“Have aword,little bird,” she giggles, dipping her brush into a burnished gold. “What, are you from Kentucky?”
“Atlanta,” I declare, a little offended. “That’s in Georgia,” I clarify, and she whips her head toward me.
“I know.” She lets her brush drop and pivots so we’re face to face. “Go ahead. Quiz me.”
I narrow my eyes, letting the bubbly feeling wash over me as I think of a city. “Philade?—”
“Pennsylvania.”
“Orlan–”
“Florida! Come on, don’t go easy on me,” she says, wiggling in her seat.
My lips press into a firm line as I dig for another city. “Carmel.”
She goes bug eyed as she leans forward, like she’ll find the answer somewhere in the ether, before she suddenly springs back. “California!”
The door creaks open, swallowing my attempt at another question, and her brother walks in, and the air shifts, my skin pricking with awareness as I watch him take me in, watch his gaze sweep over me in one long brush.
“Nice jacket,” he says, fighting a grin.
I touch the leather I’m wrapped in, the coolness reminding me of Halloween in my car, and I fail to fight the blush before shrugging his jacket off, handing it his way. When he makes no attempt at taking it back, I hang it over a chair, clearing my throat.
“The windows were down and it was still in my car.” I glance around at the table, littered with paints as it is, and lock eyes with Carmen. The expectant heaviness I find there tugs on my heart strings. I can tell she doesn’t want me to leave yet. “We were just painting, but if you guys had plans?—”
“Spaghetti.” He lifts to two grocery bags, and another hangs in the crook of his jacketed elbow. My brows dip in question. “Those are the plans. As long as Carmen doesn’t have a problem with it…” Andrew grins, all coy and practiced, like he’s teased his sister a million times, and my heart warms when she glues her eyes to mine, pleading.
“Please stay,” she tells me, the smallest hint of a smile playing at the corner of her lips, and I nod.
“I do love spaghetti.”
“Be worried if you didn’t,” he says to just me as he walks past, disappearing down the hall.
“He likes you a whole lot,” Carmen mutters while fixated on the white outline of a clover, her physical attention never leaving the mug.
The roof comes into focus, and I remember the way he didn’t want to kiss me, fresh embarrassment burning the bridge of my nose.Doesn’t matter anymore. We’re friends.
“I can promise you he doesn’t,” I chuckle, dipping my brush into a maroon tinged clay color. “But if he did…it wouldn’t be none—” I boop her nose with the color “—of your business.” Carmen squeals, her brush quickly finding my face, and I let her swipe me with one too many colors, only pretending to protect myself from her, before we quietly settle back into our pieces, paint drying on our skin.
When Andy finally emerges, hair wet and tousled, messily falling across his brow, in a gray Astor Hill crewneck and jeans, I pull my legs up to my chest and grin over at him.
“That’s all ya’ll wear, isn’t it?Astor Hillthis,Astor Hillthat.”
“I’m sorry is that—is that jealousy, I hear?” His crooked smirk threatens to undo me, has something burning in the center of my chest as he crosses behind me, close enough to touch.
“Sloane doesn’tneedyour pretentious college merch. She’s an artist—a student of the world,” Carmen says, echoing something I said as a joke to her and her little friends behind the set design wing. I’m reminded that sarcasm, and the ability to discern it, is in fact honed over time.
Andy’s back shifts, his laughter floating across the cozy apartment as the first notes of garlic, blooming in olive oil, burst through the air, and I shut my eyes for a second, letting the ease of being here wash over me.
The evening descends into a comfortable calm, like deep pressure, smothering the worries that have bled into my awarenessthe past few weeks. Here, now, I can hardly recreate the dread I felt earlier at the hospital; it’s abstract and out of reach, blown away by the hazy bliss of this little home.
Carmen and I paint, moving onto the few white plates they own, while her brother cooks. The apartment turns fragrant the longer he stands there, sautéing onions, dicing and crushing tomatoes. I watch as he drains the pasta, singular focus etched into his features, and mindlessly admire the strain of his forearms.
The dinner is unearthly perfection, and I’m reminded of the way Clemmie’s mom would cook for me, of the few times Evie made something she didn’t find in a cookbook. When I’d be sick with a cold, she’d make me chicken soup, “the way her grammy made it.”
“You start with the whole chicken, and there’s no other way about it,”she’d said as I lay curled up on the formal sofa, made more comfortable by every pillow in the house and a quilted blanket, as she salted an oversized pot. She’d stir and I’d hear the soft thud of chicken bones on the pot’s walls, hear her curse under her breath when something would start to boil over. I’d close my eyes and breathe in, convinced the smell alone was making me better.
I think about this, about how different things taste when someone makes them with you in mind, as I twirl my fork and slide in a mouthful of pasta. Eyes fluttering shut, I sigh, warmth oozing over me as I let the bright notes only fresh tomatoes can bring spread across my taste buds.
