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I keep looking at the paintings because looking at him feels too close to admitting something. All these little pieces of me arranged on a wall by a man who had no business seeing me this carefully and somehow did anyway.

“You can,” I say.

His head turns. “Can what?”

“Paint me.”

His mouth opens a little.

I point at the wall, pretending this is easier than it is. “Any part you want.”

His eyebrows lift.

“Almost any part,” I add.

Paul nods. “No dick.”

“Right. Because that would make it weird.”

He smiles at that. “We’ve crossed several lines, but thank God we found one.”

His face softens. “Thank you.”

The studio goes quiet again, but not bad quiet. Morning moves through the open window.

My stomach makes a sound.

Paul looks at me. “Breakfast?”

“Yeah. Beach?”

His face shifts, cautious and pleased. “You want to go out?”

“I’m not eating yesterday’s pasta for breakfast. I stopped doing that almost two years ago.”

“Clothes, then.”

“Damn.”

“Trust me,” he says. “You do not want me taking you places in PV where clothes are optional.”

“Guys always think they know what I want.”

After breakfast—which becomes late enough to count as lunch if either of us cared—we end up near Los Muertos Pier with ice cream.

Paul sits beside me on a bench, wearing his brightest department store shorts. I have on cutoffs and a T-shirt that might be clean enough for public, depending on the lighting.

The ocean is bright. The pier curves out into it like something built by a city that wanted people to understand it had flair. Tourists move around us with shopping bags and sun-kissed skin. A lady carries her tiny dog like a little emperor in a tote hanging off her shoulder.

Paul hands me a spoon.

“Ice cream after breakfast. This another PV tradition?”

“Not a tradition,” he says. “Just something I’m testing out.”

I take a bite.

Coconut. Perfectly too sweet.