“Is next week too soon?” he says. “I have a vision of a new painting and it’s holding me captive.” He smiles as if he knows I know what it feels like to be the prisoner of art.
I smile back. “I think I can make it happen.”
We sit and talk through how he likes to work: a few hours in the morning, a break for lunch and a nap, and a few hours in the afternoon. I’d be free to stay and work on my own paintings during the break. Five days a week, no nights, weekends off to rest.
When I get to my car, I’m so high I toss my portfolio in the back and throw my arms in the air. “Yes!”
“Yes, yes, yes,” I cry as I steer the car up the drive. My heart is swallow-swooping, and I have to share this unbelievable turn of fortune. I can’t even make it back to Pasadena before I pull over.
I take out my phone and message Taysha to call me as soon as she gets out of class. I hit send, and my thumbs hover over the keys. There’s one more person I long to share this with, but it’s been over a month since we last talked, and I’m not the one who decided we were done.
I stow my phone in my purse and pull back onto the road. A hawk glides down the canyon and rises over my car. He circles in front of me, riding the currents like he weighs absolutely nothing.
Saturday morning, I slip on my oldest, softest shirt and ease it over the tattoo on my wrist. The skin is still tender as I rest my finger on the word inked in cadmium green: CLARITY.
When I walk into the kitchen, a donut is waiting on a plate by the coffeemaker, and because Mrs. Mednikov had breakfast hours ago, I know the donut is for me. I break off a small piece and it crumbles on my tongue, tasting of cinnamon and apple cider.
The thaw between us began two nights ago when I came back from working with Willy Steam. “There is soup,” she said as I walked in the door. My heart skipped a beat because it had been weeks since we last ate together, but I tried to sound nonchalant. “I’d love some. I’ll set out the bowls.”
Our conversation over dinner was tentative, as if she didn’t want to promise and I didn’t want to disappoint. We passed each other questions like fragile china plates. She pretended she was only mildly interested in my enigmatic boss, but I saw right through her.
I pour some coffee and carry the donut to the porch, ready to tackle my new work in progress. Since I delivered Iona’s portrait, I’ve been free to paint what I want.
It’s only been a couple of weeks since I began assisting Willy Steam, but the give-and-take between us as we break down a face and reinterpret it in color and shape feeds my painting in a way CALINVA never did.
The morning sun bathes my canvas in golden light, highlighting the areas that still need work. The composition of my newest self-portrait isn’t the problem. I stand in the gray-black ashes of a house, gazing at the viewer, my left hand stroking a bluebird nestled in the hair on my shoulder.
Tired but not broken is what I want the eyes to convey, but I haven’t nailed them yet.
I prep my palette and am deep into painting when a movement in the garden catches my eye. I glance over, expecting Mrs. Mednikov, but it’s not her, it’s Kevin.
What the hell?
I draw in a breath, and push back the tears that would fill my eyes if I let them. CALINVA students are back from break and Taysha told me she’d seen Kev around campus, but I didn’t expect to hear from him, not after his monthlong silence. And to show up like this?
The screen door squeals as I push it open. I stand on the top step, my hand locked on the handle. “Why are you here?” It comes out harsher than I mean it to, but so what.
Kevin sways a little and takes a half step back. “I guess I should have called, but I thought…”
You thought I’d hang up.
“Stephania told me you were out on the porch so I…” He raises his hands in surrender.
My heart is still bruised, and it would be easier if I hated him, but I don’t. Kev’s got something to say, and maybe I’m being weak, but I want to hear it. “You can come in.”
Kevin’s careful not to touch or even brush against me as he comes up the steps, but when he sees my canvas, he walks right up to it. I close the screen and hang back by the door.
He shoves his hands deep in his jeans and leans in until his nose almost touches the surface. “This is—what you’re doing with color and shape, it’s—really different.”
His mouth hangs open and I don’t fight the pride I feel at how the painting affects him. “Thanks. I don’t know if you heard, but I got a job as Willy Steam’s assistant. I’m learning a lot about technique.”
Kevin continues to study my painting, his eyes tracing the lines of the figure until they focus on the face. “It’s not just the technique that’s different. You seem like you’re in a better place.”
“Getting there.”
He shifts from foot to foot, and I sense he wants me to help him out and make this easier, but he’s just going to have to suck it up and say what he came here to say.
After a long moment, Kev finally meets my eyes. “I had a lot of time to think over the break, and I realized I owe you an apology. You didn’t go looking for a way to screw Krell, and you’d never have painted that copy if that guy hadn’t set you up. I refused to see that, and I’m sorry.”
I nod, not sure how to answer.
Kevin’s apology doesn’t erase the hurt I felt when he abandoned me, but at this moment I feel as if he sees me—not the me I pretended to be for him or the me he believed I was, but the real me.
He takes a step toward the screen door. “Okay, well, I guess I should go.”
Something pulls in my chest, and I press down with my fingers to quiet it. He reaches for the handle, and as his hand closes around it, I realize what I want.
“There are apple cider donuts,” I say. “Mrs. Mednikov made them fresh.”
His eyes relax, and his lips curve into a tentative smile, and I offer him one back. We turn and he follows me into the sunlit kitchen.
I don’t know where this will take us. Maybe we can recover, and maybe we can’t, but wherever we go from here, I intend to show Kevin the me that is real, the one that is flawed and sometimes ugly, light and dark, honest and true.