BY THE TIME Joe showed at my place for the final portrait attempt, it was do or die.
Mostly die.
Because this portrait was going to lose. Big-time.
It might turn into a really compelling piece of art. It might become a fascinating character study. It might wind up beautiful or mesmerizing or powerful.
Hell, it might even be salable.
But it would not be the kind of portrait the North American Portrait Society was looking for. It would not be the kind of painting that had allowed me to beat out 1,990 other competitors. And it would not look like the work of a twenty-first-century Norman Rockwell—guaranteed.
Which was freeing, in a way. Knowing I was going to lose?
It meant I could lose with some style.
After Joe agreed to the final attempt, Sue gave me a pep talk. “Do you think I can do this?” I’d asked.
“What do you mean by ‘do this’?” “Win. Do you think I can win?” “No way in hell,” Sue said.
“Hey!” I said. “You’re supposed to encourage me.”
“I don’t think you can win,” Sue pushed on, “but I do think you can make something interesting. I do think you have mad artistic skills and a wildly creative brain. I do think you understand color and light like no one I’ve ever met. And I also think, just from the vibes I’m getting across international borders, that you might be madly in love with your subject.”
So that she could get to her point, I chose not to argue.
“Maybe you need to let go of winning. Maybe there are all kinds of ways to win. Maybe it’s a chance for you to make your own set of rules.”
“You’re saying I should give up?”
“Don’t give up. Just shoot for a different kind of victory.” “You can’t just not win and pretend that you did.”
“Look,” Sue said. “Maybe you can’t do your usual thing right now. What if you do something crazy and different? What if instead of trying to make a thing you can’t make, you try to do something else?”
“Like what?”
“Like try to tell the story of this moment in your life. Try to capture your world right now, cracked open, exactly the way it is. Capture the chaos and the uncertainty and the longing. And don’t forget to capture whatever’s going on with you and that guy—because there’s some kind of fire in that.”
I thought about it. “I don’t usually try to tell a story about my life with portraits.”
“But,” Sue countered, “that’s what you’ve been doing all along. Telling the story of a girl trying like hell to paint exactly like her lost mother. And maybe now, in the story, the girl has no choice but to paint like herself.”
“But this isn’t myself.” “Right now it is.”
I thought about it.
“What if you just capture your story—right now—as it is. I’d give anything to see that.”
“I’ll try,” I said. Because what other choice was there? “And then text me a picture.”
“Fine,” I said. “But if you text back words like ‘serial killer,’ we’re going to have a problem.”
 |
OKAY. SUE WASN’T wrong.
Before, I’d been trying to paint a portrait. A highly specific kind of portrait.
But knowing that I couldn’t do that was a kind of freedom.
Now all I had to do was paint something interesting. Something compelling. Something that held your attention. Something true about my life.
I was going to paint the moment. My experience of Joe in this moment. Whatever that might turn out to be.
What I didn’t have going for me, obviously, was the face. What I did have?
Joe’s exquisite torso, for one. Right? I knew for a fact I could see that. Now that I thought about it, it seemed like a crime to leave a visual feast like that all covered up.
I also had going for me: form, color, mystery, composition, contrast. And attitude. I wasn’t going into this painting timid. I would dive in bold— headfirst and naked.
Metaphorically naked.
Which left me feeling all the things you feel when you’re about to get naked. Nervous. Awake. Churning with anticipation. Hyperaware of the fact that you’re alive.
When Joe arrived, he seemed like he might be some of those things,
too.
“You don’t have to do this,” I said as I opened my hovel door. “Sure I do. I said I would.”
“Yes, but I’m giving you an out.” “I don’t need an out.”
“You don’t know what I’m about to do to you.” “You can do whatever you want to me.”
“I’m going to touch you,” I said. “Is that okay?” “I think so?”
“What I mean is, I just read an article about an artist who does self-
portraits by touch, with her eyes closed. So she’s painting what she’s feeling more than what she’s seeing. And I’d like to do that to you.”
Joe shrugged. “Fine.”
Was it bravado? Or did he really not think me putting my hands all over him would be a big deal? Or maybe he wasn’t yet fully aware of how very much I was about to put my hands all over him.
I had to warn him. “Remember when I swore there would be no nakedness?”
“Yeah?”
“I might have to ask you for a smidge of nakedness.”
I could feel the grin that took over his face at that. “Are we going full Burt Reynolds?”
“No,” I said firmly—like that was the full answer. Then I amended, my face crinkled with apology, “But I do need you to take off your shirt.”
Joe shrugged. “Fine.”
