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I lie still and let the day find me piece by piece. My shoulder aches. My thighs ache. There are marks on my hips from Clint’s hands, faint enough that no one else would notice, clear enough that I do.

Then I remember what day it is.

Renny’s birthday.

Today was supposed to be different. I’d wake alone in the house we loved, make coffee for one, maybe walk to the beach, maybe cry in a tasteful way, and by sunset grief would have loosened its grip because I had performed the ritual correctly.

A solemn goodbye. A new beginning.

Instead, I’m in bed with Renny’s son, my body mourning only the loss of his cock.

It’s uglier than the day I’d planned, and yet it feels inexplicably correct. Like there was never any other way this day was going to begin.

I can’t explain it, and so I won’t bother trying.

Clint shifts, making a sleepy sound into the pillow. I slip carefully to the bed’s edge and let him be.

In the studio, the air is already warm. The canvas waits where I left it: Clint’s back finished, alive, almost breathing beneath the paint. The line of his shoulder is exact. The turn of his head. The tension at the base of his neck, caught in that moment before he looked back at me.

Him, I can see. Everything around him still refuses me.

The ocean. The sand. Umbrellas dotting the coastline. All of it wrong.

I paint over it. Then over that. Soon the space around Clint is a battlefield of corrected mistakes.

I step back, brush in hand, and understand before I want to.

I can see him. I still cannot see a life.

Not the version where I stay. Not the version where I leave. Not the version where Riverside waits with dogs and lawyers and a house full of Renny’s things. Not the version where Puerto Vallarta becomes more than the beautiful place I ran to because running felt transformative.

I need to be able to see one of them.

Last night proved I’m not ready. Sex didn’t fix that. Neither does paint.

The realization makes me so angry I almost throw the brush. Instead, because I’m still me, I set it down carefully. I lift the canvas and carry it to the wall where the unfinished ones lean together like a jury. There’s room for one more.

I stand there staring at it until a sound comes from the kitchen. A bowl against the counter. A drawer opening.

I wipe my hands on a rag and follow the noise.

Clint is standing at the counter, a mixing bowl under one arm and a smear of flour dusting his navel and crotch.

He looks up. “Bag got away from me. I’ll clean it up.”

“I wasn’t going to say anything.”

“You were staring.”

“I always stare at you. It’s my new hobby.”

There’s a yellow box on the counter beside a tub of chocolate icing. Eggs. Oil. Measuring cups.

My throat tightens. Clint sees it.

“I remembered,” he says.

I grip the back of one of the counter stools.