PLAYED - A BRITISH BAD BOY ROMANCE (2 page)

“So that’s
Publicist Jess
speaking,”
I commented gruffly. “What about the other one?”

“As your
friend?
” Jess asked.

I nodded quietly.

Her eyes flashed wildly again, and that smirk slipped back across her
lips. As I felt a heavy pit in my stomach, she leaned forward, whispering as if
anyone could hear us in this private pub room.

“I think I have an idea…”

My skepticism somehow found a new height. “An idea, yeah?” I asked,
crossing my arms. “Am I going to like this?”

“Well, that depends…” Jess mischievously remarked, taking another swig
of her drink.

“How do a few weeks in America sound?”

“Why the bloody hell would I want to go to America?”

Jess slapped a hand down on the table. “Because in America,
nobody
knows your name.”

Chapter 1

Riley

The canvas sang with streaks of color as I dashed my palette knife along
the taut material. Beneath my deft strokes, a serene landscape was springing to
life, filled with clouds, mountains, and trees… and for the foreground, a
hilltop pasture.

This was what I lived for.

Painting came naturally to me. On my mother’s side of things, a thick
streak of artistic creativity ran in the family. My grandmother had been a
skilled seamstress and designer. My mother had been particularly skilled in
sculpting.

That left me: Riley Ricketts, the painter.

Happiness was an empty canvas and a broad spectrum of vibrant paints,
all ready for the skillful dance of my wrist. I favored a water-based style,
coating the blank vessel of my artwork with a thin layer of clear-coat before
adding in the surreal colors with a palette knife, a half-inch brush, or the
edge of whatever expendables I had nearby.

I’d painted with sponges, crushed chocolate wrappers, Lego bricks, even
steel wool. A consummate improviser, I worked with whatever was accessible and
necessary to achieve the effect.

Although the gift came almost as naturally to me as breathing, I’d found
myself in a bit of a bind these last few months.

The magic had gone away.

Whatever invisible muse had been guiding my work, it had scampered off
into the night. My art still came as easily as ever, but it felt uninspired. It
never looked the way I wanted it to.

Despite the protests of my few close friends, I let each failed piece
languish in the spare closet. They called it the
Closet of Doom.
It had become a graveyard of forgotten canvases… a
tomb for failed passions.

I glanced down at the canvas before me now, seated comfortably on the
easel. As I wiped clean the palette knife in my hand and lifted a blue-tipped
brush, ready to enhance the clouds above, my hand hesitated waveringly.

No,
I thought to myself.

This won’t do.

As if I were a disappointed parent, I dipped the brush back into the cup
of water and beat the Devil out of it against the metallic easel frame. Down
went my pallet, set aside for later use, and the brush dropped into my
easel-side container.

I stretched my limbs, intertwining my fingers outwardly above my head.
The light was already turning, casting my small studio in the throes of
twilight. Soon, Reiko would be here, ready to cast off another dismal day running
her boss’s sandwich shop. Maybe Connor would join us tonight, although I was
growing less and less patient with his passive-aggressive advances.

It was obvious he wanted to date me, but I’d held the same sisterly
affection for him that I had since junior high… for whatever reason, that
apparently wasn’t enough anymore.

Worries for another time,
I decided, bending to the side to stretch my back.

I heard the door squeal open, and the slight clatter as it slid back
into place.

“You in the studio?”

“Yeah. You can come in.”

Reiko Sugiyama leaned against the doorway, already dressed in her street
clothes. With a cute, round face and soft features, her casually fierce eyes
reinforced everything that her sheer force of presence said:
Don’t fuck with me.

Despite her lithe form, Reiko’s snarkiness and intimidation were the
things of legend. I’d only ever witnessed it secondhand, but my
other
best friend since junior high was
a sight to behold. There wasn’t a single bone in her body that lacked
confidence, and she walked with her head held high and a strut that showed the
world who was really the boss.

It was a shame that she was so lazy.

With just a pinch more ambition, she would have already left her job: babysitting
a bunch of teenagers barely able to string along a decent club sandwich.

“Whatcha got there?” Reiko asked, nodding in the direction of the
canvas. “No, no, let me guess… another one of your recent failures, am I
right?”

“Maybe,” I answered apathetically.

“Yeah, I thought so,” she sighed, pushing off from the doorway and
sauntering over. Her black boots clanged against the hardwood floor as she bent
over beside me and peered at the canvas. “You know, whatever it is that you
hate
about your art these days, I just
don’t see it. This looks just as fucking fantastic as your usual shit.”

“
Shit
being the operative
word,” I replied, wandering towards the kitchen to give her privacy with the painting.
After hours of being in the zone and away from my bodily needs, I was
positively parched.

“You
know
what I mean!” She
called out from the studio room. “I just don’t get it. People would
kill
for talent like yours. Tell me,
explain it to me… what makes this suck to you?”

Pouring myself a glass of water, I ripped the scrunchie from my hair. My
mane fell over my shoulders, the unfurled locks eager for release.

“I don’t expect you to get it,” I answered truthfully. “There’s
something missing. A spark…” I walked back down the hall, settling against the
doorway as she had before.

“Well, I’ll trust your judgement,” Reiko grinned over her shoulder,
before her smile faded into concern. “But you’ve been on this warpath against
your own work for, what,
months
now?
I know you say you lost your spark or whatever, but maybe this stuff is better
than you think?”

