The drink makes this easier; everything tastes bitter, including the words clawing their way up my throat. “She’s, uh…a painter.” He nods, like he knows this, because he does. “And she’s…running. I think. I don’t know. She hasn’t told me. Really, she hasn’t told me anything important.” Shame drops heavy in my stomach, drapes itself across my shoulders like it belongs there and I think it does. Any attempt to forget the shame is naive; when you hide the things I’ve hid and lie the lies I’ve lied, shame is part of the bargain.
He nods to himself, appeased by still musing over something. “What I need is to know if she’s talked to a reporter,” he says, tipping the rest of his drink back, craning his head more than he needs, all while guilt sluices down my spine. “And if she hasn’t—make sure she doesn’t.”
“Got it,” I murmur, trying to let the task rest lightly within me as I take in a measured breath. My father, for his part, just walks straight out the door without confirmation that my agreement is good enough for him, and without a glance at Ian, who lingers by the spiral staircase.
Something needs to be said, but what—I don’t know. ‘I’m sorry’ seems insufficient and out of place, because what am I even sorry for? That he threatened me but didn’t give him a hug? I start to move toward my brother, like his grace will do what I can’t do for myself, but the air in the room shifts.
From across the ball room, I hear Will’s voice crack as he says, “Andyou.” There’s a pause, and I don’t even have to turn my head to know who he’s talking to. “If you want to fuck her so bad, do it.”
My eyes go wide the moment Ian’s do, and I rush toward the sound of fist against bone, of Olivia’s hoarse shouts, of the unrestrained whispers that are just rehashed tidbit’s from Ian’s fucking column.
I whirl on him, knowing he can’t be far behind. “You,” I sneer. “You need to go. This is not fodder for your piece of shit gossip blog.” Liv’s screams fade, and when I glance down the room, I can just make out Ben’s pallid face. It’s the face I imagine someone makes when they’ve been gutted. When their intestines are being laid out in front of them. He’s making this face, and it’s Olivia he can’t take his eyes from.
“I didn’t make them do anything. If Olivia was doing herjob, this wouldn’t even be happening.” His face looks hot to the touch, like he could burst, but not from glee. From anticipation, maybe.
“What are you talking about?” I wince as Liv pulls past me, dabbing Will’s face with a towel as they shuffle out the front doors. The room that had just fallen to a murmur now balloons with sick excitement. It’ll be everywhere tomorrow—I know it.
Ian’s gaze locks on mine, buffering on a thought I can tell he’s desperate to share, but he decides against it. Shakes his head, scoffs, rolls his eyes like he can’t be bothered with me.
Out the glass doorway, I can see Will, in his blood stained three piece tux, and Olivia, in her floor length chocolate gown, the tips of her hair wet with blood, too, quietly arguing as they wait for a car. It pulls up, and she carefully folds him into the passenger seat, her face drawn tight with anguish.
“Unbelievable,” Ian huffs out, watching with silent fury in his gaze as they drive away.
It’s all a mess—a horrible mountain of the worst things we can do to each other—all of it. Painful and twisted, and he is standing here, stringing together a headline. And for who? For what?
“When you write about this tomorrow, I hope you know that you’re scum.” I push past him, my shoulder roughly knocking him. Standing on the pavement, waiting for my car, I stare into the endless night sky and wonder if somewhere, on a star I can’t see, is a different version of all this. If somewhere, it’s all unfolding, but everything is good.
11
Sloane
“This one is my favorite,” Elliot says, brushing his hand across the muddled colors on my canvas.
“Oh,” I huff, part laugh, part sarcasm. “Thanks.”
“Don’t you want to know why?” He turns toward me, the smile on his lips meeting his eyes.
I pull in a breath. “Sure,” I tell him, smiling tight. He does this: pretends he’s into something when he isn’t. He enjoys bringing students to the edge of glory, only to take it away. At first, we all thought he was just an asshole, but he has imparted some artistic wisdom to us. I’m bracing myself because I’m ninety percent sure he’s going to say the dark image before us, a stark deviation from what I’ve been doing all summer, is convoluted trash. But he said “paint what we feel” rather than giving us a prompt. So I painted the complicated feelings around my mother.
“I’m drawn to this,” he says, lowering his voice so only I can hear as he faces the piece, “because it’s like a wound. See the way you’re not afraid to let the colors blend? There’s no definition.” He traces a barely there line on the canvas. “You almost try to control it, try to box it in, but then it just…falls apart.”
My breath feels shallow, and each one feels like a feeble attempt at trying to catch oxygen.
“You don’t see it?” he asks, tilting his head as he searches my eyes. I purse my lips and cross my arms like it’ll ward against whatever vulnerability rays he’s shooting me with.
“I’m just surprised you did,” I say, and he narrows his eyes in confusion. “I was expecting somethin’ flippant. Not profound.”
“Well. You surprised me, Sloane,” he smirks, and it’s this dazzling smile that erases the lines between professor and student. Novice and legend. “Take the compliment.”
My alarm shatters the vignette. I was sleeping restlessly anyway after the art show and then from picking up Gen, who was a mess, from the janitor’s closet she’d been hiding in with my brother at the charity gala last night. Worse than a mess if her multiple attempts to empty her guts over the side of Delilah were any indication. In my sleepless delirium, I keep having these vivid dreams that are just memories of Elliot.
I sit up, sipping from the glass of now lukewarm water beside me, the condensation from the melted ice now a puddle on the dresser. Water colors are everywhere, their slim palettes littering every table top available to me and I know if Grant came in he’d have a cow. I sigh, beginning to put them in small stacks the way I stored them back at school. My thumb brushes a thick tube of blue oil paint, one I brought home from the theatre to experiment with technique. Now seems as good a time as any considering any actual inspiration feels like a distant memory.
I sit cross legged at a large canvas propped against the far wall of the bedroom and squeeze the tub out on one of the paper plates I ate pizza off of a few nights ago. I bite the inside of my cheek trying to remember everything Evie told me about oils, how finicky they are, how permanent.You can always make it into something new, texture is your friend, it tells thestory of what you were and how you became what you are.I sigh, letting the small scalpel like tool I also swiped from backstage at the ballet and slathering thick layers of the blue onto the canvas. I’m doing this wrong. Why the fuck did I tell them I could do oil. I grab for my phone on the mattress, hoping to find a good youtube on oil technique. I could call Evie but I’ve learned the hard way that if you crack the door even slightly she’ll try to kick it wide open.
I unlock the screen just as a text appears.
Jean
