Page 39 of Room 13: Bred By the Bears

I thought about my tiny two bedroom house and the turn of the century sized closets. I could barely get my own clothes to fit inside of them let alone three men plus me.

“How big are your closets?” I whispered to Armel.

“We’d probably have to do some rearranging if you’re actually serious. There’s this great space upstairs that we’re using as a defacto office space. But it has floor to ceiling windows that look over the pond. It would make a magnificent bedroom. And if we blew out the wall and extended over the garage we could get a great master closet and bathroom out of that space as well. It could easily fit a double king, like the one in our cabin, along with anything else our bedroom would need. Like atoy chest.”

He ran his hand down my cheek, caressing it before leaning in for a soft kiss. It should freak me out. How much kissing we’d been doing lately. You don’t kiss fuck buddies. We’d already blurred the lines by allowing it during play. But like this? At a dinner table surrounded by friends?

I pulled back, wiping my lips as if to rid my body the memory of how good it felt.

“Keep doing that and I think Miele will turn down margaritas like the rest of us.” Margaux’s friend Rae laughed, “Wouldn’t that be a hoot. All of the Troublesome Creek girls full of babies at the same time.”

“You know, every single time we have sex, I hope the birth control will fail,” Armel admitted to the group, coating my veins in ice. “Obviously it’s nothing we’ve even discussed and probably anoopsieto be admitting here, in front of everyone without even mentioning it to you, or Ryker and Obi…but I really want to give you a baby. More than one. I want to fill you with them. Have a little brood of our own running around here with all of your friends.”

I told my fucking brain not to even make eye contact with Casey because I knew exactly what I would see there. And I couldn’t. Not right now. In front of all these people who were mostly strangers. Between Ryker and now Armel and his fucking confessions, I had to get out of there.

“I’m sorry. If you’ll excuse me.” I popped up and out of my seat so fast my chair tipped over. But I kept running. Like Cinderella trying to beat the midnight clock I ran, bursting out the back door of the Big House, down the lanterned path to the lake, where I stripped off every shred of clothes and buried myself under the murky water.

At least under water no one could hear you scream. No one could see your tears. Or hear you cry. Under water, there was soothing silence.

twenty-five

I hadn’t meantto be anti-social. The land surrounding us was so peaceful, it was too easy to lose yourself in your thoughts. I spent some time swimming trying to work through any way we could convince Miele how right it felt when we were together. I wanted us, Me, Armel, and Obi to speak with her privately away from everyone else and see where her head was at. Figure out what she was thinking.

I watched Clover and her sister-in-law Margaux chatting with their friends Journey and Rae and pictured Miele as part of their group. Excitedly talking about enjoying the margaritas while they lasted because soon, they’d have to refrain from them while they began fertility treatments. I lay there in the shade, listening to the breeze in the trees and I’d nodded off. Feet running at full speed down the path and crashing into the water on a sob startled me awake, thinking one of the kids had escaped the babysitter and needed saving.

But instead of one of the kids, I saw Miele, naked, highlighted by the moonlight, coming up for air on a broken sob, only to dive back under the water again. A riot of bubbles forming all around her until she ran out of air and repeated the process again.

It was the sounds more so the fear of her drowning that had me pushing off my chair and stripping off my clothes. If I hadn’t seen the feminine outline of her body, I would have convinced myself a wounded animal had met its watery end.

“Sweetness.” I approached her slowly, with as gentle as a voice as possible so as not to startle her.

“Oh, Ryker, hi.” She pushed her hair off her face, sluiced the water from her nose and eyes, and gave me a watery smile. I saw the shake of her chin, and heard the emotion in her voice, but she valiantly held onto the appearance that everything was totally fine, and it was absolutely normal to skinny dip in the middle of dinner.

“What’s wrong baby? How can I help?”

Despite her attempt to keep up appearances, the moment I opened my arms to cradle her against my skin, she went willingly into my embrace, her stoic resolve breaking on a heart rending sob.

“Shh, sweetheart. It’s okay. Whatever happened, it will be okay.”

I brought her out to deeper water, where she became buoyant enough to wrap her legs around me, burying her face in the crook of my neck, unloading a torrent of emotion that had my pulse racing and murderous rage begging to be directed toward anyone who broke her to the point of hysterics.

I did not know if she heard any of my words of comfort, but eventually her internal storm lightened to a gentle rain. She and I floated quietly in the water. The sounds of crickets in the distance, the occasional firefly lighting up the shoreline, and every once in a while the surface of the water broke for a hungry fish that spotted an unsuspecting fly.

I rubbed her back, pet her hair, kissed away the tears on her face, and waited.

“It wasn’t supposed to be like this, Ryker,” she told me. “It’s a game. It’s just a game. Itoldyou I wanted nothing more than some play time at the club. And the lines have blurred so bad. And part of that, we couldn’t control. Because I had no idea you were the same artist I’d commissioned. But, then we were playing at the hotel, and having dinner together, and then I was at your house, in all of your space and I startedthinkingabout things. And they’re in there talking about closets and how to fit everyone in one bedroom, and I’m asking Armel how big your closets are and he’s talking about blowing out the room in the attic and extending it over the garage. And I’m nodding and agreeing to things I specificallytold you all a resoundingno on.”

“Oh, Miele. This is because of us? These tears? Because of me coming here?”

She said nothing. Silence hung between weighted with everything I needed to hear from her and she didn’t want to say. Despite the humid, sticky, heat of the summer, the lake suddenly felt too cold.

“Are you crying because we’re here, or are you crying because you don’t want us to be here?”

“I don’t know.” She looked at me, eyes filling once again, another round of fat droplets playing tag as they broke over her eyelids and ran full speed down her cheeks.

“If you could have anything in the world Miele, what would your dream life be?”

“It isn’t possible.”

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