Page 28 of Room 13: Bred By the Bears

“SVA.” She smiled. Despite the night wrapped around us like a blanket, I could sense her blush. I felt the soft pride in the way she copped to the admission. There was embarrassment in the way her voice dipped. I wanted to open that shift up and inspect it. “New York’s School of Visual Arts.” She clarified for me. Obi and Ryker had both nodded as if they knew immediately what SVA was.

“I didn’t know SVA offered Interior Design programs,” Obi said.

“Technically, they do. But my major was visual and creative studies with a minor in painting. Interior design came later.”

“You’re incredibly talented,” Obi continued. “The entire hotel remodel is stunning. That they’ve entrusted the full scope of work to a singular designer is impressive. That you’re pulling it off so effortlessly speaks to your abilities.”

“Thank you.” Instead of meeting anyone’s gaze, she stared instead into her wineglass, clearing the last few sips.

“What about the three of you? I feel like I barely know anything about you. Other than Ryker being famous of course.”

She laughed as she set her wineglass down and curled her legs up into the chair, resting her chin on her knees.

“I didn’t know you paint.” Ryker sounded surprised. “Maybe I can see your work one day?”

“Maybe,” she whispered, her relaxed smile faltering before she recovered. “But that is still ametopic. I’m pretty sure we were moving to ayoutopic.”

I caught Ryker’s glance before Obi’s, but both of them probably mirrored my own. How deep did Ryker really want to go with Miele? This has been his idea. To bring her to ourhome. To test the waters on what it would be like to be anus. But it was also dangerous water to tread in given Miele had been crystal clear and upfront from the onset that she was not interested in dating or a relationship. Yet, Ryker persisted. Pushing headfirst into this forced intimacy that hadDanger!written all over it.

“We grew up together,” Ryker told her. “Childhood friends. St. Claude wasn’t nearly as highbrow as Marginy was, but it was home.”

“And now the art scene there is thriving. Is that how you got discovered? In your home parish?” Miele asked.

Obi huffed. In the firelight I saw him roll his eyes and shove his beer bottle between his lips, tilting his head back in a long swig. We were the only ones that ever saw this version of him. Worn jeans with a tear in the knee, a ratty T-shirt, and a pair of well-worn sneakers. This was how I always pictured him when people talked about him. Not the urbanite he’d sculpted himself into.

“We are all educated. Went to college. Lived in other cities. We came back here to behome.” He tilted the bottle, watching its contents circle the inside of the bottle as he continued. “The three of us were thick as thieves since childhood. I think my earliest memory I was maybe six? Armel would have been five, and Ryker almost seven. We built a fort in the marshes, high in the trees. We’d spend hours there. Lived an entirely separate existence when it was the three of us out in the wild. Grew up, graduated high school, the whiz kid over there went to Georgetown, Ryker headed to RISD in Rhode Island and since both those fuckers went so damn far away, I followed them like a sad little puppy dog, and went to Virginia Tech. Ryker had a professor from Berlin, introduced him to some people and his career took off. He brought me along for the ride while Armel was rubbing elbows with the Washington elite.”

Miele looked to me as if I was supposed to finish the story. But it wasn’t really my story to tell. It was Ryker who always had been our central force. The glue that held us together. He called and said he wanted to come home, and so we did.

“Ryker had a vision for a house on a hill. One that felt like home. Where we could enjoy the trappings of our individual successes without having to be integrated into it. We built this place about six years ago.”

There was a lot of “us” in this house. Not just in the design or the way we decorated it. But in the things throughout. Old pictures, the odd token from grade school. Our entire history existed in this house. A history I feared bringing Miele into if she would balk and tear herself out of it.

Miele opened her mouth as if to ask a question and then shut it again. Her eyes flit between the three of us. Bouncing between the two who weren’t speaking as she listened to the one that did. I feared she’d tear a hole right through her lip, she bit at it with such distracted focus.

“You can ask whatever you want, Little Cub.”

Ryker turned to me, panic in his eyes. It grated me with a fierce twist in my gut I hadn’t expected. Fuck him. He was the one who brought her here. And it wasn’t like an entire life working with politicians hadn’t taught me how to tap dance around subjects. He’d known me nearly my whole damn life. I wasn’t a dip shit.

“How did you three get started. You know, doing this.” Her hand flit in a wide circle between us. “Together, as a unit.”

Almost as if we’d practiced our response, the three of us said, “Tammy.” In unison. The serendipitous occurrence pulling a laugh from all of us.

“Tammy.” Obi said again, rubbing at the back of his neck. “She was something.”

“We were fifteen,” I chimed in. “Well, Tammy and I were fifteen anyway.”

“Fucking wild.” Ryker smiled into his beer before taking a pull.

“We were on some school trip to one of the historical sites. I can’t even remember which one.” I began.

“I think it was the Pilot House,” Obi said.

“Could have been. Wherever it was the four of us were bored out of our skulls. We went exploring. They had beautiful grounds, lots of trails and woods, so we set off in that direction.”

“None of us were virgins anymore.” Ryker told her, a wolfish grin on his face.

“I was.” I admitted with a sheepish shrug.

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