Rend

by Roan Parrish

  I dumped the rest of the coffee down the drain and ran a heavy hand through his hair.

  “Let’s go back to bed,” I said.

  My intention had been to throw Rhys down on the bed, climb on top of him, kiss him until he fucked me hard, and then make him go to sleep, but somehow I only got to step two of the plan before it seemed like we’d had the same endgame. I felt Rhys’s warm body beneath me and nosed into the hollow of his neck, and the next thing I knew, his big hand was running up and down my back and he was murmuring, “Sleep, baby.”

  I surfaced drowning in pleasure, my nerve endings awake long before I was. I kept my eyes closed against the too-real snap of sunlight and just felt. I had a raging hard-on, goosebumps, and two fingers in my ass. The fingers curled to stroke across my prostate and I writhed backward onto them, moaning.

  “There you are, sweetheart.” When he was turned on, Rhys’s voice was the dirty, gravelly growl that the world only knew from certain low notes at the bottom of his bluesiest songs. He pressed a kiss to the back of my neck and slid another finger inside me.

  I loved this. Waking up to Rhys using my body, touching me, showing me that I belonged to him at every moment. I’d told him more than once that I wanted to wake up to him fucking me, but it hadn’t happened yet. As turned on as I was, I forced my muscles to unclench, my limbs to relax into the soft mattress. I wanted to pretend I was still asleep.

  “Mmm,” Rhys groaned into my neck as I let out a shaky breath. Then his knees were on either side of my hips and I could feel his hard cock as he pressed forward. He corkscrewed his fingers and my insides felt liquid. Then his heat was gone and a wet, sucking kiss was delivered to the inside of my thigh. Rhys’s tongue slithered upward and he kissed the dimples above my ass. They were one of his favorite parts of my body.

  “Want you,” he murmured against my spine, and in response I relaxed even more, face in the pillow, arms outstretched, the picture of peaceful slumber. “Fuck, you’re so gorgeous like this.”

  Rhys slid inside me in one burning thrust, and I imagined I was just waking up. The world I woke into was nothing but Rhys on top of me, inside me, around me. The world was just the throbbing pleasure of being opened up by the man who loved me. I cried out as he thrust again, the looseness of my muscles allowing him deep inside.

  “Morning,” Rhys said, sliding me up on my knees. “I couldn’t resist you. You’re so sweet when you’re asleep. I hope it’s okay that I just helped myself.”

  I groaned helplessly. Fuck. I loved it.

  At first I’d been mortified at my response to Rhys talking like this. He’d said something sweet about how being married meant we belonged to each other and I’d gotten an erection. Rhys being Rhys, he went with it. Now it was one of his favorite tools to take me apart with.

  “I figured since you’re mine it would be all right.” He grabbed my hips, and I grabbed the headboard, dropping my head between my shoulders. He fucked me harder, until I was crying out with each stroke and had lost control of my muscles. Rhys didn’t mind. He slid a hand between my legs, and it only took one hard drag of his callused palm down my swollen dick before I was coming, spewing over his hand and clenching around him. My vision went black and my body shook and only Rhys’s hand kept me from falling forward.

  He came with a growl, everything turning wet and slow and dreamy.

  “Fuuuck,” I muttered, face in the pillow again.

  “Mmm,” Rhys agreed, sliding out of me and collapsing onto his back. “Okay, let’s try this again. What do you want to do today?”

  “Shhh,” I said, and put a shaking hand over his mouth. But my eyes had drifted closed again in the afterglow and I think I covered his chin instead.

  * * *

  —

  Hours later, we had finally dragged ourselves out of bed, cleaned up, and Rhys had made me drink another cup of coffee. It was a much better start to the morning than my previous effort.

  “Maybe today’s the day,” Rhys said, pouring himself another bowl of cereal. I didn’t know why he bothered eating cereal at all. It only kept him full for about fifteen minutes.

  “Maybe it’s not,” I replied hopefully.

