PLAYED

“You aren’t flattered?”

“I don’t need the flattery.”

I shrugged. “Should we skip the other museums? If you’re worried about bumping into other fans…”

“Could we, just for today?” She pleaded. “I wasn’t going to ask, but if you’re offering…” She saw my expression change, and quickly rectified her tone: “I will absolutely take you on other days, but that was one of the smaller museums… I don’t think I want to deal with that too much more for today…”

“Absolutely,” I embraced her with one arm, leading her away from the museum. “I don’t see a problem with that at all… and if you’d like, just tell me some of the other galleries, and I’ll go visit them independently of you.”

Riley looked up at me with an impish grin. “We’ll see,” she replied, right before pecking her lips against my cheek.

We were feeling kind of hungry, and her Japanese friend ran a sandwich shop, so we put two and two together. Luckily, Witch Wiches wasn’t further away than a fifteen-minute taxi ride, and we strolled through the doors during its slow period.

“No, no, no! What is the matter with you?!”

One of the teenagers behind the counter glanced up stupidly from a meat-slicing machine, which was making a vicious scraping noise. The Japanese friend of Riley’s – Reiko, I think I’d been told – was making an absolute fuss over the disaster.

“I don’t know what happened,” the kid dumbly told her. “I put it on the right settings. This stupid thing is a broken piece of junk.”

Reiko glowered at him. “This stupid thing is a three thousand dollar piece of equipment that works fine. Parker, you are the piece of junk. Get the hell out of the way so that I can fix this freaking thing… again…”

She fiddled with the settings as we approached the counter, and he vacantly gazed over our way. “Oh, you’ve got it on the fourth setting… and you’ve turned it up to high? No freaking wonder it’s on the fritz… how you figured out how to damage an analog slicing machine, I have zero freaking clue…”

He started to take our orders, ignoring my requests for recommendations, when Reiko poked her head up and glanced over.

“Oh! Riley! And Handsome English Dude! Why didn’t you tell me you were coming by?”

“It was a last-second thing,” I smiled. “How are you? Kid’s got you bothered?”

Her face fell as she tilted her head. “Boy, you have no freaking idea how much of a snot-nosed little brat these teenagers can be on an individual basis... slap a crew of them together, and I’m constantly putting out fires.”

“Fire?” The kid asked, perking up.

“No, you insane pyromaniac,” she told him. “Don’t you dare think about fire. You just get over there and start making sandwiches, or the closest fire you’ll find is a freaking pink slip.”

He wandered over to the side, and she started giving out glowing recommendations of some of the offerings at her dine-in. Within ten minutes, we were eating some of the most delicious sandwiches that I’d ever tasted – completely complimentary.

“That’s not half bad,” I told her when she swung by to check on us, pulling up a barstool to our high-top table.

“Oh yeah?” She grinned, nodding along. “You like that fried alligator sub, don’t’cha?”

“It’s pretty damned delicious,” I agreed.

“One of my favorites,” Reiko replied, then jabbed a thumb Riley’s way. “Can never get this one to try any of the cool stuff…”

“I like the traditional ones,” she answered defensively. “Nothing’s wrong with a chicken cordon bleu.”

“But that’s so uninspired. Chicken and ham, dude! What’s exciting about that? Try out the wacky shit sometime!” Her voice went sing-song as she continued. “I can guarantee that you’d liiiike iiiit…”

“When’s the last time I’ve enjoyed a recommendation of yours?”

She looked between the two of us. “Um. Remember that one time that I convinced you to come downstairs and head to the bar with me? When I mentioned the totally hot British guy, sipping away at his–”

“Point taken,” Riley quickly interjected. “Point very, very taken.”

“Oh?” I chuckled between bites. “That sounds like a story.”

“Don’t you dare,” she cut in, glaring daggers at Reiko. Well… very dull, half-joking daggers, but daggers nevertheless.

“Try something cool next time, and I won’t!”

“Fine.”

“Fine, what?” Reiko smiled widely.

“Fine, I promise to try something ‘cool’ next time,” Riley answered in defeat.

“See! I don’t really ask for much, do I?” She laughed, aiming the question mostly my way. “It’s all bellyaching with this one. Total stick in the mud. Set in her ways… sometimes, you’ve just gotta break her out of that shell, you know?”

“I think I’m starting to see that,” I grinned.

Riley looked between both of us.

“I don’t think I like you two being friends.”

“Oh, c’mon bruh!” Reiko laughed again, throwing an arm around my shoulder. “Inseparable as fuck. We’re two peas in a pod! Two beans on a stalk! Two…”

The scraping noise started up again, and she almost lost her shit completely.

“Goddammit, Parker!”

When she leapt off the barstool and went to go rescue her expensive restaurant equipment from her crewmember again, Riley and I shared an eye roll as we tore back into our sandwiches.

I realized in that moment that just I couldn’t ignore it anymore. This girl was absolutely wonderful, and I deeply enjoyed our time together…

…And I thought that I might just love her.

Chapter 9

Riley

The next time I lifted a paintbrush, I was astonished at how quickly I slipped into the zone. The colors came naturally to me, and the delicate, intricate swiping of bristles against canvas sang a chorus of victory into my ears.

A few hours later, I was facing another landscape painting. To the untrained eye, it was just like my previous, failed paintings – dozens of them, sitting in the Closet of Doom in my apartment.

But this painting didn’t belong there.

I gazed at the soft strokes of paint, at how the creek raced down the forest floor. It hooked a steady bend in the foreground, pouring down a steep, brief drop-off into a bed of smoothed large stones. The water turned white with activity, rustling towards the viewer, carving its path through the trees.

There was no other life here, no traces of animals nipping at the rushing water or tucked away behind the flora. It was only a glimpse into the woods, flowing with berry bushes, strong and sturdy trees, and sprawling branches.

All of which gave way for their passionate, reigning god: the roaring, rustling creek, choosing its own place and cutting a path of life through the rest.

I smiled to myself: the magic is back.

I began to clean up, washing my brushes and checking the easel to ensure the paint would dry to an optimum efficiency. The last thing I needed was for my first acceptable painting in months to fuck up in the cool-down process.

For the first time that day, I thought about Connor and Reiko. They had both grown busy with their prospective jobs, and I’d been filling my time with Lex…

But Connor in particular was starting to become somewhat of a hassle.

It had been obvious since high school that he was developing feelings for me. The advent of college, and even disappearing for a year off to Finland, had done nothing to push those feelings down… and now that we were growing into our mid-twenties, he was finding it hard to keep himself restrained.

He thought, perhaps, that he was being sly with the obvious glances, the lingering gaze, and the way he’d drop whatever he was doing to come drag around me if opportunity struck. The only reason I didn’t see more of him than Reiko was that he was kept so busy running his record store.

But as soon as Lex Lam

bert had entered the picture…

Perhaps it was because Lex was clearly hanging around, and I was clearly fine with it. Maybe it was because Connor knew that I was a total Anglophile, and that dating – or even just fucking – a handsome, older British man was too much for him to ignore.

Either way…

He was clearly aggravated about this.

That’s why I kept myself occupied a lot of the time. I started to blow him off, when I was really hanging out with Reiko, or sometimes I’d tell the truth and let him know that I was going over to Lex’s place, or he was coming to mine.

I thought back to the previous day, when he’d cornered me at my place and invited me out for breakfast. Reiko was busy with the shop, and I didn’t have any excuse to not go… and I felt a little bad about constantly blowing him off.