Chapter 20

Chapter Twenty

Clark

I DON’T KNOW HOW long I sleep. No alarm wakes me. No task awaits me. I fall into a deep, dreamless sleep, and wake softly in the embrace of warm sheets. Sunlight drips in through the blinds and patters across the bed. A soft shuffling reminds me I’m not alone, and I creak my eyes open in search of River.

He isn’t in the bed, but the bedroom door stands open, and through it I get a glimpse of most of his living room — and him naked within it. He folds himself down, head brushing his knees, long blue hair spilling loose to the floor. He clasps his elbows and hangs, his body bent in half. Lean muscle strains as he holds himself in that position. The sunlight filters more freely into the living room, caressing the lithe lines of his body.

He exhales and rolls himself back up to standing, unwinding one vertebrae at a time. He sighs at the top, his shoulders sinking and eyes opening. He catches me watching and grins.

“Good morning,” he says as he pads into the bedroom.

His nudity doesn’t seem to register with him. He moves as unselfconsciously as if he wore a suit and tie, settling at the edge of the bed beside me.

“Do you like tea?”

I’m stuck on the sight of his perfect naked body. I have to shake myself before I remember enough English to realize what he asked.

“I don’t drink coffee,” he goes on as though I didn’t completely freeze up.

“Oh, um, yeah, tea is fine,” I manage.

“I have a great green tea that I’d love to make for you. It’s such a gentle way to start the day. Give me a few minutes.”

I nod, and he hurries away. The wall hides him, but I sit in his bed listening to him bustle about the kitchen, still reconciling with the fact that I woke up in his home. I didn’t plan to stay here last night, but, then, very little of what’s happened between River and I has followed any sort of plan. I lose control around him, falling into the raging current of his life, his ideas, his enthusiasm, like I’m a raft going through white-capped rapids. All I can do is try not to crash, but I’m starting to wonder if even that is possible when I’m around him.

Somehow, it doesn’t scare me the way it should. River might be a turbulent, inexplicable creature, but he won’t let me crash. He won’t let me drown in that exuberant current sweeping him through life.

He returns with a mug in each hand. The one he passes to me says “good vibes” and features bands of color straight out of the seventies. I cradle the mug and let the stream curling off the tea puff at my face. It’s mellow and grassy, but not as abrasively bitter as I might expect. When I take a tentative sip, something light and sweet and barely detectable softens the bite of the green tea.

“There’s honey in it,” River says in response to my unspoken question.

I scoot over in the bed, making space so he can sit with me. It comes as both a relief and a disappointment when he covers himself by tucking his legs under the sheets.

“Sorry if I woke you,” River says. “I like to start my morning with practice. It helps settle my mind before the day begins.”

“You didn’t.”

I can’t look at him, even with most of him covered. The image of him stretching in his living room while completely naked lingers like the sweet aftertaste of the tea he brewed for me. Instead, I study my tea like the drifts of steam wafting off of it can make sense of how I wound up waking up in this man’s bed — and why I can’t bring myself to regret it.

Unbidden, that conversation with my sister rings through my mind. I know that’s part of it, the news about Dad, the feeling of being too much like him, the fear that I’ll spend my life making the same mistakes he has. He insists on working even when he shouldn’t, and he missed out on a lot of me and Alyssa’s lives as a result. All of that pushed me to accept River’s invitation to that show last night, and once I saw him in person, once I was standing in that crowd with his hand casually resting on my body, my resistance melted away like snow in summer.

“What’s wrong?”

River’s voice calls me out of my thoughts. I blink down at my cooling tea, which I cradle between my hands. I drag my gaze to River, allowing myself to drink in the sight of this impossibly beautiful man.

“Nothing,” I say. “Sorry, I was distracted.”

His smile is easy and genuine. “If you want to talk, I’m here.”

His offer catches me off-guard. Other men don’t tend to encourage me to vent to them, nor I them. It’s just … not something that happens. I’ve complained more often with Megan than any man I’ve dated, or even any male friend I’ve had over the years. Yet I have no doubt River would listen if I got this whole thing with my father off my chest.

“It’s nothing,” I say. “Just … work stuff.”

He sets his tea aside, then gently pries my mug from my grasp to set mine aside as well. He shuffles around to sit in front of me and take my hands in his, but that leaves him very starkly naked, and I have to will my eyes to remain at chin height or more. River either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care. He proceeds like I haven’t been distracted by his body this entire morning.

“I don’t think it’s nothing,” he says, “but I won’t push you. Will you breathe with me?”

“What? We’re already breathing.”

“It’s different. I want to breathe together with you.”

