Chapter 6 Ris
Ris
There was never a moment when they didn’t have somewhere to be.
“I’m home,” Ris called, letting herself in that evening, able to tell he was still in the apartment just from the energy it held.
Even the apartment itself functioned like a place designed for constant movement.
The front hallway was the launching chute, with shoes lined up along the wall in only an approximation of order, giving the impression that they might go marching off out the door.
Her split-sole dance sneakers, his boots of various heights and stud capacity.
Her yoga mat leaned against the wall, held there by a potted plant, in constant danger of rolling away.
The case for his upright bass, too large to go anywhere else, rested behind the door, as if it might depart again on its own.
His leather jacket rested on the bench beside the shoes instead of hanging on the coatrack, as if it hadn’t yet decided if it was staying.
“Perfect timing,” Ainsley announced, coming around the corner as she entered the kitchen.
He paused at the table, lifting his foot to the edge of their kitchen stools, tightening his laces before swinging the guitar case over his shoulder.
“I’m just leaving. We have two minutes to make out in the doorway before I do. ”
She let him wrap his long, albatross-wingspan arms around her, squeezing until she squealed, hooking his hands around the back of her thighs and lifting her effortlessly.
Ris choked out a laugh, clinging to him like a cat on the side of a tree, her head lightly thunking against the wall of the hallway.
Her face fit neatly between his tusks, sighing into the heat of his mouth, enjoying the slip and drag of his tongue.
The blunt edge of his teeth lightly scraped over her jaw, and she considered that it was a shame they weren’t both home that night.
Her head lolled as Ainsley kissed his way down her neck, her hands coming up to scratch against his skull, the stubble of it rasping beneath her nails.
Catching his ear with her teeth, she licked up the pointed length, biting gently before whispering.
“What’s for dinner?”
She was already laughing when he dropped her, letting her go tumbling back to her feet, shaking his head.
“You’re trash. Here I am, trying to be a romantic, as per usual, and you can only think of one thing. ‘I hope he put the veggie lasagna in the oven already.’”
“Did he?” she asked hopefully, still giggling.
“Trash. And yes, he did.”
Ris rose up on her toes, meeting his mouth once more, his hand already on the doorknob.
“. . . I’ll probably be a little later tonight.”
“Okay,” she nodded, ignoring the slight hesitation before his words. It was Thursday. Grief group, then. Her pottery class hadn’t yet resumed since the Yule holiday break, and she would be home alone. “I might be waiting naked on the kitchen table if he put garlic bread in, too.”
“Wooooo, big night. Something to look forward to.” One last quick kiss, the door already pulled open. “I love you.”
He said the words more seriously now. It wasn’t just an automatic parting, a thing to say. It was something to which he gave weight, telling her as a pointed reminder each time they came and went.
“I love you too, babe.”
Changing out of her work clothes, she briefly entertained the thought of slipping into her flex leggings and grabbing her mat.
The yoga studio down the block had drop-in classes seven nights a week, and she could kill some of the time he’d not be home .
. . no. It’s slushy out, it’s cold. You literally just got home.
You don’t need to be busy twenty-four hours a day.
She frowned, knowing the voice in her head was technically correct. But the nice thing about keeping busy, she could admit to herself and only herself, was that she was busy.
Unlike Ainsley, she didn’t mind the commute from the city. The drive wasn’t terrible if she left early enough, which she always did, and it gave her an opportunity to not be responsible for anything other than the commute itself.
She might put on an audiobook or one of her language lessons, but she’d barely make it over the bridge before it would be off, replaced with the radio, singing along to pop songs like she was still a teenager, as if that were something teenagers still did.
She didn’t want to think, didn't want to plan. She didn’t want silence to have the chance to seep into the corners, insinuating itself into her good mood.
She liked the mindless decompression of it, and didn’t want to do anything.
Taking the train felt like an ordeal unto itself — getting to the station, waiting on the platform, constantly on high alert and hyper aware of her surroundings, surrounded as she was by humans.
She didn’t enjoy the logistics of the ride, being sandwiched in between strangers, attempting to keep hold of her workbag and her dance bag, her yoga mat, her pottery supplies.
