“Are you procrastinating?” I say quickly, before he can speak again.
“Pfft.No.”
Liar.
Ignoring him, I get down on the ground, on my knees, with the gray and white paints. Once I’m set up, I get to work adding dimension with the brushes, shading and contouring like a professional trompe l’oeil artist. When I finish the metal breastplate, I stand and take a step back to admire my work.
I’m impressed with myself. It practically looks like the real thing. I think I did a good job.
Easton notices me and stops cutting disks. “Is it supposed to look all blotchy like that?”
“Blotchy?” I say, frowning down at my creation. “It’s not blotchy. That’s texture. Texture adds depth.”
Duh.
He stands next to me, squinting as if to imagine texture and depth. “If you say so. I’m just saying, it looks like you ran out of paint and started using mud.”
Mud? What the heck is he talking about? My gray shading looks like actual metal plating! If he knew anything about anything, he would know that.
I snort. “You’re an expert now?”
He grins. “I have eyes.”
“Just leave me alone. You do your thing and I’ll do mine.” I huff. “Try harder with those shields—we’ve got a deadline here.”
That deadline being prom night.
He laughs at me and goes back to cutting—though not without sighing and making a production out of it, which I find nearly impossible to ignore.
I continue painting with a more critical eye, careful with my shading so it doesn’t look like…mud.
I glare at his back.
Mud? What a dick.
I’m doing the best I can!
“You know,” Easton says after a few minutes, “this reminds me of that art class we had in grade school. The one where we had to make those clay sculptures and take them home as gifts for the holiday.”
He remembers that we had an art class together in elementary school?
“Um,” I manage. “Yeah, I remember. Yours ended up looking like a melted blob.”
“Hey, that was supposed to be mydog.” He laughs.
“Mine was a vase and looked like a toothpick holder.” I smile, recalling the memory of my “vase,” with its holes in the sides and no way to hold water. Or flowers.
So ugly.
Easton finishes cutting out the last shield and stretches his arms. My eyes track his movements, glued to his biceps.
“Okay, all done with that one. Now what? Do I make more?”
“No, I want them to all have a different vibe,” I say quickly, snapping my eyes away. “Why don’t you grab the red and paint the one you just finished.”
He frowns. “You want it all one color?”
“Use your imagination.” I watch him set to work, laying theshield next to my knight and squirting red and blue onto a paper plate, aka a palette. Then he dips a large brush into the water between us and adjusts it in his hands.
