Say Yes by Kandi Steiner
The Art of Blurring Lines
So that’s how June passed.
The days grew longer, the nights hotter, and I spent every waking moment either with Liam, or thinking about him.
My work didn’t suffer from the new focus. If anything, it was a major benefit. Because when I wasn’t with Liam, I was trying to distract myself from my thoughts of him, so I’d throw myself into studying, into sketching, into painting or volunteering for an extra shift at the museum. I spent time with Angela, exploring nearby Tuscan cities, and I felt a sense of relief when it came time to go to sleep, thankful that I’d survived another day without giving in to my urge to ask Liam to spend time with me.
I always left that to him.
I figured out that was the way to keep myself safe, to just let him call the shots. Sometimes, we’d see each other before or after class for just a few moments before we’d go our separate ways. Sometimes when we both were out, he’d give me a head nod from across the room before going back to whoever he was with, and I’d turn my attention back to Angela, acting like I didn’t care, either.
But other times, it felt like Liam couldn’t stay away from me, no matter if he wanted to.
I’d catch him watching me all through class, his dark eyes under furrowed brows, cheeks between his teeth like he wanted so badly to look away but physically couldn’t. Those were the days he’d walk me to the museum, or barely make it through his greeting after class before he asked when he could see me.
And on the nights we were together, time stopped, the world slowed to a crawling spin, and even the universe itself seemed to take a breath of pause.
Sometimes we’d go out for dinner and drinks, only to end up back at his place, him exploring me, me discovering him. Sometimes we’d never leave the room at all — his or mine, depending.
But on my favorite nights, we’d paint.
The first time it happened was at my place. I’d had a stack of thin canvases between my headboard and the wall, and Liam had peeled one out, propping it up on my dresser against the wall. He left the room long enough to grab one of our barstools from the kitchen, and then he’d set my easel up next to him and patted the seat.
I put on The Bends Radiohead album, and for the first six songs or so, we didn’t say a word. It was nothing but the sound of brush against canvas and Thom Yorke’s falsetto, a beautiful combination. But about ten seconds into “Just,” Liam sat back, appraising his canvas, and then he turned and looked at me.
I wasn’t working on anything in particular, not an assignment or something due to turn in. Instead, I painted the tunnel of a wave, mixing shades of deep turquoise and brilliant teal and deep, navy blue. But assignment or not, I was locked in. That’s how I always was when I painted. Lost. Surrendered. Completely consumed.
I was bringing a tiny surfer to life in the middle of the wave when suddenly, a cool, thick paint was brushed along my cheek.
I blinked, coming back to the present moment to find Liam smirking beside me, the offending weapon in his hand. “Hi,” he said.
I laughed. “Hi.” I reached up and wiped the paint with my fingers, holding them in front of me to see the bright golden yellow. “You painted me.”
“I did,” he agreed, and then he angled his canvas a bit, showing me the start of something that did look a lot like me, except the lines were dragged this way and that, creating a blur. But I still saw me there — the depths of my blue eyes, the mole on my lip, the curtain of blonde hair falling over my ears.
I swallowed, staring for a long while as if I could stare long enough to not feel anything, to not be filled with warmth at the fact that I was his subject.
And then suddenly, there was a flash.
I blinked, turning to find Liam holding the disposable camera from yes night.
He shrugged, winding the knob at the top so the next picture was loaded and ready. “We had a few left,” he said before setting it aside.
I smiled and looked back at the painting, marveling at the way he saw me. When I met his gaze again, his eyes were darker, heated, and laced with something akin to mischief, or perhaps desire.
He reached forward to tap the tip of his wet brush to my bottom lip. Slowly, he dragged it down, over my chin and along the line of my neck, down my chest until it dipped below the V of my t-shirt.
I was in his arms in the next instant, wrapping him up as much as I could as he did the same. Even a centimeter of distance between us was too much. I wanted every piece of me touching every piece of him.
Our clothes were shed in a rush, and the only time we broke from our kiss was to strip. And while I expected him to take me in my bed, he lifted my ass and sat me on top of the dresser, shoving me back until my spine hit the fresh paint of his canvas. He grabbed my hips and yanked, then, until my ass hung just enough off the dresser for him to enter me. And after a quick condom application, that’s exactly what he did.
He filled me to the brim, covering my mouth to mute the cry that came with the feel of him stretching me open.