No wonder Mr. Kim called him Helpful. I couldn’t get a no out of this guy.
All to say: Ready or not, we were doing this.
I led him toward my easel, where I’d placed a stool for him right up close. Everything had to be within arm’s reach—the stool, the canvas, the paints. By the time I had us set up, his knees were on either side of my thigh
—close enough that we kept brushing and bumping against each other, over and over …
In a way that I worked very hard to experience as nonsensual. Joe waited for instructions.
But I suddenly felt shy to give them. “So now … if you wouldn’t mind … I need you to take off your jacket … and your shirt, if that’s okay. Because … I don’t know if you know this about yourself, but your torso is really … compelling. And I just feel like it would be a tragic missed opportunity to leave it out.”
“You think my torso is compelling?” Joe asked, shrugging out of his jacket and tossing it over my sofa. I could feel him smiling.
“Yes,” I said, trying to clarify through tone of voice that my intentions were so honorable they were almost scientific. “Artistically. Visually. Mathematically, even. It’s compelling. To look at. By all objective standards. And so if I can capture that in the portrait, then the portrait will be compelling, too.”
Joe peeled off his T-shirt, and my eyes took in the sight without asking permission.
“You sure you’re good with this?” I asked. “You’re much more nervous than I am.”
“I just want to make sure I have your consent.” “I am one hundred percent consent.”
I’d painted many models over the years, and it was never nerve-racking like this. But this was different. Usually the models were across the room, not right up next to me. And I never touched them—just looked. And they were not people I had kissed. Or yelled at. Or eaten linguine with. Or ridden Vespas with. Or told about my mother. Or cried in front of.
They were always strangers.
That’s when I realized that Joe wasn’t a stranger.
I didn’t know exactly what he was to me, but he wasn’t a stranger.
All the touching I was about to do to him … it couldn’t be just an art project. It couldn’t be just about shapes and textures and tones. There were emotions involved.
I didn’t know how to get rid of them. And I didn’t want to get rid of them.
And I suspected, honestly, that they’d make the painting better. If I could keep it together.
I lifted my hands up for Joe to see. “So,” I said, trying to make it all sound rational, “I’m going to touch everything that’s going to be in the portrait with these.” I shook my hands at him.
Joe nodded, like Cool.
“First I’m going to just kind of map you with my hands. And then once I’ve got a really 3-D mental picture, I’ll start sketching.”
Joe nodded again, like Let’s go.
But I was still hesitating. “I’m going to frame the portrait kind of from the waistband up. So I’m really going to have to touch you everywhere.”
“Got it,” Joe said.
“And I want you to know,” I went on, “what I’m about to do to you, I’ve also done to myself.”
That came out unexpectedly suggestive.
I was trying so hard to pretend like this was just another day at the office. Like I did this kind of thing all the time—no big deal. But my hands were weirdly cold. And I was strangely aware of my blood traveling through my body. And then, as I reached out to touch him, just before I made contact, my hand faltered.
It just … stopped. Like there was an invisible force field.
But that’s when Joe’s hand came up, and he cupped it behind mine, and he pulled my palm to his chest. I felt the impact before I realized what he
was doing: the stonelike hardness of his collarbone beneath my fingertips, the spongy firmness of his pecs beneath, the warmth of his skin.
I could feel that he was looking at me. I could feel him encouraging me.
And something else, too. Something that felt like longing.
Was it his or mine?
For a second, the air in my lungs felt tight.
“Don’t be shy,” Joe said. “I’m fine. Just do what you need to do.” “I’m not being shy,” I said. But neither of us believed me.
Anyway, that broke the ice. After that, I closed my eyes and worked my hand around his shoulders and neck and chest before making my way up past the Adam’s apple and over the ridge of the jaw to his face.
Was it working? I wasn’t sure.
But I’d decided I didn’t have to decide.
I was just going to do it. I wasn’t going to overthink it or evaluate it or judge it.
I was just going to capture the moment. For better and for worse.
This was by far the most self-conscious I’d ever been around a model.
Pull it together, I told myself. Doctors touch people all the time.
But I was no doctor.
Also, I’m assuming, doctors didn’t usually spend a ton of time with patients outside the office. Or have recent memories of altruistically kissing them in front of their ex-wives. Or have crushes on them they were in denial about.
The truth is, it was intense.
For one thing, we were so close to each other. You’re never just inches away from people for long stretches of time like that. I was close enough to hear him breathing, and even to feel those breaths as they brushed over my arm. I could smell his aftershave, which was scented like cedar and juniper, I decided.
