Say Yes by Kandi Steiner

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Art of Seduction

After stuffing our bellies with delicious white truffle ravioli from a small restaurant down the street from our dorm, Angela and I found ourselves in the back corner of a wine bar called Vino di Fiume.

I wasn’t sure if it was always where the younger crowd gathered, or if the students in our program had just taken over since we arrived in Florence two weeks ago, but this seemed to be the place for everyone studying abroad. Students lined every inch of the bar and took up every seated table, too.

The lights were low, a combination of candles and dimly lit chandeliers, and the wall behind the bar was lined with more wine than I had seen in my entire life. Soft Italian music played from a boombox behind the bar, too, but you could only hear it if you were ordering a drink. Otherwise, it was the steady hum of conversation and laughter, which I loved just as much.

“Man, I bet this place is great during the holidays,” Angela mused, looking around the dark bar. “Did I ever tell you about the time I hosted my family for Thanksgiving?”

I shook my head.

Angela scoffed. “I don’t know why I even wanted to. I think part of me wanted to be like my grandma. She’s always hosted our holidays, you know? She’d cook her heart out for Thanksgiving, have the biggest and best tree every Christmas.” She smiled. “But I was in college. Sure, I had a little apartment that I shared with a few girlfriends rather than a dorm, but still, I had no business hosting a holiday.”

“How many people did you host?”

“Fifteen,” she said after taking a sip of her wine. “My whole family. Parents, grandparents, mom’s sister, and two of my cousins, my three brothers and their significant others.”

I laughed. “How in the world did you fit them all in an apartment?”

“Uncomfortably,” Angela answered. “My roommate had a dog at the time. Bastard jumped up on the table when we weren’t looking and ate all the cheese and sausage we’d cut for appetizers. And because I’m a kid and not an adult, I made instant mashed potatoes and stuffing.” She shook her head with a wide grin. “That was the angriest I’ve ever seen my grandma — including when I told her I was lesbian.”

I chuckled.

“Everything just went to shit. I cooked the turkey too long, so it was dry, and I forgot to take the giblets out so that all got cooked along with it in this gross bag of juice.”

She wrinkled her nose as I laughed again, imagining the scene.

“We ended up driving all over town trying to find somewhere open for us to eat, and there was this small, family-owned dive bar just like this.” She looked around with a soft smile. “We played pool and Grandpa spent at least a hundred dollars on the juke box. The family who owned it joined us after a while. We shut the place down.” Angela’s eyebrows bent together. “That was the last time we were all together and happy. It was before I told them.”

I frowned, reaching over to cover her hand just like she’d done to me in the room.

“Yeah,” she said after a minute, shaking off the memory as she reached for her wine. “I bet this place is great during the holidays.”

I smiled, looking around at the exposed brick and low-hanging chandeliers. “It does have quite the vibe.”

“What does your family do for the holidays?”

I shrugged. “Usually it’s just the three of us; my mom, Dad, and me. We have a tradition of getting McDonald’s on Christmas Eve.”

“Ew.”

“I know,” I admitted on a laugh. “It’s weird because when we do go to my grandma’s house, she has all these traditions and dishes she cooks every year. She makes the best green bean casserole,” I added, mouth salivating at the thought of it. “But we don’t go very often. I think it hurts my mom to be around her siblings and all their perfect kids.”

“Perfect kids?” Angela said after swallowing another drink of wine. “Pretty sure that’s an oxymoron.”

I tried to smile. “My mom is one of five kids. She wanted to have five kids, too. But then I came first and… well…” I held up my right hand, wiggling my pinky and thumb as evidence. “She thought I’d be a handful, no pun intended, so she and Dad decided one was enough.”

Angela watched me for a minute before she said, “You’re not responsible for your parents’ decisions. And for what it’s worth, I think you would be a rad big sister.”

“Right now, I’d rather be a rad artist.”

“Well, let’s get you drunk. Maybe that’s the missing piece. Lots of artists experimented with drugs in their prime, you know. Just look at Picasso.”

I laughed, reaching for my wine glass and tilting it to meet hers. They met with a satisfying ting in the middle of the table, and at that exact moment, I looked behind my roommate and found the boy from my art class.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“What?” Angela asked with wide eyes, whipping around to look where my eyes were trained.

“That’s him. That’s the boy from class.”

