Shadows You Left

by Jude Sierra

  River shot her a smile. Her eyes were so like his, and their skin the same tone, lovely warmth that was unmarked and easy to care for. When River smiled into a mirror, though, he was a completely different self. As a kid, he’d hated it. He had no mask, no defense. He bled for everyone in their home. He’d never had her ruthless instinct for survival. So, she’d had it for them both.

  “Cheyenne is doing me.”

  Val choked. “Excuse me?”

  “No! Jeez, calm down, you pervert. I mean she’s doing a piece for me. On me.” River closed his eyes and laughed.

  “I got onion rings to split, is that okay?” Val asked, a relatively moot point, since she informed him right as they arrived, still steaming and admittedly mouth-watering.

  “Of course.” River scanned the menu again and ordered the first thing that caught his attention. By the time he’d finished describing the style of the solid black map and shading behind it that Cheyenne had finished so far, they’d demolished their shared appetizer and she was demanding pictures.

  “Cheyenne made me promise not to take any until we get it done.”

  “When will that be?” She checked her phone subtly and adjusted the paper napkin she’d laid on her lap.

  “We were gonna get it done last week, but then my—” River cut himself off in the nick of time. By the grace of the gods, their food made its appearance. Rather than step into a sticky conversation with Val, River focused on stuffing half his sandwich in his mouth. Val snorted. The light caught the gold in her hair. She held a look of magic, a dusting of highlight on her cheeks, eyes shadowed in silver, and the perfect arch of her brow. River imagined her with flowers in her hair, in a forest of breathing greens.

  “River?”

  He shook his head and decided to paint her later, for a birthday gift maybe. He hadn’t painted in a long time. The realization was a burning in his fingertips that asked for different mediums, different quiet, different light.

  “So, Steve tells me there’s a person,” she continued. Her hand was turned out, covering her mouth as she spoke.

  “That asshole. Betrayal at every turn, I swear.”

  “So fucking dramatic,” Val said. River made himself laugh. He had to. Otherwise he’d have to think of how to shape Erik for Val, how to describe him, and he couldn’t. “Uh oh, what’s that look?”

  “Ugh.” River cursed his too-open face.

  “Is this boy drama or girl drama?”

  “Why does it have to be an either-or?”

  “Are we talking spectrum or multiple people now?” She flicked a crumb at him. “Stop deflecting.”

  Maybe it wasn’t his ineptitude with poker faces at play, but his inability to hide anything from her.

  “His name is Erik. And it’s…complicated?”

  “What kind of complicated?”

  River knew the narrowing of her eyes all too well. Val was too perceptive for her own good, much less his when he was busy running from uncomfortable truths. “Your lunch break is definitely not enough time.”

  “That sounds like bad news.”

  Irritation was sharp and bright. Defensive hackles rose in full force. “Val, come on, don’t do the thing.”

  “Okay, well then, tell me about him. What’s he like? What does he do?”

  River started to shred his napkin. The call of a line cook, interrupted by a shattering glass, and the raucous laughter of someone in the corner stole their attention for too little time.

  “He’s a bartender.” And a fighter. “He’s gorgeous and totally built.” He’s hopelessly scarred, and I can’t even see them all. “He’s from L.A., and it’s still new, that’s all.”

  “That’s all?”

  River began a methodical process of balling each tiny strip of his napkin, setting them in a tiny, perfect line. “I really like him, but I don’t know him that well. I know that sounds impossible but…” He pushed the napkin balls into a triangle shape. One stuck stubbornly to the pad of his finger.

  “Not necessarily, right? I mean, that’s part of the newness, isn’t it?” Val’s hand was warm through the sleeve of his shirt as she curled her palm over his arm. “Is he kind?”

  Of course, that’s what she’d want most for him. His split-second hesitation was damning. Val heaved a sigh.

  “No, he is, I promise. He’s better than he believes he is,” River blurted. Erik had kindness in spades, underneath his exterior. A heavy sweetness he didn’t want to trust—that River wasn’t sure Erik saw in himself, because it betrayed his bravado in the smallest moments.

