by Parker, Ali
“Uh huh.” Grace folded her arms. “I don’t know who you’re trying to convince, me or yourself, but this guy is into you and you’re into him, too. Why wouldn’t you be? He’s dashing, funny, intelligent.”
“Stop it.”
“I’m just saying.”
“Well stop saying it.”
Grace fell quiet for a minute, but the knowing little smirk on her lips never went away. Finally, she changed the subject. “Have you heard back from any of the jobs you applied to at the end of last week?”
The giddy feeling in my chest ebbed away. “No, nothing yet.”
“Keep your chin up. Someone will follow up with you. It’s all about timing.”
“Come on, Grace. Unemployment is no joke right now. There are too many people vying for the same jobs. I have no qualifications. On top of that, nobody wants to hire someone who just spent a year abroad. It’s like they know I’m going to up and leave the first chance I get.”
Grace gazed thoughtfully at the fireplace. The electric flames flickered and glowed. I loved our cozy living room on a rainy day. Even though I’d hardly gotten homesick during my travels, there had been lonely afternoons where I lay on flat mattresses and stared at water-stained ceilings in hostels and longed for this kind of ambiance and comfort.
“Maybe it’s time to change your strategy,” Grace said.
“Strategy?”
“Your game plan is to find work, pull in money for a year so you can save as much as you can, and travel again, yes?”
“Yes.”
Grace nodded. “Well, have you considered finding work that’s remote? There are plenty of jobs out there where all you need to be successful is your laptop. Which, newsflash, you have. You could work while you travel. That way—I don’t know—a year and a half from now, if you’re living your best life in Singapore or something, you don’t have to come home because funds ran out.”
“How have I not thought of that?”
“I don’t know,” Grace said. “But it might be worth looking into.”
“My parents would lose their damn minds.”
Grace laughed. “Maybe, but that’s only because they wouldn’t understand it. And that’s okay. They don’t have to.”
My phone buzzed.
It took all of my self-restraint not to pick it up and see if the message was from Walker. Grace either hadn’t heard it or she was doing a valiant job of pretending she hadn’t because she didn’t pester me about who it was.
My mind definitely pestered me though.
“I think you should look into it,” Grace said as she pushed up out of her corner of the sofa. She made her way into the kitchen where she filled our polka dot kettle with water. “Want a cup of tea? I’m going to brew a pot and head back up to finish my work for the day.”
“Sure,” I said.
While she was in the kitchen, I checked my phone.
‘So Chris Evans is your type, hey? That doesn’t bode well for my dainty artist’s wrists.’
I snorted. Grace, who now had her head in the fridge looking for a snack, straightened and peered over at me. “There’s no way you’re giggling at a job posting.”
“It’s Walker,” I admitted as I typed out a response.
‘His best feature is definitely not his wrists, so I don’t think you need to feel all that threatened.’
“Are you going to see him again?” Grace pulled out a cutting board and started slicing some Havarti jalapeno cheese to put on crackers.
“I don’t know.” I hope so.
“I think you should.”
“That’s because you want me to fall in love with him so I fall out of love with traveling,” I said pointedly.
“That’s not true.”
“No?”
Grace popped a cracker and cheese in her mouth, chewed, swallowed, and tapped her foot while she waited for the kettle to boil. “No. Okay, well maybe a little bit. But I also don’t recall you ever being so giggly over a guy before. It’s nice. You’re not so… snarly.”
“Snarly?”
She shrugged one shoulder. “You have a tendency to be a bit sharp tongued. You know that. But this guy softens that sharpness a bit. I mean look at you. You’re glowing.”
“I am not,” I said firmly.
“Bullshit. You like him. And he obviously likes you. He’s texting you at two in the afternoon on a Tuesday. And based on how you’re acting, it’s not the usual ‘let’s smash’ or ‘Netflix and chill’ garbage the immature boys like to text. This guy has something to offer, Nora.”
“Your point?”
The kettle began to steam and whistle. Grace poured the boiling water over two English breakfast tea bags in our white and gold teapot. It had been a gift from her parents when we first moved into this palace—a little housewarming present that I also reaped the benefits of.
My parents had given me a plant.
“My point is if he asks you out again, tell him you’ll go,” Grace said simply.
“Maybe I will.”
“Good.”
“Good,” I said.
Grace laughed and rolled her eyes. “Poor bastard has no idea what he’s getting himself into.”
“No, he does not.”
