“Me? What did I do?”
“You’re being you. That always makes me smile.”
She side-hugged me as we walked, and damn if I didn’t want to stay like that forever. Out of habit, I adjusted my stride to accommodate her shorter legs.
Sounds of the growing crowd already reached my ears. Dani shepherded me past the downtown shops, which were transformed into an outdoorgallery, until we found the sign-up table. She turned in our tickets, and we signed up for our activities.
We spent hours immersed in the Desert Rose Arts Fest. It would have been fun with anyone, but Dani made it magical. She was as animated and excited as the kids when we stopped to watch the bubble magician. When we got Mexican hot chocolate and pan dulce from a food truck, she waxed loquacious.
We were too late for one of the demos she planned, but we stopped for tamales from a local taqueria, and that cheered her up. Any residual disappointment was wiped away when we watched kids make sidewalk art under the direction of a local artist.
There were tables set up throughout the town square for different art activities ranging from screen print to tie-dye and mosaics. She watched the kids with an expression I couldn’t decipher before the timers on our phone went off.
We attended our painting class demo, where we sat next to each other at a long table. Dani’s eyes shone with excitement as we waited for the class to begin.
“Shouldn’t you be teaching this class?” I asked.
Dani bumped my shoulder and blushed prettily.
“It’s been years since I’ve painted. I might as well be a beginner.”
I scoffed.
“I doubt it. You might be rusty, but you haven’t lost it. It’s all still there.”
She beamed at me, and class started. Dani was instantly immersed. I followed the instructions, but canvas and I don’t mesh. Give me an automotive paint gun and a compressor, and I’m an artist, but watercolors make no sense. My landscape was worse than the toddler finger-paintings outside.
“It’s astonishing how creative you are in some arenas but a disaster in others,” Dani laughed. “The paint on Old Blue is a work of art, but this… Um, were you going for a modern interpretation?”
“Hey, now,” I grumbled.
She backpedaled and tried to find things to praise. It was a lost cause, though. My amusement grew with each clumsy attempt to encourage my terrible abilities.
“Dani, I don’t care about watercolors. I want to have fun with you. I’m having fun. Are you?”
Her expression softened, and she blinked rapidly.
“Jake, I wasn’t going to do this now, but—”
“Attention, everyone,” a brisk voice called out. “If you’re interested in signing up for a group class or private lessons, we have discounts available for those who use the festival registration code.”
Dani’s face lost its intensity, and she grabbed both our paintings.
“We can toss mine,” I said.
“No, way. It’s going in the gallery at home,” she said with a wicked smile. “We can drop them off with my dad so we don’t have to carry them around, but they’re both going up on the wall.”
I laughed and followed her out, my heart lighter than it had been in years. I was invincible after hearing her refer to our place as home.
Her dad was holding court with a circle of other older men. I tipped my head to acknowledge those I recognized. Dani pressed a kiss to her dad’s cheek.
“Dad, would you be willing to put these in your basket?” she asked. “We took the landscape demo, and I don’t want them to get messed up before I can hang them up at home.”
“You painted?”
The excitement in his voice was palpable, and I had to look away.
“Yeah,” she said shyly. “It was fun.”