  “River.”

  “No, I mean it. I’m not just selling you a line.”

  “Honey, come on. You have a type! Brooding, troubled, someone who sets off your ‘save me’ radar. You’re always more careful with others than yourself.”

  River swept the mess off the counter, dumped it into the melting ice in his water glass, and picked up the bill. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Yes, I do. I do because I love you, and goddamn, someone has to love you enough to put you first.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “It means, I love you enough that I’m willing to piss you off if it means protecting you—”

  “That’s what this is? C’mon, Val, I don’t need to be protected. I’m not a little kid.”

  “You don’t protect your heart, River. That’s the point. You want to save everyone, and you don’t leave anything for yourself. And when will you? When do you get to be the center of all that happiness you want for everyone else? I know this is one of the reasons you end up avoiding relationships—because your heart gets broken.”

  River pulled money from his wallet and ignored how her words sawed into him, biting into his belly and shredding his breath. Every one-night stand, the people he’d walked away from just so that he wouldn’t get hurt—she didn’t know those parts. If only he could explain how unexpected Erik was. Knew how to phrase something too complicated for a single moment. He shook his head and said, “You make me out to be so much more than I am.”

  “Riv—” She caught his hand as he stood.

  “I know.” River forced a smile despite a stomach full of razor blades. “You love me.”

  “I do,” Val said, and he knew she meant it. In her heels, she was his height, the muscle memory of twenty years of hugs thrown off. River felt nothing but her strangeness to him and the uncertainty she’d planted inside.

  …

  He’d thought to paint Val soft, a wood sprite with a steel backbone. Something suited to watercolor.

  Instead, he put her in a suit of armor, helmet in hand. It would have to be oils or acrylics, which he wasn’t as adept with. But he wanted that ethereal beauty and softness he chased in her eyes. The light of dusk would break through the trees in the background, glancing off the metal. Everything needed to be painfully rich in color.

  In many ways, Val was Erik’s counterpart. Soft in ephemeral moments, kind in fleeting touches. But River understood her armor. He had touched Erik’s, but he didn’t know its story. With Val, at least River understood the shroud of their childhood and how she’d learned to fiercely protect herself. Val always wanted the same for him—because she cried when he did, because she hated when he was hurt. Val’s response to the trauma of living with an alcoholic was to build an emotional fortress, to push their mother away with anger and accusation and a refusal to allow herself to be manipulated. River could never stand to see someone in pain, and as their family tore apart, he’d bled for their mother, for Val, for their father at every turn. River hurt himself to love others, a bad habit he carried into his relationship with Brigid.

  River worked hard, after Brigid, to learn how to have healthy relationships, and Val was a large part of that. Whenever she seemed overbearing, River reminded himself that she hurt for him, that she’d wanted to protect him, too. He often wondered whose failure she blamed herself for: River’s inability to stop forgiving their mother and what that m
eant for his relationship with Brigid, or hers for not teaching him her mode of survival.

  River surfaced an hour later, sketch after sketch tossed on the floor. He’d have to buy paints for this. He’d have to find time. Everything lately had been Erik, even when River wasn’t with him. He didn’t think Erik wanted to be saved, but he did wonder how well he really knew him. What the hidden parts of Erik’s life meant for the whole of who he was.

  “Wow, what’s this?” Pax said. His blond hair was dark with droplets of water, remnants of the late fog that had rolled in that afternoon, and his blue eyes were alight with curiosity. Pax was back to his regular All-American good looks in a small frame, complete with charming freckles. Still enigmatic, closed off yet polite.

  “Art in progress. The loss of one’s mind.” River had flopped onto the couch at least thirty minutes ago and was still analyzing the brush strokes on the white ceiling. They weren’t uniform, and it bothered him to no end.

  “And yet, I see no paint.” Pax hung his coat, a designer knock-off, and then nudged River with his knee. “Want a beer? Or are you going out tonight?”