I didn’t have to tell her which one I meant. It was easy to see from the confidence radiating off him. It might as well have been a pungent cologne for how he wore it, his shoulders square and wide, eyes lazy and a bit glazed, a sideways smirk playing on his lips. He looked carefree and a little bored, like he could be anywhere he wanted to be in the world but chose to wander into this bar just for fun.

His hair was even messier than it had been in class, tousled on top of his head like he’d just had his hands running through it. He did at least change his clothes since I’d last seen him, but there was no evidence of a shower. He wore wide-legged, baggy jeans and a cream-and-brown plaid button-up with a denim jacket over it. It was far too hot to be wearing that jacket, as was it far too dark to be wearing sunglasses inside, but he donned both.

“Ugh,” I muttered under my breath, shaking my head as I lifted my wine glass to my lips. “Doesn’t he just exude prick energy?”

“That’s one word for it,” Angela muttered back. When she turned around to face me again, she clicked her tongue. “I know him. Liam Benson.”

“How the hell do you know him?”

“Last week, I ran into this girl crying in the common room, on the first floor of the dorm building, ya know?” She shook her head. “She was heartbroken over this guy who hooked up with her and then ignored her the next day. One guess who that guy was.”

I sighed. “Liam Benson.”

“Ding ding ding,” she said, winding her finger up above her head. “Don’t worry — I cheered her up. It took all night,” she added with a smirk. “But I didn’t mind.”

“How do you do that?” I asked on a laugh.

“What? Hook up with straight girls?”

I nodded.

Angela shrugged. “Every girl has an appreciation for beauty in other women. And sometimes, especially when we’re heartbroken over yet another man, we decide to give the other team a shot. I mean, I’ve always known I was attracted to women, but some girls don’t wake up to that fact until they’re older.”

“So you just flip a switch, huh?”

“Not always,” she said after a sip. “Sometimes they wake up the next morning and slip out of my room before the sun comes up and I never hear from them again. They scratch an itch and never look back. But sometimes…” She arched a brow with a wide grin. “Our team needs to order a new jersey, if you know what I mean.”

“Well, I guess I can’t blame her. If I was going to be hot for any woman, it would most certainly be you.”

“Sorry, roomie,” Angela said with a wink. “I don’t shit where I eat.”

“Gross.”

She waved her hand. “It’s an expression.”

We both chuckled, and then Angela grabbed our empty glasses and headed to the bar for a refill. At this point, we should have just bought a bottle, but at least this way we got to try different blends.

I watched Liam from my dark little corner, fighting the urge to roll my eyes as he put his arm around a beautiful girl I recognized from the Uffizi. He pulled her close and whispered something in her ear that made her laugh and shove him away, only to cuddle into his side a moment later. She started kissing his neck, and at that exact moment, he took off his sunglasses.

And he looked at me.

I should have been embarrassed. I should have torn my gaze away with flaming hot cheeks. But for some reason I couldn’t look away, not even when those dark eyes lit up with recognition of who I was.

I let out a long breath, wishing I had my wine glass so I could at least do something other than stare at him. But he didn’t seem annoyed. If anything, he seemed to enjoy being the subject of my attention.

I didn’t mind it, either.

Until the moment his gaze fell to my right hand.

I had it propped under my chin, not even thinking about it, since it was just me and Angela in the corner. But when he looked at it, that flush I thought I’d feel from him noticing me staring at him finally found me, and I hastily shoved my hand under the table where he couldn’t see it anymore.

His eyes met mine, then, and he frowned, brows bending together to form a thick line between them.

In the next instant, the girl on his arm slid her manicured nails back behind his neck and turned his face until he was looking at her again.

I closed my eyes on an exhale that burned my lungs, shaking my head before I opened them again and looked for Angela. She was still at the bar, our wine glasses full now, but she was caught up in conversation with the bartender.

A beautiful Italian woman who seemed to lean just as much over the bar as Angela, a curious smile on her face.

I know where this is going.

Grabbing my purse off the table, I slid out of the booth and tucked my hair behind one ear, stopping by the bar long enough to tell Angela I was going to head out.

“But I just got this for you!” she complained, motioning to one of the full wine glasses.

I smiled, tapping the bar as my eyes found the bartender’s. “I think you two can handle it.”

The bartender smiled at me first and then Angela, and my roommate gave me a knowing grin before she leaned in and kissed my cheek and told me to be careful walking home.