“Why? What does that even mean?”

“It means taking a deep breath in.” He does so as he explains, and for some reason I follow him. “And then letting it back out.” We exhale noisily. “Right, just like that.”

He guides me through a couple more breaths this way, long, slow inhales and gusty exhales. He holds my hands the entire time, and gradually, I sink into his touch. I don’t know how he keeps doing this to me, but after a few breaths, all the guardrails I normally put up have crumbled into dust.

“It’s my father,” I say in the silence that follows the exercise. River doesn’t respond, so I continue. “Apparently he fell off the roof the other day. He’s fine, but he could have been hurt way worse, and he shouldn’t have been up there in the first place. He was only there because he won’t let anyone do anything for him. He insists on doing it all himself. He has the money for it — he could easily hire someone to do house repairs and stuff — but he’s stubborn and he’s… He believes in hard work and in taking matters into your own hands instead of relying on others.”

“And he instilled that in his son.”

River’s stormy eyes bore into mine.

“Yeah,” I admit. “I guess he did.”

River rubs his thumbs along my knuckles. “That must be scary. I’m glad he’s okay, but I can see why it might weigh on your mind.”

I shrug. This is edging into territory I don’t want to tread with him or anyone else. It’s my family, my problem. It shouldn’t concern him.

“What about your family?” I say to change the topic. “Do your parents know about the retreat? They must be impressed that you’re an instructor.”

River’s thumbs still. His mouth twists into an uncharacteristic scowl. It only lasts a moment, like a flicker of distant lightning, but the storm in River’s eyes darkens.

“I didn’t tell them about the retreat,” River says.

“What? You didn’t? Why not?” I can’t keep the surprise out of my voice.

River manages to smile, but it strains like a lone support beam trying to hold up a skyscraper. I regret asking, but before I can rescind the question, he takes a breath and explains.

“They’re not exactly proud of my profession,” he says. “They own an architecture firm out in Seattle. All my brothers and sisters either work there or became lawyers. Five children, and I’m the only one who didn’t live up to their expectations. A yoga instructor was definitely not part of the plan. They know what I do, but they’ve never bothered asking for the details, and I’ve stopped offering them.”

For a moment, I sit there stunned, furrowing my brow at River as I try to make sense of his words. Who wouldn’t be proud to have him as their son? He’s adventurous and creative and an incredible yoga teacher in high demand both at the café and things like that retreat.

He withers before my eyes. All that confidence, all that positive energy he talks about — it dissipates, leaving behind a young man carrying a deeper hurt than I ever suspected. The man doing yoga naked in his apartment was a person who lacked even a shred of self-doubt; the man sitting before me now and nervously clinging to my hands might as well be a stranger.

“I’m sorry.” It’s the only thing I can think to say, and it’s wholly inadequate.

River shrugs. “It’s alright. I’m the youngest. All my siblings set the bar impossibly high before I ever had a chance to disappoint our parents.”

“No one should consider you a disappointment, River. No one.”

He drags his eyes back up to meet mine, studying me as though he’s searching for a lie hidden within my words.

“Listen, my father may have been obsessed with work, but he never put that burden on me or Alyssa,” I say. “He never told us who we should be. If I was a yoga instructor like you, all he’d care about was that I was working hard and giving it my all, and you are, so there’s nothing you should feel ashamed about.”

River’s smile returns, less strained this time. “You’d make a good dad,” he says.

A flush steals into my cheeks. No one’s ever said anything like that to me. I’ve never imagined myself as a father, but a sudden vision of a child scampering through River’s apartment knocks me off-balance. What is River doing to me to take me from a workaholic like my father to a guy who talks about his feelings and imagines being a father? Every time he speaks, entire new worlds open up to me, paths I never dared to consider. It’s as frightening as it is thrilling — and I’m not sure which emotion will ultimately win out.

“Hey,” River says, “do you want to do something with me today? I know we were only supposed to go to that show last night, but since it’s Saturday, I assume you don’t have work. Can you stay? There’s something I’d love to show you if you have time.”

I pause, my hands in River’s as I sit on his bed. I shouldn’t even be here, and now he’s asking me to stay even longer. My stomach is in a tumult. My head is spinning. The whirlwind that is River has caught me up and carried me along like a leaf in a hurricane, but I’m not as afraid and appalled as I probably should be. Despite it all, I do want to stay. I do want to see what more he has in store for me. I know I shouldn’t — he’s too young and I’m too busy and we’re too different for this to ever, ever work — but at least for the moment, I allow myself to give in to his whims yet again.

Whether that will prove a disastrous mistake or not remains to be seen.