And I adore her for it.
Now I’m going to have a night on the town with my brother and a gale force hurricane.
Chapter Twenty-Two
NATE
Two Weeks Later
Two weeks in the studio, pouring my heart onto yet another canvas. Each brushstroke glides across the textured fabric, acrylics spreading like the emotions I can’t contain. The rawness of my feelings seeps from my fingers, merging into the artwork in waves of color and shadow. This piece—dark, moody, hauntingly familiar—reveals a woman who looks uncannily like Ria. I hadn’t meant for this artwork to be about her, yet somehow, recently, everything I create seems to connect with her.
I miss her…
No, Ifuckingmiss her.
But not a lot can be done about that.
She’s made her choice.
I have to live by that.
I dab the brush, giving the artwork a stipple effect, and exhale as the piece comes together. This place, this gallery, Ria was right. It’s perfect for me. And having Alex here is the exact push I need to get me moving in the right direction.
Music is my life, but art is my passion.
And now, in my downtime, I want to spend as much time here as possible.
Moving my brush into the jar of water, I swirl it around, removing the black paint.
Alex strolls in to look at the painting in front of me. She half-smiles and exhales, tilting her stance with her hand on her hip. Her eyes move to me, and I raise my eyebrows at her judgmental face.
“What?” I ask, and she lets out a bemused laugh.
“You want to call her,” she states, then looks at the painting. Obviously, she can see Ria’s resemblance.
Exhaling, I drop the brush into the jar of water and stand, throwing a cloth over my shoulder as I step to the sink to wash my hands. “No, she said she didn’t want me, and she made that factperfectlyclear.”
Alex is silent as I turn on the faucet, scrubbing at the crusted paint on my fingers and under my nails with a worn bar of soap. The warm water rinses away the last traces of color just as I look up to see Alex slipping out of the studio. I frown, surprised—she’s not one to give up so easily. Shaking off the water and drying my hands on a paper towel, I turn back around just as she reappears, this time with a bottle and a pair of shot glasses.
I grin, recognizing the familiar tequila label, and let out a quiet laugh. “Alex, you have a bottle of tequila in your hand.”
She looks down, opens her eyes wide, and fakes shock. “Holy shit, I do. How the fuck did that get there? Wow! The tequila fairy must be invading my privacy again. I’ll get you, you damn fairy. Fucker always tries to get me drunk. Oh well, guess I’ll have to share with you now, right?” she states, pulling up a stool and plopping down on it.
I laugh, shaking my head, and sit next to her. “You’re seriously weird, you know that?”
“I know. It’s why I’m so crazy irresistible to all men and the fairy kind.”
I snort as she pours us each a shot. “We’re at work, you know.”
She shrugs and tilts her head to the side, looking at the clock on the wall. “The gallery closed over an hour ago, so officially, we’re off the clock, boss man. To me, that means it’s happy hour. So shut up and bottoms up, big boy,” she says, clinking her glass to mine and then slamming the tequila down her throat. Her nose wrinkles after she swallows in a cute little way, whichmakes me chuckle, but I follow suit and throw back mine, which burns all the way down.
I like the hurt.
It reminds me that even though I’m numb, I can still feel something.
“Why are you so nice to me?” I ask.
Alex pours me another shot, and I raise it to my mouth, pouring the contents down the hatch.