My hair fell in front of my face as I turned, but I didn’t tuck it behind my ear this time.

I used it as a shield to hide me from Liam Benson as I pushed past him and out into the night.

I didn’t know why I ended up in the classroom.

I didn’t know why, when I left the bar and stepped out into the warm summer evening, my feet decided to walk me in a straight line toward campus.

Maybe I wasn’t ready to go home. Maybe I didn’t feel like sleeping yet. Maybe I was still worked up from the day and needed to walk it off.

Maybe I wanted to see what Liam Benson had painted.

Whatever the case, I found myself alone in the classroom — one Professor Beneventi gave each of us the combination to unlock so that we could work whenever inspiration struck us. Last night, the room had been filled with students finishing up their projects. Tonight, it was empty and quiet, the atmosphere a little haunting in its aloneness.

I let out an audible sigh as I walked over to my painting first, dropping my purse on the barstool and staring at the canvas. An image that had brought me such joy just twenty-four hours ago now made me want to rip it all to shreds. I no longer saw the bright and beautiful yellows and oranges and reds. I no longer saw some of my best brush work in the river, or the clarity of the people walking the streets even when using thick oil. I no longer saw a landscape I’d be proud to hang in my home or to see displayed in a gallery.

I only saw mediocrity.

And suddenly I understood what the professor had said.

It was predictable.

Shaking my head, I turned my back on the painting and walked along the edge of the room, eyes glancing at the other works as I did. Some students had taken theirs when they left, but most of them remained, and I saw some that were far worse than mine and just as many that were better.

I painted my first picture when I was three years old using a watercolor set my grandmother had given me. To this day, I swear that was my first memory. The first little snapshot of time my brain held onto was the splashes of blue and purple watercolor on that white sheet of paper.

It was the first time I’d shown promising use of my small hand.

My parents had celebrated the victory, hoping it would mean more activity from my underdeveloped hand. And sure enough, I started using it to play, to hold things, and to explore the world as a three-year-old does.

Painting was the first thing to ever inspire me.

It had been the only thing to ever inspire me.

And if I were being honest, it was the only thing I had that made me feel worthwhile.

It was a strange thing, to be born with a deformity, because I didn’t know anything else. Sure, it was easy enough to imagine what it would be like to have a fully developed right hand. But I never felt like I was lacking. As a kid, I never knew I had something wrong with me, that I had fallen short in some way. I did everything I wanted to. I did everything other kids did.

But as I aged, as I became the impressionable child we all become, I began to adopt thoughts from those around me.

I heard kids call me weird, saw them point at my hand with disgusted faces, and felt the shame of being purposely avoided in group projects. I heard their parents soften their voices and explain to their child how I was different, special, and that they shouldn’t point at my hand or talk about it. I heard my own parents whispering to each other in the kitchen, worrying over how I would type, or if I’d play sports, or if I’d ever be in pain as I grew older. I watched TV shows and movies in search of someone like me, but came up empty handed every time. I couldn’t even find a book that had someone like me in it.

Slowly, bit by bit, those realizations stacked on top of each other like a bad game of Tetris in my heart.

And I woke up one day and saw it — that I was less than, that I was different, that I fell short.

I was never able to unsee it after that.

Still, it never hindered me. If anything, I felt even more determined to live life despite my disability, and that determination quadrupled when it came to painting.

I didn’t just want to be an artist.

I wanted to be one of the best artists.

And I didn’t want my hand to have anything to do with my story.

Of course, that was nearly impossible. Every time I won an award at an art festival, or secured a medal for my school at the state competitions, my hand was just as famous in the news coverage as the art I created.

Disabled Teen Wins State with Stunning Fresco.

Girl Wins Art Festival Gold Medal with Underdeveloped Hand

No Hand? No Problem for This Year’s Leonardo da Vinci Award Winner.

No matter what I did, no matter what I created, I couldn’t escape the asterisk that followed every achievement.

I traced my index finger of my left hand along each barstool as I circled the room, and on purpose, I made Liam’s painting my last stop.

When I caught sight of it, I stopped dead in my tracks, my breath hitching in my throat.

It couldn’t have been more different from what I’d painted.

Where I’d filled my blank canvas with color and light, he’d painted his dark and dreary, harsh black oil against slightly softer shades of gray. The juxtaposition of the colors and lines made me uncomfortable, the hair standing on the back of my neck, but in the same breath, the curves and softness of the shapes within the black brought out an entirely different reaction.

