked. “Being…being like a real high school student?”

“Real?”

“Just, I didn’t do any activities or participate in any clubs. I didn’t play sports or do plays or, like, go to dances. I was either working or getting the kids to school or helping them with their homework. I didn’t do any of that stuff. Pep rallies and games. TV-show stuff. And I would watch the football players or the theater kids or any of the other cliques and it seemed like high school was a whole world for them. For me it was just one more chore that took up the middle of my day. So I guess I just wonder what it was like.”

Felix was right about one thing: I had made high school my whole world. Because the alternative was being at home with my father, who was so lost in his own sadness that he took up every inch of cold space around him. The alternative was watching him drift from room to room, uncomprehending of my mother’s absence and my presence.