At ass o’clock at night, squirreled away in Max’s workshop with the world’s smallest guard dog for company, getting my hands dirty seemed kind of like an anti-climax, but I held them out anyway. Painting wasn’t my bag, but Ash getting all firm and authoritative? Yeah, I coulddigit.
The paint was cold and slimy as he dunked my hands in two different shades of brown. Was he smearing it up my arms on purpose? I couldn’t tell. “You know the bench is already brown,right?”
“Shutup.”
I shut up and tried not to ogle as Ash coated himself in brown paint. Then I followed his direction to the end of the bench farthest from me. “Whatnow?”
“Paintit.”
“With myhands?”
“Yep.”
Okaaay. I set to work spreading the brown paint all over the bench. The two shades of brown merged together in some places but stayed separate in others. I had no idea if that was the effect Ash was going for, but I plowed onanyway.
Ash started on the other side, and we worked in companionable silence until he abandoned his side and stood behind me to scrutinize mine. “What does it look liketoyou?”
“Right now?” I sat back and studied the mess I’d made. Despite my misgivings, the swirl of different shades was kind of nice, but it didn’t represent anything—at least, it didn’t to me. Ash had a plan. Had I fucked it up already? I dug deep for any undiscovered scraps of artistry. “It lookslikefall.”
As I glanced over my shoulder, a ghost of a grin threatened Ash’s critical frown. “Really? You canseethat?”
“Iguess?”
He smiled and came closer, his chest a hair’s breadth from my back. “You don’t guess what youcansee.”
“That’s good,right?”
“I’d say so. You want to try some lightercolors?”
If it made him smile like that, I’d try pretty much anything. I coated my hands in a mellower brown and then moved farther up the bench in muted shades of green. I still had no clue what Ash thought we were producing, but I kept at it. The monotonous action and the sticky paint was oddly cathartic, and I was taken aback when I looked at Max’s homemade clock on the wall sometime later. It was three o’clock in the morning—we’d been painting forhours.
“Damn.”
Ash glanced up and followed my gaze to the clock. “Timeflies,huh?”
“We must behavingfun.”
“Or you forgot to think. A distraction is only worth it ifit’sreal.”
I stared at him as he turned his back on me and bent over the box of paint cans. A week ago, I’d have left it alone, but things had changed since then. To get better, I had tobebetter,right?
“Hey.” I came up behind him and nudged his shoulder with my forehead. “What doyoumean?”
Ash turned and thrust two paint cans into my hands. “I mean that your habit of slaving like a dog to forget the rest of the world doesn’t work. You slaved all summer long and Maggie’s still dead, and I don’t think there’s anything that will stop you blaming yourself for thatrightnow.”
Ouch. But he was right. “I didn’t know what elsetodo.”
“I know, but we’ll figureitout.”
“Wewill?”
Ash dropped his empty cans—the art-induced distraction gone—and grabbed my arms. His hands were slippery with paint and his grip slid up to my elbows. “You’ve spent all this time helping people fight for their lives with no inclination to fight foryourown—”
“That’snotfair.”
“It’s not fair toyou, Pete. You don’t give yourself achance.”
My brain fogged over like it had done so often since I’d become the one who couldn’t hold my shit together. I’d thought for a while that it was a legacy of the mother of all concussions, but Ash’s diagnosis made more sense. How many patients had I treated who were so paralyzed by depression that they couldn’t speak? How many times hadAshbeen that sick with it? He and our patchwork family had kept me from the extremes of that particular vortex, but in moments like these, when I couldn’t verbalize anything sensible, it didn’t feel thatfaraway.
