Riot Street

by Tyler King

  It’s not this easy. I never asked to feel this way: inside out and turned around. But it’s like trying to walk away from the horizon. It was always going to be impossible to avoid him, even before I knew his name.

  “Ethan…” I close my eyes, fighting the ache tearing my head in two. “We can’t do this. You know that.”

  “I know no such thing.” Untangling his hand from my hair, he lifts my chin. “Give me a reason.”

  “We work together, for one.”

  Vivian is a perfect indication of how wrong that can go.

  “There’s no rule against it,” he says. “We’re both adults. Why should I deprive myself of the one person I want because we’re inconveniently employed? Give me a better reason.”

  “Where is this coming from? You just woke up this morning and…”

  “I was attracted to you the moment we met. I mean, fuck, Avery. You’re beautiful and clever and you make me feel something. Every day since then, there’s been this…noise in my head. I woke up this morning, and it was clear. It was you.”

  “We barely know each other.”

  “That’s not even half-true.”

  “There are things about me you wouldn’t like.”

  I step out of his arms, turning toward the moon overhead and the tide crawling up the sand. Out in the distance, lightning bursts through the clouds.

  “You don’t know everything.”

  “Avery.” Ethan stands behind me, thunder rolling in. “I’m not going to go riffling through your past if you don’t want to tell me. You’re entitled to your privacy, and I can respect that. But I’m not going to let you scare me off, either. If you don’t want me in your life, tell me. I won’t force myself on you. But if you think you’re trying to protect me from something, stop. Whatever it is, I don’t care.”

  “You wouldn’t say that if you knew.”

  It’s easy to pretend without enough sense to know better. If I’d never asked about Vivian, maybe I would have told him already. Bitten the bullet and exposed the last of my ugly secrets. Now it’s too late for that.

  “If you want to send me off, say the word. I won’t bother you again.” Behind me, Ethan wraps his arms around my stomach and holds me against his chest. Another brilliant, electric flash lights up the sky. “Just understand I’m past the point of forgetting. There’s nothing you can tell me that’ll change the way this feels.”

  Every instinct I’ve developed over the years screams at me to push him away, to find any excuse to drive him off. If I let this happen, it only gets more complicated from here. Trouble is, I don’t want to push him away. I didn’t want him to stop wanting me. Addicts are inherently selfish.

  “I think you might be good for me,” he says with wistful gravity. “Give me a chance to be good for you.”

  “Ethan…”

  I don’t have a single notion in my mind of what to say to him. Words turn to disjointed emotions that I can’t explain, even to myself.

  The thunder becomes louder, more violent overhead.

  “Have you really thought about this?”

  “I don’t need to. If you feel nothing, Avery, say so. Tell me I’m wrong and there’s nothing here.” His lips move against my neck, a whisper. “Stop me, if that’s what you want.”

  It isn’t nothing. I don’t have a name for it—attraction, yes, physical. More than that it’s…the person you want to see waiting when you step off a plane. The one you call first when something great happens, and the last one standing there when you’ve lost everything. The one you don’t have to say anything to at all, because they’ve already read your mind.

  I turn to face him, plant my hands against his chest. Looking up into his churning tempest eyes reflecting the moonlight, I know the right answer. It’s clear, simple. And yet…

  Few times in our lives are we aware of these moments when they occur. The intersections where one decision has a definite and discernible effect on the course of our lives. This is that place. The farther I drift toward Ethan, the more uncertain my future becomes. I give up what little control I have. I’ve just gotten my life together. I’m finally seeing tangible progress toward my goals. If I risk that now on all the ways Ethan could wreck everything that’s just begun to take shape, I might never fit the pieces back together.

  But attraction isn’t rational. I can’t help that looking at him makes me forget where I am. Or how his smile ties my stomach in knots and his voice makes my blood pump faster. He’s addictive. That’s the thing about recovery, though: every day is a choice. Sometimes, we make the wrong ones.

  “I don’t want you to stop.”

