Riven (Riven 1)

“Then”—he cleared his throat as his voice broke—“then I walked into the kitchen and I made a stupid cake. I think Matty’s idea was that if I couldn’t have heroin I could at least have candy.” He smiled faintly. “But I didn’t need to eat cake, I just needed to make something. To distract myself. And as I was making it, I was thinking, ‘This cake is kind of gross, but when Theo gets home he’ll want some.’ And I imagined you eating a piece and then another the next day, but then the cake was too big, so you put it in the fridge. But then there’s no room for the real food, so you put it in the freezer, and you eat bites off it, you know? When you want something sweet. And I—”

His hands were around my waist but his eyes were wild, elsewhere.

“I’m not making any sense,” he said, shaking his head. “I…I imagined a future for us, in that ridiculous cake, Theo. A future where, I dunno, there was day after day of us doing shit and…groceries and cake and…fuckin’ music, and—shit! I don’t know, man. For the first time in a long time, when I pictured the future it wasn’t in anticipation of struggling through every day. I want that so damn bad. Not because I want you to distract me, or–or–or keep me clean. Because I want to trust myself to make a life. And I want to make it with you. If you…if you still want that?”

Caleb’s eyes finally met mine, and they were fathomless, like he was looking into himself and me at the same time. Seeing the past he feared and the future he finally dared to hope for.

I brushed his hair back and cupped his cheek, kissed him so slowly I could feel the press of his lips and the moment they received mine.

“I want it,” I murmured. “I want everything with you.”

Caleb let out a desperate broken sound, and kissed me again.

“I’m trying,” he said. “I’m really, really trying, I promise.”

“Maybe…maybe if you can’t quite trust yourself yet, you can trust me. Trust that I believe in you, and I love you, and—shit that sounds so cheesy, I just…I…I want you. I want you and everything that means.”

Caleb nodded, a tear tracking down his cheek, and when his mouth met mine, he kissed salt to my lips.

“You wanna know what I realized when I was coming home tonight?”

Caleb nodded again, eyes glued to mine.

“I realized that I can do whatever I want. Without Riven, I have nothing that I have to do. No obligations, no expectations. And it was the strangest feeling, because I…I’ve never had that before. I’ve never really done whatever I want, you know? When I was younger, I did what my parents wanted. I went to college because it was expected of me, and even though I left, I had all this stuff I had to do. When I hooked up with Coco and Ven and Ethan, all I wanted was a chance to do music, but almost right away it was all about what we had to do to get an audience, what we had to do to cut an album, then to get more listeners, then to book bigger gigs, and so on and so on.”

As I said it I remembered the first moment I realized that inertia had swept me someplace I wasn’t sure I wanted to be. It was the moment when we were recording our first album, and I’d sung the lyrics I’d just written for a song, and Ven said, “Wait, do we want to use ‘he’? Do we want everyone to know you’re gay?” He hadn’t meant it maliciously, and I knew he didn’t care about my sexuality at all. And Ethan and Coco both spoke up before I had to, saying that, yes, we wanted it known from the outset. And we went with it.

But that had been the moment. I’d felt a pang of fear that froze in my chest, realizing that this might already have gone in a direction I wasn’t going to be able to live with. But I’d buried it, appreciated that my friends had my back, and not mentioned it.

I ran a hand through Caleb’s hair, then down his back, enjoying the solid, muscular feel of his body. Then I grinned at him.

“We can do whatever we want,” I said.

Caleb raised an eyebrow. He said, “You know, historically, doing whatever I want hasn’t worked out so great for me.” But he smiled.

“We can do whatever we want,” I said again. “You sure like it when I do what I want, huh?” His eyes flashed and he nodded. “Well, now we can make the music we want, we can tour the way we want, if we want. Or not.”