  “Babe, come on. If we had a bed in the guest room then people could come visit.” In the natural pause that lived between that sentence and the next was the realization that I didn’t have anyone who would be coming to visit and it would mean Rhys’s family could come. “You could invite Grin to come stay,” Rhys soldiered on. “I want to meet him.”

  “Yeah, maybe.”

  The truth was that Rhys just cared more about stuff like furniture than I did. I’d moved in with a duffel bag and two boxes of shabby paperbacks. One drawer, three hangers, and one and a half shelves of the bookcase were all I had taken up then, or since. Everything else was Rhys’s. I liked the feeling of having his things all around me. I liked seeing bits of his life. The signed concert posters and albums he’d worked on, the art and knickknacks he’d brought back from all over the world.

  He’d mentioned that we could pick out all new furniture together when I moved in. Even if I didn’t hate shopping, which I did, all of his stuff was perfectly nice and nearly new, and it would be ridiculously wasteful to get rid of it. But the second bedroom, which had been a dumping ground for Rhys’s extra instruments and whatever didn’t fit elsewhere, was the one unfurnished spot in the house, and Rhys had been trying to get me to go shopping for months.

  “Okay, fine,” I grumbled.

  “Great!”

  Rhys sprang into action as he always did when there was a task at hand. He cleaned up the cereal bowls by inhaling the rest of mine and had his shoes on and his keys in hand before I’d even made it upstairs to brush my teeth. Finally, we made it to Rhys’s truck and though I grumbled about shopping, once we were driving and I rolled my window down, it was a beautiful day.

  The wind whipped my curls into a tangle, and I zoned out watching the patterns of shadow the sun made on the side of the road.

  “One store, okay?” I said as Rhys pulled into a parking lot. It came out sounding grouchy, and I snapped my jaw shut.

  But Rhys just said, “Aye aye, captain,” and smiled at me.

  I trailed behind him as he wove through the store to the bedroom furniture.

  “Okay, what are you envisioning?” Rhys asked.

  “Uh. Whatever, really,” I said. “A bed?”

  “What style do you want?”

  “I don’t really care.” I pressed my shoulder into Rhys’s, and he slid his fingers into my hair and gave my curls a little tug.

  “Okay,” he said, walking to a bedroom set. “How about this?”

  I stared at it.

  “It’s…it’s…” I couldn’t supply an appropriately horrified word.

  “Wicker. See? You do care. So show me something you like better.”

  I wandered through dressers and side tables and lamps and came to a stop next to a set that seemed inoffensive.

  “Maybe this one?”

  Rhys nodded. “I like it. Medium wood’s versatile and can go with light or dark, it’s not too large, so it’ll fit in the guest room fine and won’t make it look so small. One thing, though.”

  “Hmm?”

  “We have to try the bed. Just to make sure it’s the best quality for our future guests. I don’t want to embarrass you with subpar accommodations when all your many friends come to visit.”

  He said this with the utmost seriousness, and I slugged him. He collapsed backward onto the bed, his large frame taking up most of it, and pulled me after him. I glanced around but no one was paying any attention to us.

  “Okay, so they’ll wake up in this bed, and they’ll see that side table and go and get their stuff out of that dresser.” He pointed as he talked. “Think they’ll like it?”

  I rolled my eyes
. “Yeah, I think all my many, many hypothetical friends will really love this bedroom set.”

  “We don’t have to get a set, you know. We can mix and match, and—” I pushed him back down on the mattress. “Okay, bedroom set it is. Let’s get out of here. They can deliver it.”

  * * *

  —

  Imari might have jokingly called Rhys a rock star, but Theo Decker actually was one. He and Rhys’s best friend, Caleb, had gotten together last year, when Theo was the lead singer of Riven. Riven was famous enough that even I knew of them and would have recognized Theo if I’d passed him on the street. Theo had quit the band in December and released his debut solo album about a month before Rhys had released his.

  I’d never met Theo when he was still with Riven, but Rhys said Theo was like a different person now. Happy and calm, without the weight of a fame he’d hated around his neck.

