Page 70 of Came the Closest
I drop my hands from his face, take a deep breath, and say, “I haven’t painted since my miscarriage.”
A moan tears through his throat, and his eyes fall closed. He exhales roughly before reaching for the flyer tucked under my leg. His knuckles brush the bare skin of my thigh, washing awareness over me like a wave, and he looks at me questioningly.
I nod.
He unfolds the paper and studies it, his breathing slowly evening out. I wonder if he’s actually just processing the last fifteen minutes. I wouldn’t blame him. It’s one thing to process how the sky has shifted from cerulean to periwinkle; it’s another to digest everything that we’ve shared.
He raises his eyes. “Do you want to submit something?”
Two answers immediately vie to be the one. Yes and no. I can’t say both, so I take the middle road. “I don’t know.”
Colton hums. “So, yes.”
“I didn’t say that. I…” It’s my turn to shake my head. “I haven’t tried to venture back into that world since everything happened, Colton. It’s not like I was known, but I wasn’t not known.”
“Fini, that’s an oxymoron.”
A short laugh sputters from me. “Yeah, well, it’s also the truth.”
“What is? That you don’t know if you want to do it, or that you were semi-known in the art world?” A half smile curls his mouth, and relief pours through me. That smile is like sunlight poking through ominous black clouds, like a sunrise after the darkest, coldest night. “I mean, I don’t know the art world, but I definitely know you.”
I roll my eyes, and buoyed by his smile, I tip my head onto his shoulder. His body doesn’t tense this time. He holds the flyer in one hand, and he reaches for mine with the other. He presses a kiss to my ring finger, just below the ring he placed there. Fizzy warmth crackles and pops under my skin. He lowers our joined hands to his thigh, and the polyester of his swim trunks is damp against my knuckles.
“I have an idea,” he says.
“Which is?”
“I’ll try,” he says, emphasizing the word, “if you’ll agree to submit something.”
It feels like an ultimatum. With anyone else, it probably would be.
But it’s Colton, so I straighten and hold out a hand between us. “Okay.”
Colton pushes my hand down and cups my face tenderly. “We’re not colleagues, Cheyenne, and we’re not just best friends. We’re fake fiancés, and sometimes fake fiancés want to kiss each other.”
My fingers cover his on my jaw. He presses his mouth to mine, and I release a shuddering breath that feathers over his tear-salty lips. One that fuels the passion with which he kisses me, and gives him permission to pull me close to his chest and hold me there until the sun sinks far, far below the hazy July horizon.
Thursday night, I go upstairs to get ready for bed. Ember and Graham’s wedding is Saturday, and last-minute preparations have everyone moving a hundred miles a minute. But when I cross the threshold of my room, I stop short.
Three canvases, two palettes of paint, and an array of paintbrushes are fanned out on my downy white comforter. I pick up a note with Colton’s handwriting scrawled across it.
I wandered the aisles of Target with my soon-to-be sister-in-law for this stuff today (she was there for extra wedding favors and a book). I narrowly avoided being propositioned by a woman pushing a cart full of, I kid you not, Kleenex. Boxes and boxes of them. This means two things:
You HAVE to paint something
Why don’t men wear engagement rings? This is my petition to change that.
If you need a muse for your painting, let me know. I’d be happy to tell Graham that Ember wants a portrait as her wedding gift.
Love, C
P.S. Check the decorative mailbox.
Fighting a smile, I set the note next to my seashell lamp. I cross to my closet to dig out my old wooden easel. It’s buried under clothes that fell from their hangers years ago and random puffy paints long ago dried up, but I haul it out with a grunt.
I prop it against my window seat, and then I go back to find the oversized t-shirt and slouchy cotton shorts that I painted in every summer. They have wall paint, watercolor, and acrylic paint stains on them, and they might fit a little snugger than before, but I drape them over the back of the easel.
I dig out that sparkly blue pen from my desk drawer again, and then I go downstairs. Colton is nowhere in sight, but I quietly unlock the front door. The welcome rug on the porch prickles my bare feet uncomfortably and the neighbors across the street are turning into their driveway. I swat away a mosquito and lift the lid of the striped navy and white mailbox and pull out a piece of scratch paper.