He was painting in the near darkness, the apartment uncomfortably silent despite the record collection I’d snooped through in my room—the room that had been his studio, I recalled. Wouldn’t that have meant he played music when he painted? I’d definitely seen him put large discs onto the record player in the corner of the living room before he started painting this week—at least three times, actually.
So why not today?
Lucy’s hair was messy—loose like it usually was, but messed up. It was like he’d run his fingers through it incessantly, making it stand up on end and come undone from his hair tie.
Or like someone had taken him apart in bed and he’d been writhing against his pillows.
Jackson nudged my neck, and I resumed scratching his ears, pretending I hadn’t heard that thought cross my mind. It brought certain body parts to attention that shouldn’t be when I’m watching someone who doesn’t seem to realize I’m there.
I glanced at the kitchen next, only to find the breakfast plate for Lucy from this morning. The French toast was still there, the whipped cream melted and oozy now, with both eggs looking pristine, except for some small bites that looked suspiciously the size of Jackson’s greedy little teeth taken out of the yolks.
Suspicious now, and feeling this familiar sense of disapproval—the same I’d felt when Nana would skip the meds that were there tohelp her—I opened the refrigerator.
Lucy’s lunch sat exactly where I’d left it that morning.
I closed the door and exhaled evenly. What the fuck? Had he been standing at that easel for the past ten hours? Without food?
I whipped around and spied his water glass on the small table beside Lucy. It was barely two inches from his mason jar, which was perched there filled with water for him to dip his paintbrushes into. The water in what was now a secondpaintbrush cup was filthy and dark, with two paintbrush handles sticking out of the top.
So, not just hungry, but thirsty too?
I clenched my teeth to hold back the curses. He hadn’t even noticed I was back yet; he was too wrapped up in that stupid painting.
He was holding his chin contemplatively, but the rigidity of his shoulders screamed that he was probably scowling at the canvas like he had been all week.
Jackson wriggled out of my arms and flopped heavily onto the ground, without an ounce of feline grace.
He trotted over to Lucy and hopped up onto the table beside him.
Almost mindlessly, Lucy switched his wooden paint palette to his right hand and used his left to scratch under Jackson’s chin.
Jackson purred loud enough that I could hear him from the kitchen. I stepped around the island, and I could see Lucy’s glazed expression from his side profile. His delicate eyebrows were twisted, his expression strained, and his lips bitten red and raw from what must have been hours of abuse under his teeth.
There were far more pleasant circumstances that would produce such a swollen lower lip. Preferably, it would have been frommyteeth, not his, and I would have been far more careful in administering it.
Just as I blinked away the mental image of Lucy biting his lip under much more pleasant circumstances, he bit his lip again, his teeth scraping against the rosy flesh and bruising it from his stress.
What was so important about this painting anyway? Lucy said his dad signed him up for an art show, but that couldn’t have caused this level of stress, could it? Lucy was a painter, after all. Didn’t he enjoy it?
But, thinking back, I couldn’t recall a moment where Lucy had looked happy to be in front of his easel. He painted stiff strokes over each other, layering paint onto a canvas that was bright, stippled, and warm. It truly was a romantic painting, with its pinks and reds, a splash of vibrant blue, and brushstrokes that looked like flower petals.
And yet…
He’d said his mom told him that he transported himself into another world when he painted. I was beginning to think that was true, but for all the wrong reasons. Maybe that’s why he said this one was different, that it “wasn’t what he was used to.”
Getting to know Lucy was starting to bring up these details. Maybe it was bad I was noticing. I shouldn’t be. I should just make him some food and go to bed. I shouldn’t be worried about that crease between his eyebrows, or how stiff he must be after standing in the same spot for ten hours. He hadn’t eaten, he’d turned his drinking water into a paintbrush cup, and his cat had helped himself to Lucy’s food.
My fingers twitched with the urge to cook something. I thought about the look on Lucy’s face when I made him a grilled cheese. It had made him happy. I knew what Lucy without stress looked like from that small moment, and I wanted to give him that again.
“Guess that’s it then,” I muttered before busying myself making grilled cheese sandwiches for two. There was no soup today, but I used sourdough bread instead of white, and I added ham and Swiss cheese. It still wasn’t gourmet, but that had never been the point.
Convincing myself this was purely platonic—or even professional—was something I had to just push from my mind, because I was running out of excuses.
7
LUCY
“Here.”