  An elated smile spreads across Ethan’s face. With both hands he cups my jaw and bends to bring his lips to mine. I expect him to be forceful, urgent, the way he bursts into a room. Just the opposite. He’s deliberate the way his mouth moves with mine. Unhurried. As far as he’s concerned, this moment can last forever. Until lightning cracks somewhere above us. Close enough that every hair on my body stands taut and my muscles clench.

  Suddenly, I’m hauled off my feet and upside down. Ethan tosses me over his shoulder, my ass in the air, and he jogs toward the stairs.

  “What the hell are you doing?” I shout.

  He climbs the steps two at a time like I weigh nothing at all.

  “We have to get out of the storm.”

  As he says it, the sky opens up. Torrential rain beats down on my back and soaks through my clothes.

  “I want to show you the house.”

  “I can walk!”

  And there’s water draining out of my hair and into my mouth, so if I don’t get upright soon, I might drown.

  “No, this is way more fun.”

  “Ethan!”

  We reach the top of the stairs and he sets me on my feet. Then he grabs my hand and darts off, dragging me behind him. As we approach, the house comes into view. This isn’t some quaint summer home, it’s an estate. The massive structure is like a cottage that ate five other houses and kept growing. The entire rear is lined by white framed windows and glass doors. A covered patio stretches the length of the house. Under the shelter of the patio’s roof, breathing heavily, I wipe the water from my arms and ring out my hair. Ethan disappears for a moment. Flames burst to life from a fireplace at the near end of the patio.

  “Stay here,” he says, “I’m going to run around to the front and open the door.”

  While I wait, I stand by the fire, my back to the heat, watching the lightning travel across the sky. Thunder shakes the windows and rattles my chest. There’s nothing like a storm on the ocean. Fierce and monstrous. Like it’s alive. Behind me, lights coming on in the house illuminate the backyard and a pool. Ethan steps out through one of the sliding glass doors and hands me a towel.

  “Go ahead and kick off your shoes,” he says, doing the same. “We’ll let them dry by the fire.”

  Ethan then peels his shirt over his head and drapes it on the back of a lounge chair. His chest, lit by flickering orange flames, is slick and dripping. The shadows play tricks across his lean abdomen, accentuating the indentations. I can’t get tired of looking. When he catches me, he gets a crooked, self-satisfied smirk.

  “Whatever.” I place my shoes and socks next to his in front of the fire. “Shut up.”

  He just laughs and unfolds a second towel to wipe himself down.

  Once I’ve dried myself off as well as I can, I rub the towel through my hair. A long silence ensues, and I get this feeling like I’ve just walked out of the movie theater, the fictional world slowly falling away. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do now or what happens next.

  “Hey.” Ethan pulls the towel away from me and tosses it at a chair. “This isn’t that awkward moment where you have to wonder if I’m going to kiss you good night or call you tomorrow,” he says. “Don’t look so pensive.”

  Ethan grabs me around my ribs. Rubbing his thumbs in gentle strokes against my torso, his eyes smolder. I want to say something witty, but
his stare saps the words from my lips. He lowers his face to mine, hovering just over my lips. When he lingers too long, I take it. I pull his bottom lip between mine. He groans, a soft rumble in the back of his throat. The vibration rolls through both of us as he clutches me tighter and pulls me against his firm body.

  “Stay here with me,” he breathes against my lips. “I don’t think I can let you go.”

  As if to prove his point, Ethan grips me tighter.

  This is the point of no return. I wake up tomorrow, and there’s no changing my mind. No going back and agreeing to forget tonight ever happened. And I want to say yes. I really want to. I also promised myself a long time ago I wouldn’t do this again. Be so enamored I jump without looking. What I remember most isn’t the fall, but how much it hurt when I hit bottom. His arms around me, his kiss fresh on my lips, he feels like home. And that’s a scary thought, because I’ve been here before.

