“Don’t start now.”
He paused and looked directly at me, his gaze practically pinning me to the wall before reaching into Fiona’s kit for a long pair of pointed tweezers.
I flinched slightly.
“Don’t look,” he whispered. “It’s easier if you’re not anticipating it.”
I didn’t trust him, of course, but he did make sense. So although it pained me to listen to his advice, I closed my eyes.
He started talking, his voice soft and cheerful. He was trying to distract me from what he was doing to my hands. “Mackenzie’s Julia Roberts hooker dress—” He plucked a thorn from my palm with a quick, graceful jerk and I gasped. “—was uncanny... not that I’ve actually seen the original movie.”
My eyes shot open. “I’m sorry. What?”
He held up the tweezers. “Eyes closed.”
I obeyed. “You have some explaining to do.”
“I’m sure it’s a great movie, but it came out a decade before I was born. Plus I was more of an anime gay than a ‘divas of the past’ gay.” He pulled out another thorn, which seemed to hurt less than the last one.
“I resent the fact that you would refer to Julia Roberts as a past diva,” I told him.
He laughed softly as he continued to work. “Just a few more,” he promised.
We sat there in silence, the only sound in the Tuscan nightmare room our breathing and the occasional clink of the tweezers.
The sun pouring in through the windows caught on his eyelashes and made his small diamond studs wink against his earlobes. It had never escaped my notice that Angel spent all his waking hours trying to make art when hewasart already. All he had to do was smile or move or breathe, and he showed the world some ineluctable revelation about being alive.
“Okay,” he finally said. “You can look.”
I opened one eye to find him smirking as he tore open a new alcohol swab and started cleaning the cuts for a final time.
As he worked, I noticed a speck of color on his biceps peeking out from the sleeve of his T-shirt.
“That’s new,” I said, pointing with the hand not currently being tended to.
He glanced down, slight blush gathering in the apples of his cheeks.
I took the liberty of lifting the hem of his sleeve and laughed for what felt like the first time in months. “Is that... a reindeer... on ice skates?”
Right there on Angel’s arm was a vintage-looking mint green reindeer wearing an ice skate on each leg. Its legs were sprawling and wobbly looking, like it was skating for the very first time.
“It’s a character I developed,” he said, tugging his sleeve back down. “I... uh... the studio I was interning with this spring decided to use it for one of their children’s holiday specials.”
“Really?” Inside I was beaming with pride, but on the outside I maintained my nonchalance-bordering-on-disgust. “That’s sort of a big deal, isn’t it?”
He returned to his diligent work on my hands. “For me it was.”
“Is that why you were in France?” I asked quietly. “To intern with them?”
He nodded.
“Was it top secret or something?”
He shook his head. “I only found out when we were sitting there at the airport. I applied late... so I found out at the last minute.”
“And you just couldn’t tell me?” I asked.
He looked up from beneath his heavy, sun-drenched lashes. “I tried.”