For another thing, I was really touching him. I was going deep— working the pads of my fingers over every inch of his face, from hairline to jaw, exploring his skin, and the muscles beneath that, and the bone structure even deeper.
I mean, I was no stranger to other people. I’d dated guys. Flirted. Kissed. Gone to bed. I’d lived with Ezra for two years. But even people I touched all the time … I didn’t touch them like this.
The fact that I was exploring him for the sake of art didn’t feel too relevant in that moment. The what was much stronger than the why.
And the what was skin against skin. Breath swirling around breath.
Eyes closed.
To be honest, my heart was thumping so hard, I wondered if he could see it. Like my shirt fabric might actually be quivering over it like an echo.
I tried to keep it professional, I really did.
I worked my way around the landscape of his face, as I’d done before with my own. I started with the bone structure, to get oriented. The solidness of his cheekbones and the angle of his jaw.
Then the pads of my fingers went searching for details. The arc of his eyebrows. The depth and number of laugh lines at his eyes. The length of his lashes. The angles of his nose. I spent a lot of time working around the edge of his mouth, trying to get the lines and angles of his lips just right.
I felt it all. The warmth of his skin under my fingers. The feathery brush of his hair. The imperceptible hum and vibration of being alive.
It was artistically erotic, too. Is that a weird thing to say?
What I mean is, the whole experience was full-immersion pleasure— both physically and creatively. Shimmering with possibility. Rich and buttery with satisfaction. Igniting my attention in some very special way. Pulling me through the moment with a mounting sense of longing.
Each thing I did, each move I made, made me want more of whatever that was.
When I felt ready to start painting, I followed my instincts.
I sketched out Joe’s torso—his outline leaning into the frame with that kind of friendly, Labrador retriever energy he had. I found myself so immersed in rendering his body—those shoulders, the pecs and forearms, the trim angles of his fingers, resting on his jeans—that I didn’t work too hard on the face. I wasn’t avoiding it, exactly. I was just following the parts that called to me. The neck, the earlobes, the flop of the hair.
Everything I’d tried to do since the surgery had been about trying to get to the product. But now I settled into the process. I just painted. I kept my eyes closed to “look” at Joe, but I opened them in front of the canvas. I wanted to see the colors. I wanted to watch the brushstrokes happen. I wanted to see the painting appear in front of my eyes.
No matter what else might happen with this painting, the process of making it was bliss.
That counted for something.
At last, when I finally worked up the courage to sketch his face, I didn’t try to make it make sense.
I wasn’t thinking, What would Norman Rockwell do?
I was thinking about what I would do. What I needed to do—with each mark and each line—to render my experience of Joe’s face.
I was following my own compass. Wherever it would lead. And it turned out, Sue was right. That was a win in itself.
|
I PAINTED—AND TOUCHED, and painted and touched—Joe for two solid hours that night.
He was endlessly patient. Didn’t check his phone or fall asleep or even ask for a glass of water. He just stayed with me the whole time, taking it all in.
When I’d done everything I could do for the night and I had a pretty full, dynamic early painted sketch, I thanked him, like he could go.
“Anyway,” I said, washing my hands at the sink. “I really appreciate you doing this for me. Congratulations. You’re almost free.”
“Free from what?” Joe asked.
“From me. Once the art show is over, we won’t have to see each other anymore.”
“Why wouldn’t we see each other?”
“I’m just saying. I’ve taken up a lot of your time.” “I was hoping you’d give me roller-skating lessons.” “But how would Dr. Michaux feel about that?”
Joe frowned. “Why would Dr. Michaux feel anything about that?” “Aren’t you … you know?”
“What?” Joe took a swig of water. “Didn’t we talk about this?”
“You said you weren’t dating. But I figured you must be hooking up.” Joe coughed. “What?”
“You’re always … coming out of her apartment,” I said. And a bunch of others.
“Yeah? So?”
“So aren’t you guys … together?”
“Wait—you thought we were—what?”
My fingers were still tingling from touching him. I shrugged.
Joe started laughing then, but I didn’t think it was funny. He leaned his head back and let out a big sigh. “I’m not dating Dr. Michaux. I am pet- sitting her snakes.”
Now it was my turn to be befuddled. “You’re what-sitting her whats?” “Her snakes,” Joe confirmed. “Remember? Herpetologist? She has a
whole den of snakes in there. Even an Indonesian flying snake. It’s pretty complicated, keeping them healthy.”
Okay. I could freak out about a penthouse full of flying snakes later. First things first.
I needed to get this straight: “You’re … a snake sitter?”