  There was a guy in college. A grad student and teaching assistant for English 102 the spring semester of my freshman year. Mark wore cardigans and horn-rimmed glasses like he was trying to hide the obvious fact that he’d been an athlete in high school—if a reluctant one. I think he liked me because I was so easily impressed. By him. By literature and poetry. Everything. Books had been my escape in Massasauga. They were a world all my own, private, into which I could disappear for hours or days at a time. Mark was a writer, and in my fascination with college and living on my own, and the great bewildering power and mystery of words, I poured into him all my amazement and wonder. When he talked about Kerouac or Ginsberg or Kesey, he became them, their embodiment. He recited poetry barefoot in his living room, glass of brandy in his hand. We lay beneath his bedroom window, my head in his lap, while he read to me. He graded papers by the fireplace while I did homework on the couch. Anything to be close to him. Mark was an editor at the campus literary journal, so I volunteered there, too. For four months, we lived in a perpetual nineties coming-of-age movie starring Moira Kelly and Ethan Hawke.

  Mark became the first thing I ever adored. I lived and breathed by the sound of his voice. Slept in his shirt just to keep him close. No one had ever made me feel as wanted as Mark could when he glanced at me across a room or ran his fingertips down my arm. I was the happiest I’d ever been. Until the semester ended, and so did we.

  The breakup was short and brutal. Mark had lost interest in the awkward, dull freshman. He needed someone who could challenge him intellectually and rise to his level of worldly experience. Someone he didn’t have to hide from his friends, or his professors. A better lay.

  That summer, I lost fifteen pounds. I barely ate. Didn’t get out of bed for weeks. I lost all contact with anyone I had forged even the thinnest friendship with during my first year of college. Every day, all day, I thought about using. I’d tell myself, If you can get out of bed, you can have a hit. Just enough to get me moving again. Just enough to take away the deep, hollow aching in my chest. Then one day, I got up. Took my meds and a shower. Brushed my teeth and got dressed and found the NA meeting in the basement of the school library. Still, once I’d crawled out of my hole, there was damage to survey. I couldn’t go back to the lit journal. Going anywhere near the English Department at all was out of the question. So sophomore year, I declared my journalism major.

  Mark, Jenny—they’re my cautionary tales. My teaching moments. Both represent the same innate flaw in my nature: I want to be loved too much. There I am, chasing the crumbs, unaware I’ve strayed off the path and deeper into the forest. Darker. I lose myself in there, consumed. Because as long as the love is strong, or it could be, almost enough, even when it isn’t, it’s okay that it gets harder to tell where they end and I begin. It’s all right that I can’t remember when I agreed to give up the things I once thought made me an individual. Until the love gets snatched away, then all I’m left with is empty space and a realization that it was never okay. A person can only rebuild herself so many times before parts go missing.

  I don’t want to add Ethan to that list. I don’t want him to be a memory I can’t stand to think about. A name that becomes shorthand for another mistake and another place I’ll never return to.

  “Just come to bed with me,” Ethan says. “Let me fall asleep with you in my arms.”

  This is how it starts. A little taste, then a little more. The first one’s always free. Euphoria, like there is a god and you’re held in the great cosmic harmony of the divine embrace. At one with the universe and all living things. You feel every cell in your body slowing down, at peace. All sight and sound becomes a warm, vital glow of perfect light. Nothing matters. The world exactly as it should be. Mind free and limitless. There is no pain, only pleasure.

  It never lasts, of course. It can’t. The more you have, the less you feel it. That’s why they call it chasing.

  Addicts are reliable people. We always come back for more. Ethan is my drug now.

  “Okay. I’ll stay.”

  * * *

  The house is bigger on the inside. Tall ceilings and huge living spaces artfully decorated like a Restoration Hardware catalogue. Everything is gray distressed wood and powder-coated black metal. Oversized brown leather couches, black-and-white photos hung on the walls. Ethan leads me into the enormous kitchen equipped with stainless steel appliances. I don’t know what his parents do for a living, but I’m in the wrong career.

  “Thirsty?” Ethan opens the fridge. It’s fully stocked, everything lined up in perfect order.

  “Sure. Water would be great.”

  He pulls out two bottles and passes one to me.

  “Would you like to shower?”

  Ethan leans back against the counter, his wet jeans hanging from his hips. I raise a questioning eyebrow.

