by Nikki Wild
Of course, she had told me herself that she was a talented painter with artwork featured in various museums around the country, but a part of me reserved interest for actually seeing this with my own eyes.
My gaze fell upon a small sign near the doorway, featuring her headshot and a short biography.
It was unmistakably her.
Riley Ricketts.
“You… don’t need to read that,” she quickly tugged me away, her arm looped through mine. “Anyway, you’ve seen my art now. Satisfied?”
“The other museums, do they carry different paintings than these?”
“I sell them my originals,” she responded. “Some of them have taken it upon themselves to license reproductions, but yes, virtually all of the museums here in town that carry me have different selections of my work.”
“Can I see more?” I asked.
“You… really want to?” She seemed surprised, and I couldn’t imagine why.
“Of course I do, Riley,” I told her. “This part of your life is one you haven’t shared with me yet, and I want to see more of it… but only if you’re comfortable with the prospect.”
An approaching young man interrupted us. He was dressed immaculately with his hair tucked behind his ears, a pair of thick glasses over his eyes, and feminine charm in everything from his strut to his facial features.
“Oh, dear me, it’s really you, isn’t it?”
Riley stiffened up slightly, but put a mildly charmed smile on her face. “I assume so, yes.”
“Oh, Miss Ricketts, it’s an absolute pleasure to meet you,” he emphatically told us. “I’m a huge fan of your work. I don’t want to bother you for too long… but could you take a selfie with me?”
She blinked a few times, then laughed.
“You… want to take a picture.”
“Of course! If that’s not too much trouble, that is. My friends and I, we’ve followed your skill for some time. My older brother bought one of your paintings a decade ago, long before all this!”
He nervously chuckled, throwing his arms up to indicate the room. “Not that, I mean, you completely deserve the recognition, I wasn’t saying–”
“Your brother,” Riley commented, putting his star-struck stammer to a stop. “Who is he?”
“Jackson Wilcox,” he replied with a wide smile. “I think he said you two went to school together a long time ago–”
“Jax? I remember Jax!”
Riley beamed with pleasure. “I think I remember you, too. I recall a younger Wilcox, the one time I was over at his house.. a little rambunctious thing in a Cookie Monster onesie, watching cartoons the entire time. Was that you?”
“Guilty as charged. I used to love that thing.”
Riley chuckled, moving into position next to him. “Alright, then. One selfie. Let’s do it.”
He smiled like a goofball, then whipped out his phone and flicked to the camera app. Holding it outstretched in front of them on portrait mode, he threw up a thumbs up with his free hand as she slipped her arm around him and summoned up a smile.
I was used to this treatment, but I hadn’t realized that she was this popular here. Sure, it wasn’t quite the levels of a World Cup football star… but there was an incredible validation in a stranger off the street, recognizing your skills, and wanting to freeze forever in time the moment that they bumped into you.
My willingness to pose with fans had really worked in my favour, although I’d always been fine with it. It was less an ego thing, and much more a flattery thing.
Well… maybe it was an ego thing anyway.
After it was done, they examined the picture together. “Not too bad,” she observed. “Anyway, I’m about to get going, but it’s nice to bump into you after all this time. Tell Jax I said ‘Hi’ the next time you see him… and that I’m still the better arm wrestler.”
“Will do!” He grinned, before looking from her to me, and then back to her again. “Listen, Riley… if you’re not doing anything tonight…”
“I’m busy,” she robotically answered, “but flattered.”
“Right,” he quickly chuckled through the rejection, suddenly aware that I wasn’t alone. “Right… well… it was great to see you again. You take care now, alright?”
“Will do,” she nodded. “You too.”
We took our leave of the museum. “That’s the chirpiest I think I’ve seen you yet,” I commented to her.
“Yeah, that was exhausting,” she confided. “It’s rare that I bump into a fan, but it usually drains me to keep up the cheeriness for more than a couple of seconds.”
“Is that so?” I asked.
