“Probably because you were willing to paint over the thing and start again,” Seth says. “I think a lot of people would have just kept on with the ugly frog and acted like it was supposed to be that way.”
The metaphor doesn’t escape me.
“How do you paint something that big?” he asks, after a moment.
“I used a grid,” I say, waving my other hand at the side of the barn. “First I drew it on a piece of paper with the same dimensions, but a grid on that, and transposed it square by square to the side of the barn. It was very methodical. Sort of like a spreadsheet for art, you’d like it.”
“I can appreciate art without spreadsheets, thanks,” he says.
“But do you appreciate it more with them?”
“No comment.”
We stand there for another moment: frog, apple, sunset, trees. I lean my head against his shoulder, the wool of his coat slightly rough against my cheek.
“What’s it like to get things right on the first try?” I finally ask.
“What do you mean?”
I mean that his life seems charmed to me: he went to college and graduated, came back to his hometown, started a business with his brother. One, two, three, done.
“I mean you didn’t fail out of art school twice,” I say.
“I probably would have if I’d attended art school.”
“Come on.”
He pauses a moment, adjusts his hand in mine.
“In college I almost got a degree in literature, but talked myself out of it because what use is that?” he asks.
It’s a rhetorical question. I don’t answer it.
“I started an application to study abroad in London for a semester, but never sent it in,” he says. “I graduated with a degree in economics, moved back to my hometown, took a job like I was supposed to overseeing the finances of a small mining company, and I hated every minute of it but they paid me well enough so I stayed. Because that’s what happens, right? Hate your job and make a living?”
I nearly say you never told me you wanted to study abroad, but change it at the last second.
“I didn’t know you wanted to go to London,” I say.
Seth’s quiet for a moment, his fingers flexing against mine.
“I decided I didn’t want to be that far from my girlfriend,” he says, after a long pause.
I think of all the things that I could say, but I don’t say any of them. I want to tell him that I’d have wanted him to go, experience the world, then come back to me, but I know that’s not what I’d have done.
At twenty, I’d have talked him out of it and into staying in Virginia. I’d have been afraid that he’d leave and find someone better than me, because I was insecure and selfish and felt like I was flailing my way through life.
I just watch his face from the side, but he doesn’t look at me. As Seth talks he’s just looking at the mural, his eyes drifting over it like he’s committing it to memory.
“And after college, Levi was off, in the woods, doing his mountain man thing,” he goes on. “Eli moved away for ten years, and we’d get phone calls from Thailand and postcards from Australia. Daniel found out one day that he had a ten-month-old daughter, and a month later he had full custody. Caleb followed his dream and went to grad school. And I was the stable one.”
I don’t know this man.
Standing there, in the cold, by the barn, the weight of that realization settles on me like snowfall: that all these years I’ve spent thinking I know Seth, I’ve been wrong. All I’ve gotten since we broke up when we were twenty-two has been glimpses into him, skewed snapshots of his life at any given time, like taking a picture of a funhouse mirror.
To me he was wild, reckless, intense. He was the man who’d answer my calls at any time of night, who’d drive hours for a booty call. He was the man who’d call me, voice rough, ask if I could be at some motel by sundown.
He talked dirty, fucked hard, broke my heart more than once, and I had no idea what the rest of his life was like.
“And the brewery came so damn close to failing,” he says, sounding more amused than anything. “Actually, the first time I called y—"
He looks down at me, narrows his eyes.
“I called an ex when I thought it had failed,” he says, circumspectly.
“She show you a good time?” I ask, feeling dangerous.
I remember that rendezvous. A year or so after our first. I’d just gotten to the end of my post-divorce bad girl phase, and the garter tattoos were pretty new. Seth liked them then, too.
We fucked. We fought. I cried all the way home, convinced I was an idiot for doing it again.
“Mostly,” he says, and I laugh.
“I’d ask what the good parts were, but we’ve never even kissed,” I say, leaning into his side a little more, trying to push the memory of that particular meeting from my mind.
“I don’t want to start painting before I’m finished drawing the grid,” he says, and grins.
“Are you trying to impress me with an art metaphor?” I ask.
“Are you impressed?”
I shift my stance so I’m now half-facing him, half-facing the mural, and I look over at it.
“There are plenty of muralists who just paint away with no guidance at all, and it looks fine,” I point out, tilting my head. “They just barrel on straight ahead as the spirit moves them.”
He turns toward me, lifts our joined hands, spins them so they’re upright and palm-to-palm.
“Anything I’ve ever done right was with careful planning and strict adherence to regulations,” he says, a teasing little half-smile on his face. “Sometimes the rules are there for a reason.”
I step closer to him so that we’re nearly touching. Carefully, without breaking eye contact, I kiss the closest knuckle of his index finger, his skin cool against my lips.
“Tell me the rules,” I say.
“Don’t you already know them?”
“I want to make sure I’m crystal clear.”
Seth swallows. His fingers tighten in mine. His eyes go to my lips, linger, come back up.
“No past,” he says.
I kiss another knuckle.
“No fucking,” he says, and now he’s smiling.
I put my lips to a third knuckle, hold my eyes on his.
“Is that it?” I ask, softly. “Only two rules?”
“Are you asking for more?” he teases, voice low and rough, trickling down my spine.
“Just surprised that’s it,” I say. “For all your talk of careful planning and adherence to regulations.”
“I can come up with more,” he says, and one eyebrow twitches, and his smile deepens into one that opens a maelstrom in my chest. “No fuck-me looks. No wearing purple leopard print robes when I’m around. No dresses that make you look like a sweet society princess when I know you’re covered in tattoos an inch below your neckline. No naming raccoons or laughing at my jokes. No telling me you’re busy tomorrow night and can’t see me until Sunday.”
“Go on,” I laugh.
“No enjoying yourself at square dancing,” he says, and pulls me in. His other hand goes to my neck, his thumb on my cheek, his fingers in my hair. “No asking me for the rules. And don’t you dare kiss me back.”