“I can’t,” she decided. “You can sell this, I’m sure. It’s worth more than a morning of packing.” She put her hands over his and pushed the painting back toward his own chest.
Adrian didn’t budge. “I think I have some old paintings and sketches on paper up in the attic. Do you want one of those instead? You’d have to frame them, but—”
“There’s more?” Caroline scolded him, and he held his palms up in resignation.
She spotted the hatch in the ceiling and jumped for the cord, filing away for future reference how Adrian averted his eyes from her chest a little too late for her to avoid noticing.
The attic was dusty and looked like it hadn’t been disturbed for years. Adrian followed her up the ladder,sneezing at the stale air. There was the usual clutter of old furniture and boxes of holiday decorations, but also a stack of red rope paper artist’s portfolios leaning against the wall. Adrian opened the nearest one, thumbing through it.
“These are really old,” he said. “I think from before my MFA.”
Caroline grabbed the next portfolio, unlaced the thread catches, and peered inside. There were newsprint sketch pads and a few spiral-bound notebooks with heavier watercolor paper. Picking one up at random, she opened it to find it full of beautiful oil studies of flowers and leaves.
She sank down on her heels to gently flip through the little notebook. The cheap paper had never recovered from the moisture of the paint, but the flowers were still vibrant, leaping off the pages in pink and orange and green. She recognized peonies, carnations, spring irises. He must have loved the garden his ex had wrecked. He used to put flowers into all his paintings. She wondered why he’d stopped.
“Oh, Adrian, these are gorgeous.” She sighed.
He glanced over his shoulder to see what she was looking at. “You can’t display those,” he dismissed the notebook. “Even if you could cut them out, I didn’t bother to prime the paper. They’re just studies.”
Caroline held the notebook protectively to her chest. “You can’t throw it out.”
“I don’t have the space for everything I’ve ever painted,” he said, lifting his eyebrows at her.
“Don’t museums always have the early works too, whenever they do an exhibit on an artist?” she protested.
Adrian laughed. “Museums, sure. And I suppose I also have my biographers to think of.”
His smile was self-mocking but not mean, so Carolineonly dug in her point. He obviously had no idea how to go about running his business. He ought to have had a website full of his little flower sketches, like the guy who did the cottage paintings everyone had in their breakfast nooks. Thomas something. Caroline was sure that guy never had to sign up for sugar-baby websites to make rent.
“Well, if you don’t have the room right now, I’ll put them all in my spare bedroom until you do,” she said firmly, packing the portfolios back up. “And then I’ll buy one of your paintings when I can get furniture to match it.”
Adrian shook his head at her, the corners of his eyes wrinkling up with what Caroline hoped was gratitude. He wiped his hands on the sweatpants hanging off his narrow hips. Dust hung and sparkled in the few beams of light breaking through the wooden shutters covering the only window, gilding the sharp edges of his cheekbones. Caroline wondered if he ever did any self-portraits.Thatwould definitely sell.
“If you insist,” Adrian said.
“I do,” Caroline replied, and that concluded the packing, so they locked up and left. She gave Adrian a moment on the threshold to say goodbye to the house, but he didn’t look back.
Chapter Seven
It was almost noon by the time Caroline’s Tahoe was fully loaded, and Adrian’s stomach was a hard, complaining ball under his rib cage. He was out of the habit of eating breakfast since moving in with Tom, so he was starving. Though he didn’t mention it, Caroline dramatically pressed a hand to her bare midsection and announced that she could eat a horse. It had nothing to do with the loud growl his stomach had just made, he hoped.
“Do we have time to get lunch before I drop you guys off?” Caroline asked. “Or brunch?”
“Love a brunch,” Tom said before Adrian could decline on his behalf. He was worried that if he took his eyes off his roommate, the other man might decide he could do Adrian’s sugar-baby job for him, only with a lot less respect for Caroline’s boundaries.
“How about that IHOP on Soldiers Field?” Caroline asked. “That has parking.”
“Love an IHOP,” Tom said.
Caroline pulled away from the curb, narrowly missing the bumper of the car in front of her.
Adrian wrapped a hand around the door handle and white-knuckled it as Caroline slowly executed a five-point turn in the road and proceeded west, obeying all trafficlaws despite the terrifying rush of cars passing and merging around them from both sides as they got back on 1A.
“What should I put on now? More classic Taylor Swift? Olivia Rodrigo?” Caroline asked, glancing over at Adrian with a teasing expression. “We need a good theme for the drive.”
“I’m afraid I am not familiar with the music of Olivia Rodrigo,” Adrian replied, wishing she’d keep her eyes on the road. “So I don’t know whether it’s thematically appropriate.”
“Well, did Beethoven ever write something for breakups?” Caroline asked. “I have Apple Music, so we can put on whatever.”