  He and Erik hadn’t made plans, but things often changed rapidly. Everything between them seemed to. Erik was capable of swinging from unwitting softness to a detachment that reeked of fear in a heartbeat. Although he’d last left Erik’s apartment while they were both still buzzing from each other’s hands and mouths and bodies, text and Instagram weren’t the best mediums to measure someone’s true mood. River checked his phone. No messages, and he knew Erik was working tonight. “Sure, I’ll take one.”

  “How’re things with the new guy?”

  River closed his eyes, traced the condensation of the bottle in his fingers. He thought of Erik’s voice breaking around his name and the sweetness that lined his lips in the aftermath. Val didn’t always have to be right—he didn’t have to let her worries become his own.

  “Good,” River said. “It’s really good.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Friday nights were usually reserved for fights. Erik kept them far removed from everything else in his life. Truth was, he hadn’t had an everything else to separate it from until a month ago.

  But now he had River.

  Erik stared at his reflection in the fogged mirror of his bathroom. The bathtub drain gurgled, and moisture hung heavy in the air. It was Friday night, and Erik wasn’t at Virgo, preparing for a fight. Instead, he was struggling to button a black long sleeve and getting ready to meet River for a date.

  A second actual date.

  River had been surprised when Erik mentioned his free night and sent a thread of messages that Erik couldn’t help skimming again and again.

  Watermarked: No fight?

  Watermarked: thats good. I mean not good. not bad? whatever

  Watermarked: we should go out

  Wolfbite013: We can

  Watermarked: Like on a date

  Wolfbite013: okay

  Watermarked: Like to a club

  Wolfbite013: fuck off

  Watermarked: come oooonnnn go dancing with me

  Wolfbite013: You dance?

  Watermarked: I don’t not dance asshole

  Watermarked: please it’ll be fun

  Watermarked: You scared to dance with me?

  Wolfbite013: you win what should I wear

  River had made a wise-ass comment about whatever would look best on his bedroom floor, and the conversation steadily devolved from there. Erik had no idea where they were going. He’d grudgingly tagged along with Desiree to a few of the clubs in the city before, but he’d never paid attention to their names. The only one he knew by heart was Virgo, and that club was off-limits.

  He wore a pair of jeans that only had one hole in the knee, grabbed his black coat, and stopped to check himself again in the mirror before he left. Pushing his dark hair out of his face, he tilted his head, eyeing the mark on his cheek that refused to fade. His phone buzzed, and he swiped his thumb across it, revealing two new messages.

  Watermarked: I know a place. They play mostly dubstep and EDM. No Top 40 bullshit. Good drinks.

  Watermarked: And they have chips and salsa.

  Erik barked out a laugh.

  Wolfbite013: You had me at chips and salsa

  …

  Dawn was a Queer club on the outskirts of Capitol Hill that hid between a Starbucks and a dive bar. It boasted two long bar-tops lined with comfortable stools, a cluster of bottle service tables packed with well-dressed patrons and a large, crowded dance floor.

  Erik watched River swivel in his seat, one elbow on the bar, chin resting in his palm. He snatched a chip out of the basket between them.

  “Can I ask you something?” River had to lean forward to be heard.

  Erik popped a chip in his mouth. He nodded and lifted his brows. A wry smirk curled his lips.

  “Have you been seeing anyone else?”

  It wasn’t a particular look on River’s face that made Erik stop chewing. It was the way he asked—short, to the point—that caught Erik off guard. River rolled his lips together, gaze fluttering from Erik’s mouth to his eyes, his shoulders to his lap, back to his eyes.

  “It’s not a big deal,” River added quickly. “I just—I didn’t know, and I, you know, I don’t—”

  “No,” Erik interrupted. “No, I haven’t been seeing anyone else.” He watched the tension drain from River’s face. “Have you?”

  River shook his head.

  “Do you want to see other people, because I’m…” Not fine with that whatsoever. Erik’s mouth wouldn’t close. He grappled with what to say, but River started shaking his head again before he could finish.

  “No, I’m not interested in that.” River’s shoe knocked against Erik’s shin, and he added, “At all.”

