“I can take care of myself, thanks.”
Sette had considered telling her about the bidding and possibly becoming June’s patron. She would’ve played along had Sette been accepted for the starting bid. Knowing that her friend was offering more money, though? Preposterous.
Now, she knew better. Best that Zara didn’t know about what went on at the Manoir, aside from June being her new model, anyway. Joy had yet to get back on any possible gallery shows, but they were hopeful. Until then… it should be Sette and June only.
How unfortunate. For the first time in a long while, Sette had a woman to brag about. So what if she paid for her? That was a detail. June may not have been her real girlfriend, but she wasreal. A real conversationalist. A real intellectual when she was allowed to be. A real hottie when Sette let lust overcome her.
Zara left, still shaking her head and mumbling about going down to the marina to play on her boat. Sette turned back to a painting she was finishing up. She was due to see June that afternoon for fresh sketches, but wanted to finish this up first. Yet the longer she stared at her own work, the more she thought of June, and how great it would be to exist as her #1 woman. A privilege worth paying for.
I wonder if she gets any say in it. Could June choose her over the other woman? Or was she at her madam’s whim?Today, I can show her what I am. After business, of course. Except Sette’s brain was already overrun with every naughty thing she wanted to do to June. Everything she would tell June to do to herself. The more she was around her, the more Sette wanted to assert herself – and June responded as she desired.
No wonder Sette was willing to throw tens of thousands of dollars at her a month.
The coffee shop was too bright to comfort Sette’s addled nerves. If anything, it did the opposite. It threw light at her through floor-to-ceiling glass, bounced it off chrome espresso machines and white marble countertops, and dared her to pretend she was artisticallymindfulwhile people in pressed trousers and spotless sneakers hustled past, tethered to their lives by lanyards, watches, and glowing screens.
Sette chose a table by the window, anyway. Better to have natural light scream at her than ultraviolet hell.
Outside, the CBD moved like a machine. Suits strode in packs. A woman in a long camel coat paused at the crosswalk, her hairas sleek as lacquer, while a man with a messenger bag spoke into his earbuds with the kind of fervor usually reserved for Thanksgiving squabbles. Cyclists split lanes like cars didn’t exist. Everything and everyone looked like they were on their way to something that was the difference between life and death.
Sette sat with her coffee still untouched.
The cup was hot against her palms. The heat exuded through the paper sleeve while her pulse pushed through her thumbs and to the rigid texture. She should have been sketching. That was why she packed her travel-sized art book, right?
A month ago, she would have been sketching. A week ago, even… maybe. She would have been drawing the curve of a stranger’s cheekbone, the slant of a shoulder beneath a jacket, or the way light illuminated such a mundane place like a coffee shop. She would have filled a page because she couldn’t help herself, especially with caffeine involved.
Now the sketchbook lay closed in her bag.
Sette’s phone sat face-up on the table beside her coffee. It stayed stubbornly dark. No messages. No notifications. No ding of approval from the universe.Hmph.
She tapped the edge of the table until she forced herself to stop.This is ridiculous.She had quit medicine. She had walked away from a valuable routine, from the steady adoration and steady exhaustion, from her parents’ pride and her colleagues’ confusion. She had started over with paint under her nails and investments that combined her former salary and the trust fund her parents had given her when she turned twenty-five. She had chosen this life. Sette had known what she was getting into when she set her own schedule.
She exhaled slowly and lifted her cup, bringing it to her lips.
The coffee was way more bitter than usual. She swallowed, anyway.
Across the shop, a group of young professionals had claimed the long communal table and spread themselves out like they were the only ones there. Laptops open, chargers tangled, voices pitched just high enough to be heard over the grinder. One of them laughed loudly, and the sound spiked through the air, right into Sette’s ear.
Sette tried to let it slide past her. She tried to focus on the now.
Her mind yanked in the other direction the moment her eyes lay upon a curvy blond walking by the window.
Not June. Not her.
Sette tightened her grip on her cup handle until she couldn’t take it anymore.
She wasn’t thinking about June. She was thinking about her own work. The blank canvases. Her hand hovering over her sketching pencil as if she had forgotten what it was for.
She was thinking about the way it felt lately, to wake up and already be bored. To stand in her studio and stare at a canvas stretched over wood and feel… nothing. To have everything she’d once wanted while delivering babies and realizing that just quitting and embracing the artist’s life wasn’t enough.
It wasn’t June’s fault she’d become a fixation. June was… a symptom. Something bright enough to stare at, so Sette didn’t have to look at the hollow space in her own chest.
Sette set her coffee down a little too hard. A drop sloshed over the rim and dotted the table like a stain of splashed paint.
She stared at it.Pathetic.
A movement cut across her peripheral vision, and her attention snapped sideways. A woman had stepped into the café and instantly commandeered Sette’s awareness.
Not in the entitled way of someone who believed the world existed to serve her, but in the way of someone who had never had to prove herself in any capacity. She didn’t pause at the threshold to orient herself. She moved through bodiesand chairs and the brightness of the room as if she expected them to cater to her. Her suit jacket was black and tailored for her shoulders and waist, the sleeves ending at her wrists. Underneath, a white shirt popped, collar open. There was the smallest glint of metal at her left wrist. A watch.