“Pet sitter,” Joe corrected. “Why do you think I was feeding Parker’s cat?”
“That’s what you do for a living?”
I could feel Joe frowning, like that question was really odd. “It’s one of the things I do for a living,” he said.
“All that time … you were going in there to feed snakes?” Joe nodded. “
“And so the brown bags were full of…?” “Live mice,” Joe confirmed.
“Oh my god.”
Joe shrugged. “Food chain.”
“But,” I said as I tried to snap the pieces into place, “what about that time I saw you stumbling drunkenly into Dr. Michaux’s apartment?”
“Do you mean the time she had a stomach virus? And I was helping her down the hall from the elevator?”
“You weren’t hooking up?” Joe shook his head.
“You were just helping her? Just being a Boy Scout? Kinda like when Parker pretended to faint?”
“I’m not a Boy Scout,” Joe said. “But, yes, I was helping.”
I was still working to take it in. “That’s what you’ve been doing? All this time?”
“Yep,” Joe said. “Mostly cats on this floor. And one bunny. Wait. Did you think that I was sleeping with all those people?”
“I mean, I hoped it was something else. But I couldn’t imagine what that would be.”
“You have a very limited imagination.”
“Well, I definitely wasn’t picturing flying snakes.”
“I don’t know if I should be flattered that you think all those people would want to sleep with me—or offended that you think I’m a man- whore.”
“Sue and I prefer the archaic term mutton muncher.” Joe just stared.
“What?” I said. “You have to admit it’s suspicious behavior.”
“For the record, I have never slept with anybody in this building. Other than my wife. Back when she used to live here—and used to be my wife.”
But that didn’t track. “Wait—” I said, pointing at him. “What about the lady you fat-shamed in the elevator?”
Joe shook his head like maybe he hadn’t heard me right. “What?”
“I definitely overheard you talking about a one-night stand in the elevator. A woman with a lot of belly fat who shredded your sheets and was a real breather.”
I could definitely feel how Joe was staring at me. Like he could not in any universe imagine what I was talking about.
“She dry-humped you in the parking lot?” I prompted. “And threw up in your entryway?”
But Joe just waited.
“She slept in your bed,” I went on, “and you almost suffocated under a ‘mountain of blubber.’”
That’s when Joe lifted his head. Recognition. “Now you remember,” I said.
Joe put his face in his hands. “I remember,” he said. “But that wasn’t a lady.”
Really? We were getting into semantics now? “I definitely heard you
—”
“That,” Joe went on, dropping his hands to make his point, “was a
bulldog.”
I frowned, like he’d just said something impossible. “A bulldog?”
“A rescue bulldog,” Joe confirmed. “Named Buttercup.” “You had a one-night stand with a bulldog?”
Joe nodded. “I did. A bulldog who was abandoned after she ate a tree branch the length of her entire body and her owners decided she was too much trouble. I fostered her for one night—actually, it turned into three— before taking her to a rescue group.”
“So…” I said, my voice quieting as I let this one piece of information rework all my eavesdropping, “when you called her a bitch, you literally meant … a bitch?”
Now he was offended. “I can’t believe you thought I was talking about a person.”
Suddenly I couldn’t believe it, either.
Joe kept shaking his head. “You thought I was talking about a one-night stand?” he said. “With a human woman?”
“What other kind is there?”
He shook his head in disbelief.
So I added, “You called it a one-night stand.” “But I was joking.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“I wasn’t talking to you.”
Now all the pieces were clicking into place. “That’s why you posted pictures of her online?”
Joe nodded. “Petfinder dot com.”
“And that’s why you felt so free to liberally mock her appearance like she had no human dignity?”
“She has no human dignity,” Joe said. “She’s a dog.”
“You said some harsh things,” I said. “Even for a dog.” Joe dropped his shoulders, like Come on.
“I see,” I said.
Joe pulled in a deep breath now as the full understanding hit him. “You thought,” he said, “that I had a one-night stand with a drooly, noisy, sheet- shredding actual human female and then made fun of her body the next day on the phone in a public elevator before posting sleeping photos of her online?”
I made my voice very tiny. “Kind of?” “No wonder you were so mean to me.”
“Was I?”
“Yeah! And I deserved it!”
“Right?” I said, trying to draw a tentative alliance.
Joe sighed. Then he sighed again. Then he said, “For the record. I have not slept with anyone—at all—since I walked in on my wife hot-tubbing naked with Teague Phillips, the Planet’s Most Boring Wanker.”
But now we had a whole new topic. “Oof,” I said. “That’s a long time.” “I’m aware.”
