Just got back. Contemplating climbing through your bedroom window, but I know you’re sleeping and that your brother might murder me.
And we have time. But I missed you.
Thought you should know.
So I keep telling myself that we have time, and it soothes the angst wrapping itself around my chest every time I wonder why he’s been so busy. I adjust the lamp to the left of my piece again, highlighting the center that feels like an abyss to me. It’s still not right. And it’s been over an hour.
Elliot Walker’s god damned footsteps sound behind me and it’s a heavy effort not to ask him to leave.A little petulant, don’t you think?I know he’d say that. The corner of his mouth tugging upwards, a glint in his eye that could make you forgive the condescension, believe that it’s just an evolved sort of endearment.
“Maybe try—” Elliot reaches around me and tilts the lamp. His voice is just the same: soft, perceptive, laced with quiet humor, like he knows something you don’t. Makes you want to ask him or stay close enough to find out. “There. See?”
The light now falls across the fine glitter layered into the silhouette of the cliff so that it glints. An obvious choice. Not very thoughtful at all. Laughter climbs up my throat, breaks through in a surprising scoff that has him snapping his head away from the painting and toward me.
“Sorry,” I apologize, because he’s a judge. Not because I am. I look at him like he’s new, but really it’s the familiaritythat allows me to notice all the ways he’s actually so small. Towering over me, handsomely aged—barely gray at his temple, creases at his eyes. Stubble across his jaw. Full mouth, strong hands, but: insecurity, lodged in the back of his gaze. At that age, I almost laugh again, but remember. I want to win this. “I do love the way it makes the cliff shift into focus.”
Some level of surety returns to his eyes when I appease him. And did I always do that, without a second thought? Probably. Definitely. It’s uncertain ground for him. There’s a level of authority he’s taken for granted, that he’s assumed bleeds into every domain of his narrow little life, and I just fell into it. Swam in it like I couldn’t drown.
He smiles at me, and I press my lips together because they start to shake. “Hello, Sloane.”
Pressure builds behind my eyes as I force a polite smile of my own. A flash of him handing me my shit plays across my vision before zapping away, and I realize the room’s empty.
I remember that the room was often empty.
“Mr. Walker,” I say, fighting the urge to fidget under his attention.
“Oh,” he says, his brows furrowing as he smirks. “Is that where we are now?” He searches my face, amused as he shifts so that we’re shoulder to shoulder. “Last names?”
“Probably should’ve always been last names. Don’t ya think?” I feel him look at me as I look ahead, can sense his chest rising and falling in irritation.
“I always thought you were more mature than this,” he chides, cocking his head back toward my piece.
Fuck him.
I want to rip it off the wall, but instead I pay him the attention he’s desperate to steal. “Your mistake,” I tell him, gazing up at him with none of the admiration that once came so easy, so hot, so fast.
Something shifts in him, in the room. When he walks away, and the urge to follow, to get a reaction, claws at me—so I do, because that can’t be it. I want to exact a judgment against him the way he has on me, in a million small ways, even in his absence.
I want to tell him I don’t even know what’s good anymore because of him. I need to see him be a shell and then rip something dear from his corpse, because it would be the catharsis I think I need.
Elliot stops at a portrait of a woman looking in the mirror, done with oils just like mine. It looms, larger than the both of us, her doe–like features overwhelming this close up.
“What do you think of this?” he asks me, but his mind’s already made up.
“The envy feels heavy handed—the green, I mean.” He hums, nodding. “And whoever did this was impatient. The colors muddle here, and I don’t think it’s intentional.”
“I told her the same thing.” His hand finds my lower back and I step away instantly. Gaze narrowed, he assesses me, jaw clenched. “My student’s piece. She’s enormously talented, more than she knows what to do with.” He inspects the piece again but it’s half-assed because he’s paying attention to me. Waiting for jealousy to leap on me like a cat.
I’m not jealous, at all. Concern is the thing I feel—concern and unease. The manipulation feels so overt, I start to question if I’ve ever seen things clearly a day in my life. Even now, I don’t know if my estimation of matters is rational. Did Elliot take advantage of me, or does stupidity just wear the same mask? Is the sick feeling roiling in my gut my own making or his?
I walk away, back to my piece, and gather my stuff. He watches me, like a hawk, and his quickened steps echo in the deserted hall, the heel of his loafers sharp against the wooden floor.
“Let’s grab a drink. I’m sure you know all the best spots around town,” he starts to laugh before I look up at him from where I’m crouched.
“Why would I know that?” Instinct has my skin prickling with alarm, and his blinking is a sad attempt at soothing me as I stand up.
“You’re young,” he chuckles, stuffing his hands in his pockets. “If you’re staying around here we could sit at the hotel bar. Or mine,” he shrugs, and I’m spun. Desperate to leave.
“I can’t. I’m meetin’ my boyfriend,” I tell him, swallowing hard as I pull my phone out and dial Andy. Who doesn’t answer. Again.
