I feel it everywhere.
Spine, neck, the sensitive skin behind my ears. Stomach and thighs and in between them, too.
It must be some kind of stress response. It must be that I don’t want to think yet about the artist of that portrait—the owner of this studio, apparently—who is on his way here, phoned by the frazzled employee who greeted us. It must be that I don’t want to think yet about Tegan seeing it, or about what Salem will say.
Itmustbe.
Because there’s no other explanation for the way I want to turn toward Adam’s broad body and have the whole of mine folded into his. To have all that comforting calm control surround me. It isn’t right, the way I want to be close to him—the way I want his affection, his attention.
It isn’tme.
Wanting those things makes me feel like the woman in the painting. Like I’m being selfish, like I’m putting myself at risk, or Tegan at risk.
Still, I don’t tell him to move his hand, or step away from him. He may not even realize he’s still touching me.
“We don’t have to do this right now. I’ll tell Salem.”
I turn my head toward him and look up. His jaw is rough again with new stubble, and there are faint, lovely lines at the corners of his eyes. When he looks at me, I don’t think he sees that portrait. I hope he doesn’t.
“You would, wouldn’t you?” My voice is quiet. Not even a lick of curtness in my tone.
“I would.”
I nod and look down at my cup of water. It helps to know he would. It . . . opens something in me, makes me feel curious in a way I haven’t been on this entire trip. Maybe not in the last ten years. Suddenly, I want to see the portrait again, to take it in without the initial pulse of shock. I want to find out who painted it, and why.
And I want to have Adam’s hand on my back the whole time.
“Here they are,” says Adam quietly, and I raise my eyes to see Salem’s rental car pulling into the parking lot.
Instinctively, I step away from him, that temporary opening in me narrowing again, though not closing completely. When Tegan gets out of the car, I watch her, same as I used to when she’d get off the bus after school. I could always tell how her day had gone, just from looking at her come down those school bus steps.
I wonder if she, too, will feel disoriented when she sees the portrait, if she’ll feel hot in her face and cold in her limbs.
“Jess.”
I keep my eyes on my sister, ignore the way him saying my name feels like him rubbing a small circle on my back.
“Just say if you want to take a break from this today. Say it, or pinch me under the table, or tug on your ear. Anything you want. I’ll stop it, anytime.”
I can’t help but look at him as he says it, and God. Ithasto be a stress response, the way I hear this offer. Like we’re not talking about an interview at all.
I step away from him, toward the front door. I hold it open for Salem and my sister, and it obviously reads as extremely abnormal. Salem looks at me as though I’ve been body-snatched. Tegan, at least, is either too excited or still too annoyed with me to even register my flustered presence.
“Is he here yet?” Salem says to Adam, at the same time Tegan says, “Ooooh, this stuff isnice,” as if we’re here to do some shopping.
I follow her over to one of the sculptures she’s bent to get a closer look at. I don’t know how much Adam told Salem in his text to her, and I also don’t know how much Salem told Tegan about whatever the text said. I feel obligated to give her a heads-up about the portrait, but I’m still not sure what to say.
It’s Mom, and she looks like the cover of a magazine?
It’s Mom and she’ll be looking right at you?
“So in the back there’s this portrait,” I begin quietly, but I don’t get to finish. The young woman who greeted Adam and me bursts back into the main room, trailed by a short, middle-aged man. He has thick, jet-black hair, and he’s wearing paint-splattered cargo shorts and a bright green T-shirt. He looks a little frazzled, too, but happily so. As though it’s his natural state.
“Okay, he’s here!” the young woman says. “Everyone, this is Luís, the owner of the studio. The painter!”
Luís looks first at Adam—I can’t blame him there, the man does overwhelm a room—and then at Salem. He’s smiling broadly at them, apparently thrilled to be called into work unexpectedly. Then he looks toward Tegan and me. I brace for his smile to drop, or to turn into something strange and false, like Curtis MacSherry’s.
But it doesn’t. It widens, his cheeks rounding and his eyes lighting. Oddly enough, I don’t feel compelled to shrink from his recognizing gaze, but I do wish I still had Adam Hawkins’s hand where it was before.