  Theo was easy to like, but Caleb…I still had a hard time with him sometimes.

  Caleb was intense and moody, and would have intimidated me even if he’d never been Rhys’s lover. But he’d known Rhys when I was still a snot-nosed kid, and they had been partners in every sense of the word: friends, lovers, collaborators. Caleb was the story I’d sensed in Rhys the first night we met, and since then I’d heard all of it. They’d worked together, played together, written together until Caleb’s drug use had broken them up.

  He was clean now and living with Theo, and there had been a time when I hadn’t been able to help but wonder if, since Caleb wasn’t using anymore, maybe Rhys would rather be with him than me.

  One night soon after I’d moved in, I’d woken up to a knock at our door, and Rhys had shushed me back to sleep. But hours later, I went downstairs to find them in the living room. They’d moved around each other in a perfect choreography of intimacy, and I’d felt my brief grasp at happiness crumble around me. Caleb had looked up and noticed me, sketched a wave and a head nod, and then spoken to Rhys like I wasn’t even there.

  “He’s embarrassed to have you see him like that,” Rhys explained when he left, and I nodded. But all I could think was: Somehow I got you when he was out of the picture, and now that he’s back it’s very clear who you should be with. It’s only a matter of time until you realize it too.

  One night, drunk on whiskey and orgasm, I accidentally said as much to Rhys and he looked shocked. Then he looked furious.

  “I’m not in love with Caleb,” he said, eyes blazing. “I haven’t been since before he went into rehab that first time, years ago. Do you seriously think I would have married you if I was in love with another man?”

  I’d stared at him, unsure of what to say, because the truth was that I didn’t know. I didn’t know how it all worked, and I still wasn’t sure what stroke of luck had allowed me to find Rhys in the first place, or what magic had made him love me.

  “All your songs are about him,” I’d said finally.

  “Not the new ones.” He’d slipped his hand around the back of my neck and slid his fingers into my hair. His eyes were warm and soft. “Not a single song I’ve written since the day I met you.”

  After that he’d gone out of his way to be clear about him and Caleb. That what he felt now was friendship, care, protectiveness, ambition—all of them strong and committed—but none of them love. I had believed him, but whatever spectral worries still lingered late at night were swept aside like cobwebs the first time I saw Caleb with Theo. They were stupid in love.

  This evening, Caleb and Theo came over, and we grilled burgers and drank lemonade in the backyard, trying to catch a breeze as the sun went down.

  I let my eyes drift half closed and listened to them chat about the latest goings-on in their corner of the world. They spoke another language when they were talking about music, full of unfamiliar people and band names and musical terminology, and I enjoyed letting it wash over me until a piece I could recognize and grab on to floated by.

  “Oh, did you hear about Tara’s record deal?” Caleb said after a while, and I tuned back in. Tara Symons was one of Rhys’s oldest friends in the business. She was a studio musician, like him, and she played every instrument on the planet. She was one of the musicians that Rhys always talked about who was a zillion times more talented than most of the people who were famous or successful, but who just never got a break.

  “What? No!”

  “Yeah, I don’t know the details—she just signed yesterday. But, Jesus, it’s about time.”

  Rhys toasted her with his lemonade. “Remember when she played on Nicky Z’s acoustic album and made him look like a total fool?”

  They all nodded but I shook my head, and Rhys slid his hand to my thigh.

  “You know Nicky Z?” he asked, half-joking.

  “Yes, thank you, I don’t actually live under a rock.” But I grinned at him, because I basically did.

  “Two years ago, Nicky Z did this album of acoustic versions of some of his songs, and a few covers, and for some reason recorded it in NY instead of LA.”

  “Had to be a PR thing,” Theo said. “Right? His manager wanted him to look like a serious-ass artist or something and thought New York might have that effect?”

  Caleb snorted. “Yeah, well it just had the effect of making him look like a serious ass.”

  “So, Tara got the gig because she’s the best, and because they wanted a zither or some damn thing and she plays everything in creation. She was in the studio with him for about two hours before texting me that he’s completely incompetent. Not that it was news.”