“A really long time.” “Thank you.”
I shook my head. “I thought … you were a total player.” “You thought I was a total douchebag.”
I hunched up my shoulders. “Sorry?”
“I’m not a player, Sadie. I’m a damned monk.”
I felt a buzzing realization that this, right here, was another of Joe’s problems that I had the power to do something about.
Joe sighed. “Look. Here’s the truth. There’s exactly one person in this entire building I have any interest in sleeping with. And I don’t even think she likes me very much.”
Please don’t let it be Parker. Please don’t let it be Parker.
My heart clamped closed. “Who is it?” But Joe didn’t answer.
In my panic, I started yammering: “Anybody but Parker, okay? I wholeheartedly endorse any and all sexual escapades with literally any resident of this building—even the snake lady—just not Parker—okay?— because she really—”
But Joe didn’t want to talk about Parker.
Right then he reached for my painting smock, hooked his fingers through the apron tie, and tugged me closer to him. I stepped nearer, into the cove between his thighs, and then I felt his palms settle on my hips.
There was that cedar and juniper smell again. “It’s not your evil stepsister,” Joe said.
I shook my head, like It’s not?
He pulled me a little closer. “And it’s not the snake lady, either.”
I hadn’t really thought it would be. But I felt a frisson of relief, anyway.
Joe leaned in a bit more. Sitting on the stool, he was just the same height as me. Our faces were just inches from each other. “Do you want me to tell you who it is?” he asked.
I nodded, watching his mouth like I was in a trance. Finally he said, “It’s you.”
I’d hoped he would say that.
But just to double-check: “It’s me?”
The world had been so hard to read lately. It had somehow seemed just as possible that he might say Hazel from the coffee shop.
But it was me.
And so, when he nodded, I just said, “It’s you, too.”
It’s true, I couldn’t see his face right then. Not in the traditional way.
Not in the way I was used to.
But as I looked at the pieces of it—the outline of his lips, the dimple in his chin, the sandpapery stubble along his jaw—it felt almost like I could see him better than I would’ve otherwise. Like not seeing the big picture let me grasp the details more clearly. It wasn’t like looking into a void. It was like looking with a magnifying glass. Like being closer than close.
That mouth, for example, I could definitely see. Plump and firm and practically demanding to be kissed. But for real this time.
All I had to do now was sway forward. It would be so easy to match my mouth to his. To claim him for myself like that.
Wasn’t that what kisses were for, after all? To light a little spark in someone else? A spark that would burn for you?
I wanted some part of Joe to burn for me. And I guess he wanted that back.
I edged forward.
But then I hit that force field of hesitation again. I paused right there, my mouth just an inch from his.
And then, once again, Joe helped.
His arm skimmed up my back, and his hand found its way into my hair, and then he cupped the back of my neck with his palm and pulled me to him—shattering that force field like a glass door at a coffee shop.
As soon as my mouth touched his, he tightened his other arm around me, and I let my arms wrap themselves around his neck.
For a minute, the warm, blissful shock of it was enough.
The electric softness of his mouth. The comfort of being pressed against him. The relief of giving in to all that longing. The crazy joy of being connected like that at last. Of wanting someone so badly—and being wanted back. Of touching. Of feeling good and happy and connected, and like there was so much to look forward to.
This wasn’t like the fake kiss from before. This wasn’t a performance for some onlooker. This kiss was just for the two of us. Because those words he’d said just made everything real. Every feeling, every glimmer, every sparkle—the veritable weather system of emotions that had been building around me ever since Joe first pissed me off in the elevator … as soon as he said, It’s you—it all became palpable.
Before I knew it, I was crawling up on the stool, perching on his thighs, grasping tighter and more madly, kissing him in a way that felt like melting into another reality.
He pulled back for a second to look at me. I forced myself to look back. No matter what I could or couldn’t see, I wanted to give him the soul-deep answer we’re always searching for when we look into someone’s eyes.
Was this happening? Were we doing this? Should we keep going? Yes. All yes.
But maybe we already had our answers.
He leaned in again and captured my mouth with his, and it was like a wave of bliss crashing over me and knocking me off-balance—all softness and silk and rhythm and touch.
He stood up next and carried me toward the bed, my legs wrapped around his waist, our mouths never parting, and he laid me back against the blanket, pressing himself down over me as we sank further and further into the moment, and the feeling of being tangled together, and lost with each other.
As if staying this way could make everybody else on earth disappear.
Until … almost like the universe just wanted to prove us wrong—in a moment of bad timing worthy of the Guinness book—there was a knock at my door.