She turned back to the mostly finished landscape, clearly admiring my
efforts. “I mean, this doesn’t belong in your Closet of Doom. If that’s what
you’re doing with it, let me put this up on my wall. I need art for my bare ass
apartment anyway. Hell, I’ll take half of that closet right now.”

“You know I can’t let you do that,” I reminded her. “I can’t let this
out into the wild. It’s fine here… where it’s safe… at least, until I can
figure out what’s wrong with it, maybe clean it up.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know…”

She looked a little glum, but I appreciated that Reiko understood my
artistic selfishness. The idea of something inferior that I’d created with my
own hand being
out there,
even on a
close friend’s wall… the idea bothered me.

Hell, Connor had tried to sneak off with one of my castaway closet
paintings, and I’d furiously banned him from my apartment for two months. It
had been a breach of my trust as a friend and an artist.

Reiko understood.

“Alright, well, I know there’s no convincing you otherwise,” she finally
conceded, standing up straight. “Anyway, I like it. It’s good.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I smiled.

“…Oh! I almost forgot the whole reason why I’m here!”

She grinned ear to ear, clasping her fingerless gloved hands together.
“Get yourself cleaned up, woman. We’re going to the French Quarter tonight.”

“Oh yeah?” I tilted my head. “Why’s that?”

“Because the guitarist in that band I like is a bartender down there,
and he tells me that this rugged, British dude showed up a few days ago. He’s
been coming in every night since, mostly keeping to himself. I think you need a
little something different, so you’d better get glammed up and get your flirt
on.”

Now
that
was intriguing.

“I don’t know… Maybe I don’t feel like going out tonight,” I replied,
trying to bury the little devil of excitement creeping up inside me.

“That’s exactly why you need to get out. You’ve been holed up in this
apartment trying to get your mojo back. Maybe you’re looking for
spark
in all the wrong places,” Reiko
said, grinning mischeviously.

“And you think I’ll find inspiration in some British guy’s pants?”

“It worked the last time, didn’t it?” Reiko laughed.

I wanted to protest, but she was right.

One of the more defining characteristics of myself, besides my penchant
for painting, was that I was a total Anglophile. I religiously watched the
BBC America
channel, following such British
staples as
Doctor Who
and
Sherlock
. I’d only been to England once
on a summer’s break, but it had confirmed my every suspicion:

I loved England.

I’d come back from that trip full of inspiration.

Everyone close to me knew that… and to hear that there was a British guy
here in town who’d fallen into routine at a nearby bar… Maybe I was
due
a little fun…

Besides… This was our usual night to go barhopping. We’d skipped the
last few when she’d been overwhelmed with work, and I hadn’t really been myself
lately. Knowing that the English card was on the table added a whole other
layer of excitement.

“What makes you think that he’s into someone like me?” I asked
thoughtfully, casting her a look.

“Geoffrey tells me that this guy’s been turning down the most
sex-starved vapid chicks around,” Reiko recalled. “Hell, he’s wandered back out
alone every damn night. Whether or not he scores later, there’s no telling, but
none of
them
are successful,
award-winning artists… maybe he’s into someone with a few brain cells?”

“What’s he look like?”

“Why don’t you just go find out for yourself?”

“Your guy must have told you
something,
”
I insisted. “Dish out the details. Get me amped to get pretty and scope this
guy out.”

The door clattered open again, and I inwardly sighed. I knew exactly who
it was, although Reiko didn’t appear to hear the sound of encroaching
footsteps.

“Fine, fine,” Reiko conceded, thinking for a moment. “Usually comes in
wearing a nice suit… sandy-brown hair, broad but streamlined build… handsome as
fuck… that’s all that the dude told me.”

“Handsome as fuck? Did somebody call me?” Connor asked, poking his head
through the door.

With his floppy hair and boyish good looks, enhanced by squared glasses,
Connor completed our happy little triad.
If
only he wasn’t so obviously attracted to me,
I thought to myself as he
flashed me a sly smile.

“Nah, wasn’t describing you, bro,” Reiko sneered playfully.

He shrugged off the retort. “Who else could it have possibly been?”

“Just this rugged, British dude down at the bar,” she answered
enthusiastically. “I’m trying to convince Riley that we need to go check this
guy out, because seriously I think she might be able to score him.”

I couldn’t figure out if she was blissfully ignorant of his fixation on
me, or if she was just effortlessly cruel, but Reiko offered this tidbit of
information up with the giddiness of a schoolgirl.

“Oh, I see,” Connor answered quietly, retreating into a stoic face. “Is
he at our usual spot?”

“Sounds like it,” I shrugged. “I figured it was worth a check. You up
for tagging along?”

Connor looked crestfallen, but he bravely slapped on a smile. “Fuck
yeah, I’ve been looking forward to this drink all goddamn day.”

“Rough day at the record store?”

“Definitely. Ever since Bowie shuffled off the mortal coil, we’ve been
sold flat out of his records. Meanwhile, we’ve been
swamped.
”

“Would have thought you’d like the business,” I shrugged. “Aren’t you
having trouble making the lease some months?”

“Well, yeah,” Connor grinned. “But it’s just me and Tiana there during
the day and, well, we’re not staffed to deal with a glam rock god up and dying
on us… if it’s not people pissed that we’ve run out of his discography, it’s
people bugging us with a ton of questions about related artists…”