Ugh.That’s the problem with Dorien. He says things like statements when they should be questions, and then waits for you to prove him right.
Arrogant ass.
“Felt what?” I keep my voice bored. “The overwhelming urge to stand somewhere you aren’t?”
“This piece.” He nods toward it, and for a moment his eyes become soft at the edges. “It got to you. I could tell from across the room. I think you stopped breathing for a second.”
I hate that he was watching. I hate it more that he’s right.
Self-righteous bastard.
“Hmm.” I turn my full attention back to the sculpture and cross my arms. I think it’s a masterpiece, but I’d never admit my true feelings to this jerk. I snub my nose at the art and pretend I’m a disinterested critic. “Well, it’s technically interesting. Youcan tell the artist knows how to work with clay. And the form has… potential. But the surface treatment is a bit heavy-handed in places. It’s definitely trying too hard.”
“Heavy-handed.” He repeats the words like he’s figuring out how they taste.
“The roughness. It’s trying very hard to communicateraw emotion.” I make the phrase sound like a disease. “Subtlety might have served the concept better.”
Dorien’s half-smile widens and he almost looks genuinely amused, which is worse than him being neutral because it makes his whole face change. It reminds me that he’s annoyingly handsome. “Subtlety,” he says. “This from the girl whose last painting looked like a crime scene with red splashed all over. I saw your post.”
My shoulders tense and raise an inch. “That was a deliberate aesthetic choice.”
“I think you spilled paint and didn’t want to clean it up.”
“I did not!”
I did.I really did spill fucking paint.
He laughs. An actual laugh, short and surprised, and I feel it somewhere I don’t want to feel things. The sound of it is too real and unguarded, gone as quickly as it appears.
“Well,” he says, his voice dipping into a lower register. “Since you have so many notes, the artist would probably love to hear them.”
That husky tone mixes with his goddamn scent and I’m starting to feel overheated. “I doubt it. You know artists struggle with criticism.”
“I don’t.” The half-smile returns, and it’s edged with mischief. He holds my gaze a beat too long, those autumn-leaf eyes catching the track lighting, and the air between us feels charged.
Somehow, I know what he’s going to say before he says it.
“I made it.”
Irritating, smug, know-it-all, goddamn…
My eyes won’t cooperate and drop to the floor. Instead, they study the sculpture with new awareness. The reaching figure. The deliberate roughness. The grief given form, the heaviness I felt deep in my bones. And suddenly I can see Dorien in every line and angle. There’s isolation. The something-lost that he carries like a shadow; that I carry too. The rawness he’s never once shown me in a decade of bickering and barbs, laid out here in burnt umber clay for everyone to see.
Only they won’t really see it. Only I can.
I need to say something cutting and clever that will bring the distance back, that will turn this moment into another skirmish in the endless war we’ve been fighting. I need a canyon between us, with him on the other end so he’s only a speck in the distance. My chest is too tight and he’s looking at me like he can see all of it, every stupid thing I feel standing in front of his work, and I hate him for that.
I clear my throat the same moment I hear his heavy exhale. He’s looking for that canyon too. I’m thankful—as long as we both still want that divide, nothing bad will happen.
“Heavy-handed,” I say again, though my voice is softer than I want it to be. “I stand by my critique.”
Dorien’s smile finally fades and he inches away.
Space.Yes, we must maintain space.
“Noted,” he says. Then, lighter, like he’s deliberately pulling us both back to safer ground: “I saw your painting. Congrats on getting selected.”
I shrink inside myself a little because if I’d known Dorien had been selected for this exhibit, maybe I wouldn’t have submitted my work. I normally love sharing, but with him…