  “I think his voice is okay,” Theo offered generously. Caleb reached for his hand.

  “Okay, fair,” Rhys said. “So, the third or fourth day in the studio, Nicky Z has a fit because his guitar ‘won’t tune’—read: He cannot tune his guitar—and storms out to take a break. Tara’s sitting in the studio with everyone, and they all get bored and wander off one by one. But Tara decides that she’ll tune Nicky’s guitar so he doesn’t pitch another fit when he gets back. She tunes it, and he’s still not back, so, because she’s Tara, she starts playing some ridiculously complicated classical guitar piece, just chilling with her eyes shut in the corner. And one of the sound techs who stayed in the booth records it.”

  “You have to look it up, Matty,” Theo said. “It’s amazing.”

  “It is,” Rhys agreed. “The sound tech put it on YouTube and called it ‘Studio Musician Makes the Most of Nicky Z’s Acoustic Guitar’ or something. Of course within hours people are freaking out about it because the day before he’d posted a video of himself, like, strumming a Bob Dylan song or something, grinning like a fool cuz he managed three whole chords.”

  Caleb and Theo both snorted in amusement, their fingers tangled together.

  “Man, I’m so happy for Tara. About damn time.” Rhys pulled out his phone and shot off what must’ve been a text to Tara.

  I liked hearing about talented people getting a shot at doing what they loved. I wasn’t under any illusions that we lived in a meritocracy—far from it. But the stories of people who worked hard for years and were finally recognized always got to me.

  “Oh shit, speaking of awesome people,” Theo said, leaning forward excitedly and dragging Caleb with him in the process since they were holding hands. “This band I saw the other night? Amazing. It was at this little spot in Greenpoint.”

  “How do you go to these shows?” I asked. “Don’t you get mobbed?”

  Theo’s eyes gleamed with satisfaction.

  “I go in disguise. I’ve just figured it out. The perfect disguise.”

  Caleb shook his head but smiled.

  One of the things that had made Theo so miserable before he left Riven was not being able to go anywhere without being recognized. He missed just wandering around the city or going to the movies—and he especially missed being able to see shows without pulling focus.


  I had total sympathy. Being famous—like, recognizably famous—seemed like a nightmare. All those people looking at you and judging everything you did. Theo said that for a while he just didn’t leave the house since if he did he could end up in a magazine for wearing a white T-shirt instead of a black one. People really had too much time on their hands.

  Caleb thumbed up a picture on his phone and showed me. In it, Theo had his long black hair teased so it hid half his face. He was wearing brown contact lenses so his signature silvery-gray eyes couldn’t give him away. And his whole face looked…lumpy.

  “What did you do to your face?”

  “Okay, so I was reading about the dazzle camouflage that they used on ships in World War I,” Theo said. “And it wasn’t about trying to make the ships blend in and disappear, but to make it so people couldn’t really tell which direction they were going in or how far away they were. Super fascinating. Wikipedia it. Anyway, I was like, people recognize me when I try to disappear, because my disappearing just is…wearing regular clothes with my face. So, I decided to be visible, but have my visibility distract from the things that would make me recognizable!”

  He finished with a flourish, and I squinted at the picture.

  “But…what the hell did you do?”

  Caleb laughed. “He got three different colors of cover-up—”

  “Foundation, excuse you.”

  “Foundation, sorry. And he applied them in the opposite shapes you’re supposed to do to look good,” Caleb explained.

  Theo nodded. “Yeah, I watched these makeup videos on contouring, and then I did the opposite. So I made my cheekbones the opposite of pop and my face look flat and my nose look bigger and my mouth smaller and made my skin look all uneven like my face was a lumpy rock!”

  He looked incredibly pleased with himself.

  “Then I got khakis and a polo shirt, which is scientifically proven to be the ugliest, least remarkable outfit ever invented, and I wore a baggy jacket over it so none of my tattoos would show. Oh, and I wore Caleb’s ugly gardening sneakers. It was perfect! No one noticed me at all!”