Bex eyed Roman. “Freelance.”
“Well, then, I might have to see about having you do some work at our company as well. Now if you’ll excuse us, we’ve got a reservation at Grill House.” He motioned at a restaurant three buildings down, gave them a nod, then the four of them kept walking, while Bex and Roman headed to her car to get her tripod and video camera.
As soon as his dad was out of earshot, Bex stopped next to her car, hands on her hips. “Why didn’t you tell him my real job? Or what we were here doing?”
He stopped, too, turning to her as he let out a big breath. “Because my dad isn’t a nice person. And it’s none of his business.”
“He seemed nice enough. Are you saying he would’ve been rude if he knew that I am a YouTuber?”
“It’s more complicated than that.”
She looked out at nothing in the distance, feeling ruffled about the conversation. She didn’t know much about his dad at all, and recognized that there was a lot of history and father/son dynamics between the two that she didn’t know about yet. But after him scoffing when the teenager asked about her business earlier, his hesitation when talking to his dad bothered her and made her feel like Roman didn’t respect her job very much. She looked back at him. “Does he know that we’ve been shooting these interviews?”
“No. And hopefully he never will. Like I said, he’s not a nice guy.”
She started walking toward the shop again, arms crossed. She wasn’t upset because he wanted to protect her. It was that it didn’t seem like it was mostly about him protecting her. It seemed more like he had been embarrassed to tell his dad the truth about her—about her job and about the fact that they weren’t there for a meeting.
She needed to know how he felt. From the start, she had been worried that he wasn’t the right guy for her. And then, because of all the ways in which he was perfect, she had let down her defenses. But she couldn’t start a relationship with a guy who didn’t value her or her chosen career. So, if those defenses needed to go back up, she wanted to know now—not later, when she was more invested. Not like what happened with her sister.
“Roman, do you respect me, as a YouTuber?”
He stopped walking and the look on his face was softer. “I do, Bex. I think you are amazing at it, and I can see why you have so many subscribers and fans everywhere we go. I didn’t mean to come off sounding like I didn’t.” She searched his eyes and saw truth there. Then he reached out and pulled her close, like he didn’t care who saw, and kissed her temple.
“Thank you. But...camera...in my ribs.”
“Oh!” Roman pulled back, and she adjusted the camera strap so it rested in a more comfortable spot.
When they arrived at the shop, she set up her equipment right between their two easels, so it would get their faces. Then she shook out her arms and tried to clear her head of any annoyance. Not everyone had a great relationship with their parents. That was all this was.
Both she and Roman put on aprons with the Paint Date logos on them and sat down at the spots where they would be painting. Before starting the camera, she looked over at Roman, and he gave her that smile that melted her insides and his eyes scanned her face like he really loved what he saw there. Right back atcha, Roman.
She turned on the camera with her remote, and started filming the introduction. She took out her phone and showed them what the app had suggested when she’d clicked Nudge Me Out, and how it even found a place near her with openings.
“So here we are,” Roman said, holding up a paintbrush, “ready to paint. Even though I’ve never done this before in my life.”
“What about art class in school when you were a kid? You never painted then?”
“No, I did. I just didn’t paint actual things. Here, we are painting”—he glanced at the front where the painting they would be duplicating was placed—“a starry night sky with a couple kissing in front of a full moon. I knew how awful my drawing skills were, so in school, instead of painting whatever we were supposed to paint, I just painted ‘abstract art.’ I found out that if I could tell my teachers a good story about the meaning behind the painting or about the choices I made, they always accepted it. I was either really good at convincing them that I knew what I was doing, or they just knew that there was no help for me and were glad I was at least picking up the brush. Based on art history classes I took later on, where we discussed actual abstract art, I think it was the latter.”
Bex laughed, shaking her head. She was grateful that he was willing to share personal things in their interviews now, and was impressed that he did it without much prodding at all. He was giving her exactly what she needed for this interview, just like he had for the three others. And he was still here doing them with her—he hadn’t quit after the first one like she’d worried he would. Surely that meant that he respected her job and the incidences today were just a fluke.
Right?
“How about you?” he asked. “Is this new for you?”
“Not completely new, but it has been a good long while since I last picked up a brush.”
They chatted for a minute about the Nudge Out app, and the things it was doing for people who had been using it. Roman even told a few stories of people who had contacted them to let them know the new things they had tried and how it had boosted their confidence in doing hard things.
People who were taking the class with them started trickling in, so she stopped the recording and moved the tripod to behind them so viewers could see their paintings as they worked and see the instructor as she taught. It would all be edited down to just a few minutes of highlights.
Roman rolled his shoulders. He sat on the stool that was placed in front of his easel, one foot resting on the bottom rung, his knee bouncing.
“Oh my goodness, you’re nervous.”
“About having your viewers see what I’m painting? No. What gave you that idea?” He kept his eyes on the painting at the front.
A smile played on her lips. Normally, Roman showed only confidence, whether he had to fake it or not. Seeing this anxious side of him was endearing. Maybe because he was actually letting her see that side. It wasn’t long ago that he wouldn’t have. “Getting nudged a little too far out of your comfort zone, huh?”
He turned on his stool so he was facing her and leaned forward far enough that he was only inches from her face. “What do you say we keep that our little secret?” And then he kissed her. It was a lingering peck on the lips, but it was enough to make her feel lightheaded.
That bouncing of his knee, though, totally gave him away. This interview wasn’t going to go well if the guy she was interviewing was so distracted by his thoughts of messing up something he wasn’t familiar with.
“What about the painting are you least looking forward to?”
He nodded toward the front. “The people.”
Bex looked at the painting at the front they would be learning how to paint. The focal point was definitely the moon. In front of it was a woman and a man, both standing with their hands behind their backs and bent at the waist, leaning forward to kiss. “Even though they’re just silhouettes and not very big?”
He nodded. “I paint abstract art when drawing is involved, remember?”