Almost akin to arousal.

Though to the naked, untrained eye, the canvas was nothing but blobs of black and white and gray, oil thick and messy from not having proper time to dry, I could see a whole world on that canvas. I saw dozens of women, their curvy shapes filling every inch, thighs spread and chests arching, breasts pushed to the sky. I saw lips opened in ecstasy, and lashes splayed out against freckled cheeks.

It was all so secretive, and the more I looked, the more I found. It was like the painting on the surface was nothing, but if you just took even one moment to pause and stare, it would reveal its entirety to you bit by bit and keep you captivated.

So many emotions swirled inside me staring at that painting. Each new breath came shallower and shallower. My heart raced in my chest. My lips parted. My eyelids became heavy.

Before I could think to stop myself, I reached for the painting with the thumb of my right hand. I couldn’t explain it, but I was desperate to touch the oil, to feel the painting as if it were alive and breathing right alongside me.

“Like what you see?”

I nearly jumped out of my skin at the sound of a deep voice barreling from the classroom door, stumbling backward and barely catching myself before I toppled over the mess of barstools.

When I looked at the intruder, I found a smirking Liam Benson.

“Careful,” he said, shoving his hands in his pockets and leaning against the doorframe. “Paint’s not quite dry yet.”

I zipped my lips together, standing straight and smoothing my left hand over my overalls while the other slid quietly into my pocket. “I wasn’t going to touch it.”

Liam arched a brow. “Weren’t you? Because it sure looked like—”

“I wasn’t,” I insisted, tucking my hair behind my ear. “I was just… there was a fly, and I was waving it away.”

“Ah,” he answered.

An uncomfortable silence fell between us, and I felt the weight of his eyes on me like they were strong hands pinning me to the very spot where I stood.

I cleared my throat, making my way across the room to grab my purse. “I was just leaving, so you can have the place to yourself.”

“I liked your piece.”

I stopped mid-step at that, frowning when I met his gaze.

“I’ve never seen someone capture light with oil like that — not in this century, anyway. And the detail of the buildings, the people in the streets… even the tiny lemons and oranges at the fruit stand had exquisite detail.”

My heart thumped hard in my chest, so loud and furious I heard it reverberate in my ears. “Are you making fun of me?”

“What?” he asked incredulously, pushing off where he was leaning against the doorframe. “Of course not.”

Liam watched me like I had three heads, his brows bent in concentration. I didn’t know him, and yet my annoyance for him was palpable. It shouldn’t have mattered to me that he showed up last minute and created something I never would have even thought of, but jealousy flickered like a candle in my gut, anyway.

“I mean, look, do I understand why Professor B wasn’t impressed?” he continued after a second, tilting his head this way and that. “Yeah. He sees your talent, though. He knows you’ve got something. He’s just challenging you to do more with it.”

“What, like paint pornography the way you did?”

He smirked. “Pornography, huh? Is that what you see when you look at it?”

“It’s what you painted.”

“Are you offended by female bodies?”

“No,” I scoffed. “I just… I don’t see how it relates to the assignment. He said to paint our first week in Florence. He said—”

All the blood drained from my face when it dawned on me that all those supple breasts and lush bottoms and thick thighs were exactly what filled his first week in Italy.

When my eyes flicked to his, he wore an amused smile, but didn’t offer any assistance in helping me put the pieces together.

“We just approached the assignment differently, that’s all,” he said after a moment with a shrug. “But no, I’m not making fun of you. What you painted is beautiful.”

I shook my head, adjusting my purse on my shoulder before I started for the door. “It’s nothing compared to yours,” I mumbled under my breath.

But before I could snake past him and retreat out the door, that stupid boy hooked his hand gently in the crook of my elbow, pulling me to a stop.

My breath caught, chest squeezing, and I could feel the warmth of his hand on my arm, could smell the peppermint on the wave of his breath where it swept over me.

If I turned my head just a quarter inch, I could see the scruff on his jaw up close, I could note the true color of his eyes, I could commit every shape of his face to memory and paint it later.

But I didn’t dare.

“I didn’t realize we were in competition,” he said, his voice low and melty like a stick of butter in a hot skillet.

I swallowed, but still didn’t lift my gaze to his. Instead, I shrugged him off and shoved through the door, back out into the warm summer evening.

This time, I went home.

But sleep never found me.