It was quick and hot, my racing heart barely able to keep pace before we were both spent and clinging to each other, our foreheads slick, roots damp with sweat.
We both laughed a little before tiptoeing our way down the hall to the shower, and as the water fell through his hair and over his eyes, I asked, “How did you get into painting?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you told me you don’t really want to make a career of it, that you’re doing it just because, right now, you like to,” I reminded him. “But… you’re too talented to have just randomly picked up painting on a whim recently.”
He smirked, lathering up shampoo in his hands before he ran them through my hair, his fingers massaging my scalp. I closed my eyes and hummed at the pleasant feeling, waiting for his answer.
“I used to go to my grandma’s every summer — my dad’s mom. She lived in the middle of nowhere, a small town in northern Connecticut, rather than the coast where we were, but she was always the highlight of my year because whether she had us for two weeks or four, she filled every minute of our time with something new and exciting. The town was small, but it had a lot going on for kids — probably because everyone had them, and the parents were dying to figure out ways to keep them busy.”
I smiled, letting him guide me back until I was under the showerhead and the warm water was raining over me.
“She put us in church camp and swim lessons, pottery classes and karate. We’d go to the little theater in town to watch a movie every Friday night, and we’d spend every Saturday morning hitting every garage sale we could find.”
When my hair was rinsed, I ran my fingers over my eyes to clear the water so I could see him again.
“When I was eleven, she put us in this week-long painting program at the community center,” he said. “It was juvenile, of course, but… I remember the teacher, Mrs. Gardenbaum, looking at my painting and letting out a loud gasp and telling me how talented I was. She told my grandma, too, and grandma had the painting framed and hung it in her living room. Not her bedroom, not a guest bathroom — the living room.” He shrugged. “And I loved that feeling. I loved that something I created made two very important people in my life feel good.”
I ran my fingertips over his shoulders and down his arm. “That’s beautiful.”
“I kept up with it for a while, painting in my room after dinner, and taking what classes I could in high school. But then basketball became more important, and then eventually, girls,” he said with a chuckle. “And when college came, all I could think about was filling my schedule with the classes I needed to graduate and get to law school. Plus, I was in a fraternity — every minute of my spare time was taken up.”
He paused, inhaling a deep breath as he wound a piece of my wet hair around his pointer finger. He kept his eyes there when he spoke again.
“When everything happened…” He rolled his lips together. “I didn’t know how to process. Everyone said I should go to therapy, but I had nothing to say. Sometimes there just aren’t words, you know?”
I sighed in understanding. “I do,” I whispered.
“I don’t really remember what triggered it, but one night I was driving home, and I stopped to get a bite to eat at this little deli I loved.” He made a face. “Well, as much as I could love anything at that point in my life, anyway. And next door, there was this paint shop. They were about to close, and I didn’t even really make a conscious decision. I just walked in, like I was on autopilot. I bought a couple canvases, and some cheap brushes and paints, and I went home, and for the first time since I was maybe sixteen or so… I painted.”
“How did it feel?”
“Fucking terrible,” he said on a breath. “I cried. Like, the kind of ugly sobbing where you can’t breathe, and snot is coming out of your nose.”
I offered him a sympathetic smile, squeezing his forearm. “It was like coming home, wasn’t it?”
“Yes,” he agreed. “But it was also like being ripped open and having the most painful parts of myself poked and prodded until any wound that had healed had no choice but to bleed again.”
I nodded, tracing my fingertips up his arm again until I was framing his jaw in my hand. There was nothing more to say, so I pressed up onto my toes and pulled him down into me, and I kissed him.
That was the first time we painted together. Since then, we’d painted at least a half-dozen times, and every time, I felt this awful, tight fist around my heart when he slipped out in the middle of the night. It was only on those nights that I had to truly fight the urge to reach for him, to ask him to stay, to ask him for more.
It was on those nights that I wondered if I could really keep my promise — to him and to Angela and to myself.
But as if he could sense it, Liam would pull back after nights like that, barely talking to me for days. And when we did meet up again, it would be something casual — a walk in the park, or along the river, or a couple drinks at a bar before we had a quick romp and said goodnight.
When June turned to July, the summer heat was unbearable, and I truly felt everything between us bubbling up inside me.
But I knew it was only a matter of time before the whistle would blow and the pot would boil over.