“Is that my—” He cuts off as a waitress comes up, smiling as she sees him.
She knows him. I can tell by the way she leans in and puts her pretty, painted hands on his arm, dark purple nails leaving the slightest dips in his skin. I’m shocked when a thought flits through my mind.
I’d have to mix blue paint with her blood to get that same shade of purple, but I could do it.
And…
That’s not productive. I can’t kill someone just because they touched… a stranger. A target. Someone I can’t kill, because everyone apparently knows him.
I still keep my gaze fixated on her fingers on his arm as she speaks.
“Good to see you again, Donovan. What’ll you have?” My eyes flick up to his face to see how he reacts to the familiarity, but he’s all charming smiles that look polite more than flirtatious to me.
“Can I get a double bacon cheeseburger with fries, a grilled chicken almond salad bowl, raspberry vinaigrette on the side, and two… no, three sugar donuts?” He turns his gaze to me before she has a chance. “What about you?”
I consider. I can’t exactly say what I really want—for the waitress to get lost in a dark alley, because I’m already seeing streaks of purple and crimson—so I go for the next best thing. “Same as him…” Donovan’s eyes widen, and I tilt my head with a small smirk. “But add a strawberry milkshake.”
My eyes flick back down to the napkin I was drawing on, and I quickly crumple it up. It’s her hand on his arm, and I don’t want to look at it.
Donovan tracks the movement with curious eyes as I pull another napkin from the dispenser and start over. I draw his hand without the annoying fingernails that left the slightest line of red half-moon circle impressions on his fair skin… but the more I stare, those lines are all I can see.
I crumple the napkin up again and move my attention to the curious dip in his brows as he watches me.
“Do you want me to ask for some paper? I’m sure Laura could get you some.”
Laura. Red blood, blue paint. Right. I think I’d rather die than get paper from her.
I shake my head. “I’m fine.” And before he can ask, I continue. “How are you liking Boston?” My fingers flick across the napkin and sketch the slight downward quirk of his expression before he answers.
“It’sbig. Reminds me of the city I played in before, but that wasn’t quite as big as this place is. It’s easier to feel lost here, I guess. Nothing like my real hometown, where there’s only one set of traffic lights and everyone just knows everyone else. There are a lot more people here too, but it’s always been a good hockey city with good fans, and that’s what’s important.”
I tilt my head, glancing between his face and the sketch in front of me.
It’s wrong again.
I flick the napkin to the side and grab another.
“Why did you move here?” he asks, and I press my lips together, outlining the way his jaw curves justsobefore I answer.
“School.”
“That’s not really?—”
“Did you always want to play hockey?” I hide the small smile that tries to cross my face when he blows out an exasperatedbreath. It’s even better that he’s obviously too polite to ignore my question.
“Not always, no. I’m sure if you went back to when I was a kid and asked me what I wanted to be before I found hockey, I’d have said firefighter or something. I was a late bloomer, didn’t get on skates until I was six, and took a while to find my feet when I finally hit the ice.” For someone who seemed reluctant to answer, he sure is passionate about what he’s saying.
“Six is late?” Of course, I was drawing before I could remember. My first memories are of my mother giving me crayons, so…
“Yeah, kind of. I wasn’t a natural skater. I had to learn and learn fast to catch up with the other boys on my team who’d been thrown into skates the minute they learned how to walk. I wasn’t sure I wanted to keep going with it at first.” He pauses, taking a sip from his water glass. “And then it became pricey, you know? Hockey’s a pretty expensive sport and it wasn’t easy to afford everything I needed. I was lucky that my best friend Oakley’s dad was my coach and he saw that I was thinking of quitting. It’s because of him and his bank account that I’m here. He figured out that I have pretty quick hands, great reflexes, plus some natural flexibility. All the things a good goalie needs as building blocks at the start of their career, and I had ’em all. He paid for my first set of gear himself, just walked right into Logos Sports and swiped his fancy credit card without even thinking twice. Once I leaned into being a goalie, I found my love of the sport.”
Wow. The life story response is very different from my one-word answers. That’s okay, though. I’m very quickly finding that Ilikeasking Donovan questions. I want to ask him more—I want to ask him about the posters in his apartment, and why he bought such a small bed. I want to ask him if he has any friends, and what his schedule is like.
“Are you an artist?” I glance up at him through my curls, watching him try to get a proper look at what I’m doing. How much of myself do I want to reveal to him? I don’t really talk to people—I don’t let people get to know me.
I don’t want people to know me. Just my art. So…
“Yes.”