“Definitely. I don’t have the energy for that. It’s a part of the reason why I keep to myself… the longer I’m on the streets, the more that people recognize me.”
“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.
28
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 Lambert 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.
So I had gone out with him.
“There’s something wrong with him,” Connor confided over a half-eaten stack of pancakes and some bacon slices. “What’s he doing, hanging around here anyway?”
“Connor…” I muttered. “Don’t do this.” The conversation had been going so well. We’d been talking about his record business and my paintings, but inevitably…
“Don’t do what?” He asked, almost accusingly. “He doesn’t have a day job, he lives out of some cheap hotel, he was just sitting and drinking every night until you showed up… he goes and visits around the city, but why is he here?”
“I don’t know,” I shrugged.
“What do you mean, you don’t know?”
“I mean, I never bothered to really ask him most of those details,” I answered defensively. “He’s some kind of football player on vacation here. What’s to know?”
“He wears high-end suits and disguises how loaded he probably is,” Connor stated, remaining on the offensive. “It’s suspicious.”
“It’s pissing me off,” I replied.
“You too, huh? I knew you weren’t that dense.” He grinned, swallowing down another bite. “Let’s see what we can dig up on this guy. Have you even googled him?”
“No, Connor, you’re pissing me off,” I told him. “Just fucking drop it, okay? If there’s something there, he’ll tell me, alright? I trust him. I don’t need this to get complicated. I like that it’s something simple… something easy. There’s a hard deadline set, and he’ll be gone soon. Just let me fucking have this while it’s here to be had.”
Connor looked positively wounded. “But Riley, I just don’t want you to be–”
“To be hurt?” I hissed. “I’ll be fine. You’ve known me for a long time, Connor. I’ve got thicker skin than most. I’ll manage.”
“Speaking of that…”
I noticed him take a deep breath.
Oh, no. Not now. Don’t do this.
“Riley… I tried to keep it to myself, but I can’t help it anymore,” he began, clearly lowering himself to the point of complete vulnerability in front of my eyes. “I love you. I’ve always loved you. Ever since we were kids, and I fought off that bully for you–”
“This isn’t the time,” I insisted.
“When is the time, Riley?” He demanded. “It’s never the right time, is it? Because
you don’t want to hear it. And that’s fine for you and all, but I can’t help the way that I feel–”
“Connor, please stop,” I pressed. “You know that I’m with Lex. If you had to let this out now, you could have waited another month or so–”
“That’s not good enough,” he told me under no uncertain terms. “I know that you’re falling for him. God, Riley, it’s so fucking obvious. And I’ve seen how he looks at you, too. You’re both going to hurt each other, and that’s all there is to it.
“And then I’m going to have to come in and scoop you up, just like I always do when you get too attached to a guy.”
I paused warningly, raising an eyebrow.
“…Excuse me?”
Connor realized his mistake, but it was too late for him to back out of the corner he’d painted himself into. “Wait… that’s not what I meant. Riley, you know that I’ll always be there for you–”
“We’re finished,” I told him, rising up from the seat and tossing down a ten and a five onto the table in front of him. “I’m taking a few days. I’ll contact you first. Leave me alone.”
I didn’t look over my shoulder as I left the restaurant, abandoning him to the rest of his meal alone.
But that was yesterday.
I checked on the painting again. It wasn’t just good… It was perfect. I couldn’t let Connor get under my skin. Things were going well for the first time in a long time…
After changing into some casual clothes, I heard my ringtone pinging from the living room. Kicking back into a chair, I snatched up my phone and glanced at the caller ID.
It was one of the local galleries, which I considered odd, but they usually only reached out to me if there was a substantially good reason.
“Hello, Miss Ricketts?”
“Adam!” I grinned to myself affably. “How are you, my love?” Of all the others, it was incredibly rare that the Pulliam Museum reached out to me, let alone the head curator. “I hope all is well down there.”
“Things are splendid,” he responded in his usual, casual tone… although I sensed something just beneath the surface. “In fact, things are a little better than splendid… I just received a rather interesting phone call.”