She was just happy to see Raff.
I knew a lot of things in that moment. I knew Raff had found somebody who actually loved him. A proper best friend. And…and I knew that I wanted to know what it would feel like to be on the receiving end of that smile. That exact smile from that exact person.
That was the moment that changed my entire life.
Sixteen
I draw Vin’sboots on Wednesday night and Thursday night too.
Each drawing is titledVin Home from Work.The Thursday night drawing I spend almost an hour on. I try my hand at cross-hatching and turn the paper into a smudgy indecipherable hair ball.
Vin Home from Work.I’m building him from nothing. Conjuring him from thin air onto white paper. When I look at these drawings, I can hear the groan he does when he steps inside and the workday is done. I can feel how hungry he is for dinner. I can hear the front door locking behind him.
Vin Home from Work.Vin, my husband who retreated away from me because I’d retreated toward his brother.
“Oh, cool,” Vin says from behind where I stand at the kitchen counter, filling in the last few lines on my drawing. His voice makes me jump a foot in the air.
“Why are you sneaking around?” I’m irrationally, hotly angry at him for making me jump and I’m clutching my drawing pad to my chest like a shield.
“Sorry?” He’s got one hand on the back of his head. “I thought you’d have heard me come into the kitchen.”
“Well…okay!” And that’s all I got.
“I didn’t mean to…” He clears his throat. “I liked your drawing.”
“Oh.” The drawing pad comes down half a foot and I peekat my drawing to see what he saw. One is bad and one is good. “Which one?”
He points to the good one. “But…I thought that you only drew people?”
I’m frowning and grumpy. “Your boots basicallyarepeople.”
His brow furrows in (very reasonable) confusion.
“I mean…they have a lot of personality. They…are like an extension of you, or something.”
“Ah.” He’s nodding like he understands, which would be a miracle consideringIdon’t understand. “Like your glasses.”
“My glasses?”
“Yeah. Whenever they’re lying around, I feel like you can see me still. When you leave them on the bathroom counter, I face them toward the wall.”
I burst out laughing at this very delightful piece of trivia. “Are you serious?”
He shrugs, half-embarrassed and half-pleased at making me laugh. His hands are in his pockets and he’s rocking back on his heels, looking at his toes. “Are you…in the drawing mood?”
“Are you…offering to model?”
He shrugs again. “Yes. I mean, I know we said once a week, but I’m…not busy.”
“Okay, yeah. Same setup as before? Did that work for you?”
He’s nodding, already headed toward the hall closet for a towel, already pulling his T-shirt roughly off over his head. This time we both plunge right in. This is old hat, you know, for us. Me, the seasoned artist. Him, the seasoned…nude.
Vin jumps right into a seated pose with his legs extended and crossed at the ankle, leaning back on his palms, and I jump right into absolutely botching this drawing. Draw, Roz, draw! Michelangelo would be so proud of this yeti whose feet get chopped off by the nothingness at the edge of the paper.
On to the next. He’s standing, one arm up, palm at the back of his head. I like this pose because it comes naturally to him and I see him do this all the time, clothed. But I never realized before that it tipped his rib cage to one side like that, compressing half his midsection and elongating the other half. I never realized that his armpit stretched so open like that or that he’d have to shift his weight to the opposite leg of the hand in his hair. This time it’s his arm that runs into the edge of the paper.
He does another seated pose, a lying-down one, and then one last standing. In this one he’s twisting around, like he’s looking for something over his shoulder.
