FOUR HOURS OF tense silence.
Four hours of wondering what the hell went wrong.
After he’d left me, I’d bent in half in the changing room and sucked in air. I’d begged my heart to stop jumping around like a fool and willed my body to stop crying for sex.
I had no idea what made Gil switch so completely.
I didn’t know why I’d become so belligerent. To be honest, I didn’t know myself anymore and I couldn’t say I liked who I’d turned into.
I’d always been so careful of who I was and who I wanted to be. I never wanted to be the girl people pitied because of my accident. I definitely didn’t want to be the girl who got trampled on time and time again and didn’t have the backbone to stand up for herself.
If Gil was just an arrogant bastard, I would’ve walked away by now.
It was the fact that he wasn’t an arrogant bastard that kept me imprisoned. I couldn’t walk away because he was drowning and I was the rope keeping his head above water.
After gathering my pieces into the best order I could, I left the changing room with a white robe wrapped tight around me. I didn’t speak when I found Gil outside with the manager of Kohls, going over the vision for his company.
The squat manager had already arranged tape to be strung around the company’s logo and Gil’s workstation to keep pedestrians away, along with four life-sized mannequins with bald heads, pert boobs, and willowy limbs.
Next to them, I felt dumpy and un-elegant.
While Gil and the manager arranged the mannequins to match the huge logo letters, I hugged my robe tighter and did my best not to catch the eyes of half-interested shoppers. Each plastic figure was guided into different postures. Some with their arms up, some with legs kicked. They stayed within the lines of the large letters, adding depth to the brand.
English sunshine kept shadows at bay, and Gil finally shook the hand of the manager and waved at me to come closer.
“Where do you want me?” I asked quietly.
“Sit for a while. I’ve got to paint the mannequins first.”
I shrugged and went to rest in the car.
From my vantage point, I’d spent two hours watching Gil turn skin-toned plastic mannequins into multihued extensions of the Kohls logo. One for each letter with their arms angled to match and their stiff, perfect bodies blending effortlessly into the building.
When it came time for Gil to paint me, he positioned me on the O.
Of course.
Manhandling my arms and legs so I curved with the base of the letter of my first name, electric shocks sparked from his skin to mine. It seemed we’d forever be cursed to suffer such connection.
Our eyes avoided each other, both trapped in apologies.
Once Gil had me positioned, I stayed sandwiched between fake models, doing my best to be as elongated and as flawless as them.
“Why the mannequins?” I tensed as the first tickle of Gil’s brush licked over my shoulder—the shoulder clear of scars and ink.
“Because I don’t have enough real-life canvases.”
“Oh.” I squeezed my eyes shut as he traded his brush for his air gun, hissing paint and coldness over my flesh, quickly staining me lime, mint, and forest green, ensuring I vanished into the Kohls logo—a complete osmosis of design.
I opened my mouth to ask what exactly the brief had been, but Gil gave me an exhausted shake of his head. “Please don’t talk. Don’t move. Don’t do anything until I’m done. I won’t be able to work if you do.”
I closed my mouth.
He nodded in thanks before forgetting I was alive and focusing on his craft.
I did my best to keep my twitches and gasps to a minimum as the air gun switched to a sponge and the sponge became a fine-tipped brush, adding depth and reality, mimicking the flaws of the logo and the scars of time.
A crowd steadily gathered, pointing at the already camouflaged mannequins and then at me as I slowly disappeared. Gil worked fast; his technique faultless as he layered me with paint. The sun changed angles, and he added deeper shadows. The breeze picked up, and he cupped his hand around his air gun nozzle to keep the spray correct.
I fell into the lull of his talent once again. Awed at how he shut out the world while he painted. There was no me or them or us. Just him and his creation.
But even in his creative zone, his face held mountains of snow-capped stress.
He wasn’t happy.
He wasn’t pleased or proud of his work.
Each time he ducked to paint around my throat or swallowed hard when he drew a brush under my breast, I wanted to kiss him. I wanted him to apologise as equally as I wanted to apologise. I needed to assure him that no matter what happened between us, I would never ask him to put me above his work.
For two long hours, he wouldn’t let me catch his stare, keeping his concentration on the area of my body he was painting. When his brush trailed between my breasts and over my pasty-covered nipple, the sensation wasn’t nearly as erotic as being bare.
My back ached from twisting. My arms went dead from being above my head. And my legs trembled from staying in position.
Gil worked fast but not fast enough, and by the time the last detail reached my toes and the crowd clapped with how well I’d morphed into the branding of the department store, I was ready for food, space, and a shower.
Before the paint was dry, Gil turned his attention to the other part of his brief. Halfway through his painting, the manager had arrived with a box of merchandise and requested Gil find homes in his design to show the range of what they stocked.
Now, Gil selected an ebony scarf that he draped over my fingertips, a glossy blue handbag that he placed by the feet of the K mannequin, a toy train on the upturned palm of the H figurine, a silver toaster balanced on the upturned foot of the S model, and a golf club speared through the hands of the L dummy.
All of us held something, but Gil didn’t use a fraction of the stuff provided, preferring to keep the simplicity of four fake and one alive female illusion hidden in the letters as his masterpiece.
The scowl on his face and temper in his shoulders yelled he hated everything about this commission.
To be honest, I didn’t like it either.
It felt contrived and commercial. Lacking in originality and imagination.
My stomach growled as Gil stood and rubbed his chin with green-speckled hands. His lips twitched, reminded of my appetite last night. “I’ll feed you soon.”
The gentleness in his voice was polar opposite to the frost that had been there before.
The stiffness and suffering that had grown while he’d painted me dissolved in an instant. “I’m so sorry, Gil.”
He flinched. “No apology needed.” Gathering up his brushes, he added, “I’m the one who’s sorry. I’m not...I’m not usually so quick tempered. I didn’t mean to get so cross.” He smiled sadly while he touched up an area of shading on my cheek. His lips were so close to mine all while his face tightened in concentration.
Our eyes locked.
Our hearts pounded.
He stepped back with a sigh.
Throwing the used brush into his supply container, he murmured, “You just found me at the wrong time, that’s all.”
With that cryptic comment, he hoisted the box beneath his arm and turned to place it on the trestle table.
My eyes followed him, widening in fear at the two police officers who appeared as if from thin air.