Her home is more like what Daisy, who is an event planner, would consider country chic or whatever the fuck it is. All the furniture is beige, brown, and white, with the walls to match. Large wooden frames are stacked on the floor. I’m assuming she took them down from the walls to paint, and even the dining table is rustic with neutral accents. It’s pretty, and it feels calm, but it definitely doesn’t scream Natalie.
“You feel it too?” Her question catches me by surprise as she holds her hips and looks around.
“What?”
“The sadness. It’s so black and white, it feels monochromatic, and I’m tired of it. I need?—”
“Green?”
“I don’t know; I was thinking orange,” she says between a laugh and a sigh. “Not the whole thing, but I don’t know. A pretty orange may look good here.”
“Like your hair?”
“I was thinking more like sunsets.”
I eye her suspiciously. Did she think about this before I said anything about it being my favorite color, and she’s trolling me now?
“When you said you like burnt orange, it got me thinking about sunsets and how beautiful the sky is. I want to remember beauty and vastness and life when I look at these walls, not everything that’s missing.”
“There’s only one question left.”
“Oh yeah?”
I smile sheepishly. “Where are the brushes?”
A few hours later,Natalie takes a step back and looks at our creation. She picked one accent wall and different shades of orange while the others we painted cream. It feels like standing under the sun after a cold night, and judging by her smile, she likes it.
I have to go soon if I’m going to meet up with Jerry, but damn it if I don’t want to throw it all away to spend more time with her. That’s if I don’t ditch him to help her move furniture back in place.
“You did well,” I whisper.
She bumps her hip against mine. “We did.”
I look down, and at the same time, her intense eyes lock with mine. I gather paint off her chin with my thumb, her breath catching as I do.
“You had some paint there.” I clear my throat.
She pulls back but doesn’t take her pretty eyes away from mine. They’re so light today, almost as if she was shedding darkness with every stroke of paint. Another fucking reason why I can’t pursue this.
A friendship, sure; anything else, no. Even just looking at her sets my soul on fire. One look, and I feel happier. I feel like a better man.
She’s light and joy, and I’m matches with kerosene.
I need to go before I spread both and burn everything to the ground with me.
“I have to go.”
“Oh.” She places her brush down and wipes her hands on her paint-covered overalls. “I-I-I thought we had more time, and I was going to make you lunch.”
“You don’t have to make me lunch, Beauty. I had a good time. I have a couple of calls to make—” liar “—before I head over to the hospital to see Jerry.”
“Let me get you some lemonade to go, at least.”
I open my mouth, but she narrows her eyes at me. “I don’t want to hear a no for an answer. Come on.”
I follow her to the kitchen, which has been previously Natali-fied. There is a giant wooden cutlery hanging on the green and cream wall. The table is clearly old and has been loved—one of those round wooden vintage tables everyone growing up in the South in the early 2000s had in their kitchen.
There’s art and diplomas with her kids’ names on the refrigerator, Veronica Joy Bradshaw and Isabella Nicolette Bradshaw on every single one of them. Beautiful names and somehow familiar, but I shake it off, because why would I even know these girls? Maybe it’s the familiarity from listening to Natalie talk about them.