  A grin split his mouth, and Erik had to look away to reel it in. He caught the edge of River’s smile, too, the way it started on one side of his mouth and crawled to the other.

  “Anything else you wanna ask me?” Erik dragged his finger across the top of River’s hand before he grabbed another chip.

  “Favorite color?” River asked.

  Erik rolled his eyes. “Black.”

  “Doesn’t count. Black is the absence of color, c’mon.”

  “Yes, it does. What’s yours?”

  “Blue. Favorite place you’ve lived so far?”

  “Here, clearly,” Erik teased. Their voices would be hoarse in the morning if they kept this up, but he didn’t mind. “Favorite piercing placement?”

  River arched a brow. “Aesthetically? Septum. But for usefulness? Tongue.”

  Laughter punched from Erik, strong and sudden. “Your turn.”

  “You ever slept with someone who was married?” River eyed him as he drained the last bit of his drink.

  Erik’s smile thinned. He trailed his gaze along River’s torso, covered by a simple navy shirt, and his dark jeans, held up by a thick leather belt. “Yeah,” he said, soft enough that River had to lean in to hear him. Erik slid his palm over River’s jaw. “Why? You hitched?”

  Warm chestnut eyes settled on Erik’s mouth. “No. But would it even matter?” River asked.

  Yes, Erik thought. It would. Because Erik wanted to be with River. He wanted the whole package—coffee in the morning, borrowing each other’s socks, sharing showers, and arguing over where to order takeout from. Alcohol simmered in his veins. He found the courage to nod. “Yeah, it would.”

  “Why’s that?” River’s fingertips tickled the inside of his thigh.

  Several reasons crowded Erik’s mouth at once.

  Because I’ve never felt this way.

  Because I’m myself with you.

  Because you’re brave and creative and smart.

  Because I’m happy with you.

  Erik didn’t say any of those things. Instead, he said, “Because you’re the best fuck of my goddamn life.”

  River’s eyes sparked. Annoyance tightened his jaw, but it was gone too soo
n to be addressed. Erik thoroughly, fucking hated himself. River slid off the barstool and took a step backward.

  “I’m going out there,” River said, and nodded toward the packed dance floor. “You coming or not?”

  Erik tilted his head. He waited a second too long. River shrugged.

  “Fine, stay there,” River teased. He grinned, spun on his heel, and stalked toward the dance floor.

  It didn’t take long for Erik to catch him, curling his hands around River’s waist, mouth close to his throat. River’s laughter vibrated in his chest, and he might’ve said, “Thought so,” but the music blurred his voice, turning it into another sound masked by bass and heavy melodies. They sank into the crowd. Darkness filled the space between bodies, disrupted by the pass of a laser or the flash of a strobe light.

  River turned until they were chest to chest. His nose tickled Erik’s cheek. He rolled his hips, one thigh between Erik’s legs, pressing and grinding. The music felt haunted—suffocating. It throbbed and stretched, angry, sensual beats that worked with the alcohol and atmosphere to create something hungry and insatiable.

  A green light flashed, casting shadows along River’s face. Erik’s palm slid to the back of River’s thigh, settling in the soft dip beneath his ass. He gripped, tugging until their hip bones knocked, both their bodies craving contact and movement and heat. River’s breath warmed Erik’s cheek. But as present as his body was, when Erik got a glimpse of his eyes, he seemed far away.

  “I’m…” Erik leaned in until his mouth was against River’s ear. “You know I’m all messed up by you, right?” The music was impossibly loud. River acknowledged him with a gentle shake of his head. Erik didn’t know how to say it. “This doesn’t happen to me.” His thumb stroked River’s thigh. “You,” he clarified. “People like you don’t happen to me.”

  River’s lips trailed Erik’s cheek, scorching a path from his jaw to his throat. He made sure to find Erik’s gaze, to give him recognition that he’d heard what Erik had said. Erik closed his eyes when their lips brushed. The music matched Erik’s heartbeat, loud and ominous, rattling his insides into a frenzy. River tucked his face under Erik’s jaw, mouth open against his skin, and sucked a mark there.