She likened it to having to fly somewhere and deal with the aggravation of the airport before getting to enjoy one’s vacation — fine if it was the trial before the occasional week-long getaway, but not particularly a gauntlet she wanted to run five days a week, especially when the only reward waiting for her at the end was a day in the office.
Having access to her car was far preferable.
She liked being able to do the grocery shopping at the Food Gryphon on her way home from work, liked being able to park in the municipal lot on Main Street and walk around downtown.
She liked having the chance to pop into the coffee shop and pick up takeout.
She loved the businesses, the vibrancy of the downtown, loved the diversity of species.
Ris liked living in Cambric Creek. She always had. Having her own way around town made her feel as if she still did, in a way. You just don’t sleep here anymore.
A part of her missed having her own condo, but it wasn’t as if the apartment in the city they shared wasn’t finally beginning to feel like home.
Beyond the hallway, the living room erupted in an explosion of color.
The bright crimson sofa from her condo, his green chair from Starling Heights, a patchwork loveseat they’d purchased after the move that ‘looked like a fair-trade market and a clown college had a baby,’ according to him, art on every wall that wasn’t covered in a bookcase, all of them jam-packed.
“I’m not living out of milk crates,” Ris had told him, shortly after she’d moved in. “And I refuse to suck the dick of someone who does. You’re almost forty. It’s time to stop living like a college student.”
His outrage had been immediate.
“Okay, first of all, I have years before I’m forty. Plural years, lady. Just because you’re a cougar doesn’t mean you get to boss me around. What’s wrong with milk crates?! They keep all of my records and books nice and neat.”
“So would a bookshelf!” she’d laughed, already knowing this was exactly how he would react.
“You know, real furniture! You have the money; there is zero excuse to be storing things in plastic boxes that I’m pretty sure you told me you got for free from the alley behind your old apartment building.
So literal garbage. I refuse to live out of literal garbage, garbage boy. ”
“I like saving my money to spend on cool shit! What’s wrong with being fiscally savvy?”
She’d collapsed into giggles against him, already knowing the solution. The gnomish furniture superstore off the highway had both bookshelves and meatballs, giving her the opportunity to purchase one while distracting him with the other.
“This place is diabolical,” he’d huffed the following weekend, pushing the cart as they followed the lighted arrows on the floor. “I got a soft pretzel, and now we’re looking at steak knives?! I can buy a table that will come in seven hundred pieces and a pallet of wine? Who dreamt this all up?!”
“The richest gnomes in Europe,” she’d laughed, leading him to the gallery of bookshelves.
It had taken a few months, but the second-floor walk-up in the little brownstone had come together, slowly but surely.
A riot of color and life, a marriage of all their interests, the second bedroom housing his instruments and her practice barre, the overflow closet for them both, and the home office he worked from two days a week.
Color and life and movement, for they were never not coming or going from someplace else, sometimes barely passing in the doorway as they did so.
On Mondays, she had ballet, and he had band practice.
She stayed in Cambric Creek after work, eating an early dinner, poking in and out of the shops until her ballet class.
Sometimes Dynah met her before class, and it was nearly like old times.
She would bring home dessert from a Sylvan-owned café, a flaky circle of dough stuffed with a lightly sweetened cream cheese, full of dried fruit that had been steeped in orange blossom essence.
It was like nothing they had found at any of the human-owned places in Bridgeton, and they’d share it at the kitchen table once they were both home.
On Tuesdays he had therapy. It was her night to cook, and Ris would make a point of having dinner ready to plate when he came home, a story from her day already forming on her lips, a movie queued up on the streaming service or a quasi-educational show about ancient aliens, something light and distracting, something that gave him the space to not talk, if he didn’t want to.
He often didn’t want to.
Wednesdays were his work-from-home days, his turn to make dinner, their night to spend together.
They went to the movies, poetry readings at the coffee and wine cellar near their apartment, low-key mid-week concerts.
Other weeks, they stayed home and caught up on laundry, snuggled on the sofa.
It was a pause point in their busy schedules, much needed and always appreciated.