  “Alone. There are three of them.”

  “Thank you.”

  He pushes off the counter and escorts me upstairs past a series of closed doors. I count five bedrooms, at least. What I guess is his bedroom is at the end of the hall. It’s decorated much like the rest of the house, with a dark wood sleigh bed and matching furniture. From the dresser on the near wall he pulls a pair of boxers, a T-shirt, and black pajama pants, offering them to me.

  “To sleep in,” he says. “What do you prefer?”

  I opt for the shirt and shorts.

  “Right through there.” He nods to the door on the left, the en suite bathroom. “Feel free to use anything you need. I’ll go after you’re done.”

  The bathroom is tiled in slate gray with white marble counters. I feel almost, I don’t know, intrusive, stepping into the shower under the rain faucet. Like it’s a showroom model that isn’t supposed to get wet. When I’m done, I find several new, packaged toothbrushes in a drawer along with toothpaste and little bottles of mouthwash. I assume they must rent this place out or lend it to friends. It’s stocked like a hotel.

  After I’m done in the bathroom and have changed clothes, I step out to see Ethan wrapped in nothing but a towel.

  “You’re shameless.”

  Ethan saunters over to wrap his arms around my waist.

  “I’ve only just begun to seduce you.” He kisses the top of my head. “I left a comb out for you, if you’d like. Sorry, I couldn’t find a brush.”

  “No, that’s perfect.”

  “You smell good,” he says against my damp hair.

  I slide my arms to his shoulders.

  “I smell like you.”

  The bottle of shampoo in the shower was the same scent of mint and eucalyptus that I’ve noticed on Ethan before.

  “Exactly.”

  Maybe it’s a girl thing, but wearing a man’s clothes, smelling like his products, is like being wrapped in a warm blanket of intimate security. I guess it’s a man thing to mark his territory with his body wash.

  “Feel free to dig around for anything you need,” he says. “Go ahead and get comfortable.”

  I find the comb and tug it through the tangles in my hair, then wrap my head in the towel. I then chu
g the bottle of water and climb onto the bed to check my phone. By now Kumi is asleep. Still, I don’t want her to worry tomorrow that I’m not home when she wakes up, so I send her a quick text. She’s going to be impossible to live with now. I’m going to have to move out or I’ll never hear the end of her gloating.

  Soon enough, Ethan reappears wearing the black pajama pants he offered me. It’s unfair how the sight of him, naked from the hip up, makes me a little nervous. His eyes narrow, staring at me for a long moment before he shakes his head and cocks a crooked grin. He sighs as he runs his hand through his damp hair.

  “What’s that about?” I ask.

  He approaches the bed in a few long strides, stopping to sit on the edge. I pull the towel out of my hair.

  “I like looking at you in my bed.” His eyes turn from pleased amusement to something darker. “And you’re making it difficult for me to behave myself.”

  “I am? What about you?” I wave my hand up and down between us. “What am I supposed to do about all this?”

  “Anything you want. I’m at your mercy.”

  “Uh-huh. Take it easy, sport.”

  “Come here.”

  Ethan scoops me into his lap, burying his face against my neck. His fingers play against my ribs, soft and teasing.

  “Hey.” I shove at his shoulder until he meets my eyes. “If you want me to stay here, we should sleep before the sun comes up. I’m cranky in the morning if I don’t sleep well.”

  Ethan nods with a look of mock seriousness, pursing his lips.

  “Were you under the impression I was going to let you leave?”

  “Watch it, buster.”

  I crawl off his lap to scoot over to the far side of the bed.

  “I might be small, but I’m scrappy.”

  “I’m not a man to be trifled with.” He stands up from the bed to turn off the lights and regards me with menace. “If you’re thinking of taming me, you’ll be left disappointed.”

  “Oh,” I say, “I wouldn’t dare.”

  In darkness, Ethan comes back to the bed and holds the comforter back for both of us to slip underneath. I rest against the pillows, rolling onto my side to face him. Settled in, Ethan brings one of my hands up to his lips and kisses the pads of my fingers.