Riven (Riven 1)

“Can I have some eggs, too?” Rhys called.

“I’m not making eggs.”

“Oh.” Then a long pause, and Rhys’s hopeful voice. “Can you?”

I rolled my eyes at my friend, but got out the eggs as I heard Theo start talking. Within minutes, the two of them were snugged up on the couch, keyboard resting across both their knees, with Theo talking animatedly and gesticulating wildly, smearing ink all over from the cheap ballpoint pens he chewed.

I put the eggs down in front of Rhys and he barely noticed me, so intent on what Theo was saying. As I sat down on Theo’s other side, I realized this was the first time more than one person had been in this house with me since I’d moved in. I had only fuzzy memories of visiting my grandfather when he lived out here. He had a stroke and went to live in a retirement home when I was thirteen. But I remembered how he’d look around at my mom, my sister, and me, in surprise, as if he too were unused to having anyone in the house. Maybe that was the kind of place this was—a one-man spot, be it cloister or coffin.

It felt good hanging out here with Theo and Rhys, though. As if this place that I’d found, that I’d made into a sanctuary when nowhere else seemed tenable, might actually become a home. I pictured waking up here with Theo on Christmas morning, or having Rhys and Matt over for a bonfire in the autumn.

The scenes of making a life here—a real, present life—flashed in front of me like a flip book. Desires long buried and possibilities I’d thought dead reared up from the depths of my mind as I eased the gates open. I’d have to wait and see. But they were still there, still lurking, waiting for me when I was ready.

In the meantime, I felt a warm satisfaction settle in at the idea of my best friend and my lover getting along. It probably had all the makings of an unholy alliance, given the stories Rhys could tell about me, but I was willing to risk it.

* * *

—

A few nights later, we were lying in bed, the breeze from the open window drying the sweat that streaked our bodies from sex that had left us breathless. I thought Theo had drifted off, when he started pressing tiny kisses to my shoulder, then buried his face in it.

“You okay?”

“Nervous,” he mumbled into my shoulder.

“About going back to the studio tomorrow?”

He nodded and I ran a hand over his hair. I’d meant to run my fingers through it, but they snagged, his ever-present tangles made worse by getting fucked into the mattress, and I settled for brushing it back from his face.

“The songs are solid, baby. They’re good.”

“You think?” His voice was small. I’d told him so half a dozen times, but I nodded anyway. “I’m worried that the bass line to ‘Cupcake Apocalypse’ sounds too much like the one in ‘Monsters’ from our first album.”

“Not your job to write every single part perfectly on the first shot. Ven changes the parts sometimes, right?”

“Yeah.” He sighed. “I’m just nervous in general.”

He lifted up on one elbow and trailed a light fingertip down over my nose. Without thinking, I caught his hand and kissed his fingertips, then placed it palm down on my chest and covered it with my own. We were looking at each other in the thin moonlight, and I saw his eyelashes flutter, lips part slightly.

“I talked to my mom this morning,” he said. “While you were walking. It was her birthday.” He bit his lip.

“How’s she?”

“Fine. She’s always fine.”

“What’s she think about the whole music thing? You never told me about them. Your parents.”

“They think it’s weird. Well, it is weird. They think it’s…silly, I guess? Embarrassing. When we were first in Tuneyard, I was so excited, and I sent them a copy. It was a two-page spread, with pictures and everything. And my mom said I should be humiliated by how I looked. It was a picture of me by myself, and I was kinda crouching, one hand on the ground, and the other near my mouth. It was silly, kind of, because what I’d been doing was biting my nails because I was nervous as fuck about the photo shoot. And the photog’s assistant kept being like, ‘Get your damn fingers out of your mouth,’ to me. But in that shot it looks…I dunno.”

“I bet you’re all sultry and fucking hot is what it looks like.”

“Yeah, well. You and my mother would disagree. Whatever. When I first joined the band, they washed their hands of the whole thing. They never thought anything’d come of it, so they weren’t concerned, but they thought it was a waste of time. They wanted me to be a doctor.” He laughed bitterly. “Yeah, right. It’d go over real well when I got to the part where I hate blood and that gross, Band-Aid-y smell of hospitals makes me puke.”