“I was too busy watching you,” he protests, his laugh echoing into the fading light of day, and I shake my head at him.
“But you were supposed to be painting too,” I remind him, and Bailey rolls his eyes.
“You’re forgetting it wasn’t just a stick figure because I gave you beautiful hair,” he says, helping me into the truck. He walks around, getting in the driver’s side.
“Bailey.” I cross my arms over my chest, trying not to smile, but he’s so damn adorable right now.
“You just make it look so effortless. I can’t believe you haven’t let me see any of your paintings before.”
I bite my lip, trying not to feel my cheeks flush as he pulls onto the road. “I have a lot of practice. You’ll get the hang of it.”
Bailey moves to reach for my hand, lacing our fingers together. “I think I could spend years trying,and I’d never have a fraction of the talent you have. I can’t believe you’ve only been painting for a couple of years now.”
“My years of doodling helped, but there were a lot of free workshops at Duke. It was something I went to for fun, but one of the professors in the arts department came up to me at one. She actually invited me to sign up for her class last spring, and I learned a lot from her,” I explain, smiling at the thought of Professor Reed. She waived the prerequisite for the Introduction to Visual Arts course you’re supposed to take prior to hers, and I remember the conversation we had at the end of the semester where Professor Reed asked if I had considered declaring a Visual Arts major.
I brushed it off at the time because I couldn’t imagine telling my parents I wanted to get a degree in painting. I think I’d give my dad a heart attack if I tried.
“Have you thought about taking more classes like hers?” he asks, reading my mind.
“It doesn’t feel like a real career,” I admit, and Bailey squeezes my hands, resting them on my thigh.
“So what? Kait, your parents love you, and I know they’d rather support you in doing what you love than watch you be miserable for a paycheck.”
I look down at our conjoined hands, seeing how his dwarfs mine. “I know, but I think that’s what terrifies me,” I admit, chewing on my lower lip. “I enjoy it and I think the more I practice, the better I’ll get, but what if the second I take the leap to turn it into a job, I end up hating it?”
“Then you switch gears, and we’ll figure it out together.”
My heart swells, and I feel like a cloud floating in the sky, as light as air.
“Together,” I echo, and it feels like a promise.
“I had a really great time tonight, even if I learned how much I suck at painting,” he says, pulling into my parents’ driveway.
“I had a great time too, Bailey,” I say, turning to face him. Honestly, I’m not ready for the night to end, and he makes me feel brave. “Do you want to see my paintings?”
His light eyebrows rise in surprise. “Yes,” he blurts out, and I try not to laugh at how quickly he answered. He knows me well enough by now to take advantage before my nerves creep in.
I’m not worried about what he’ll think when he sees my paintings. If it wasn’t clear before, he’ll know I haven’t been joking about how often I paint him, or how many reminders of him I’ve left in my canvases.
Bailey follows me in, and I look forward, refusing to second guess this.
My heart skips a beat when I see the sunflowers sitting in a vase Bailey must have found in the cabinets. When I open the door to the room I’ve been using as my studio, I hold my breath, seeing the painting I was engrossed in earlier—the culprit for the paint in my hair at the beginning of the night.
I was painting the sun, focusing on all the different shades of yellow and orange, blending them together.
The real showstoppers are around the room, propped against the walls and stacked on top of each other. I stopped questioning Henry a couple of months ago when he kept having canvases delivered, because it didn’t seem worth arguing with him when I knew he wasn’t going to stop.
Now, it’s contributed to my limitless collection of art, which seems to be piling up with nowhere to go.
“Sunshine, you painted all of these?” Bailey asks, and I glance in his direction, my anxiety starting to fill in the gaps of my confidence.
“Yeah,” I admit. He stares at them all, but his gaze gets stuck on the painting I made nearly three months ago when Bailey first came back. “Wait, don’t look at that one,” I blurt out, moving to stand in front of it.
“You really did paint me,” he says, his eyes flickering over my face.
I swallow the lump in my throat, nodding. “You’re the star of a lot of these, but that one I couldn’t get right. I told you, the blond contradicts the broodiness,” I remind him, feeling a flush crawl up my neck.
“I told you I’d dye it if you wanted,” Bailey teases, but there’s nothing about the way he’s looking at me that’s a joke.