Once the tea was steeped, Grace brought me a cup fixed just how I liked it with a splash of milk and a teaspoon and a half of sugar. I sipped at the edge, scalded my lips, but kept drinking anyway as I abandoned the text message thread I had going with Walker and started looking into remote work on the browser on my phone.
Dozens of options started pouring through that I had never even thought of. There were opportunities to test and leave product reviews. One, which seemed initially promising but ended up being nothing but a time-consuming rabbit hole, invited people to take surveys and get paid. Turned out the profits were pennies and the time spent on the surveys didn’t balance out in the end. I kept on looking.
There were people looking high and low for editors, freelance writers, customer service reps for online products, social media account managers, and so many more.
Nothing stood out to me until I came across one posting with the words “Travel Writer” in bold font at the top. Curious, I clicked the link and read the description.
The job invited everyone who was well traveled and had good command of the English language to apply with a sample of a piece about a place they’d been to. I became immediately overwhelmed by ideas of what I could write.
I could write about my first day in London and how the sight of Westminster Abbey made me feel like I hadn’t just made the biggest mistake of my life by dropping out of dental school. The flight from New York to London had left me wrought with doubt over making the wrong decision. At the time, both of my parents were furious with me for flushing my future down the drain as well as the money they’d spent to put me in the program in the first place. Guilt had eaten away at me until I curled toward the window in my seat to hide my tears from the stranger sitting beside me.
They’d seen anyway and offered me the brownie that came with our in-flight dinner.
I’d accepted the offer but it hadn’t made me feel any better.
Nothing did until I saw Westminster Abbey with my own eyes. The gothic architecture stole my breath away. I’d never seen something so beautiful in my life, and knowing that I’d gotten myself there on my own and knowing there was so much more of the world for me to see and explore were the only things that lifted the weight of my crushing doubt.
I left my spot on the sofa, grabbed my laptop from my room, and started writing.
The words flowed from the tips of my fingers as the memories flickered in my mind like a movie reel.
When I was done, I edited it as best I could, read it a hundred times over, aloud and in my head, and followed the application instructions to send my sample along.
After I hit send, I immediately texted Walker.
‘I have a plan for work that I can’t wait to share with you.’
He texted back three minutes later.
‘Dinner on Thursday?’
I bit my bottom lip and smiled so big my eyes crinkled up and I could hardly see my phone screen. I texted him back as butterflies took flight in my stomach.
‘Heck yes.’
Chapter 16
Walker
Aayla lived in a studio apartment six blocks down from the restaurant she’d told me about during our studio session yesterday, where I’d nearly finished the piece of her that I was working on. She’d approved of the painting yesterday after certain details were touched up to capture the depth of her eyes and the rise of her cheekbones. I’d taken her little comment from our last appointment seriously when she seemed somewhat put out that the painting didn’t quite look like her.
Sure, it still wasn’t the exact likeness of her, but I was making my way closer to her features and less toward the fictional version I’d created in my head.
I couldn’t help that sometimes I went astray. It wasn’t that I thought she should look the way I’d painted her, but rather I liked to take certain creative liberties when I worked to make something truly mine. I wasn’t a portrait artist. I didn’t pride myself on sitting down and putting someone to canvas exactly how they were in the flesh. For me, that took too much of the fun out of it. That was why I liked to embellish with texture and other devices like shadows and metallics. It pulled everything up a level and added a bit of dramatic flair that, in my not so humble opinion, belonged in art.
My work required imagination.
The restaurant Aayla insisted we went to this evening for our date did not.
It was a modern, sleek, cardboard cut-out lounge. Upon stepping through the doors, a thin hostess with wispy blonde hair, who couldn’t have been more than eighteen, offered to take our coats, collected two menus from her podium, and led us into the depths of the restaurant.
It was quiet and still.
Couples sat at tables eating quietly and talking amongst themselves. Some sat looking at their phones, hardly looking up at each other.
The bar sat right smack in the middle of the room. Stools surrounded it and about eighty percent of the clientele sitting there were men watching sports and drinking beer. The bartenders amused the men, topped off their drinks, and made cocktails for other tables, all the while wearing well-rehearsed customer-service smiles and tight black dresses that were almost identical to each other.
There wasn’t much room for creativity here.
Our table was tucked away near the back of the restaurant. The lighting was dim but admittedly elegant, and it painted Aayla in dramatic shadows as she took her seat and unwrapped her burgundy scarf from around her neck.
She set it on the booth beside her and picked up her menu. “I’ve been looking forward to this all day.”
Had she? Should I have been?
Why hadn’t I?
Nora.
“Me too,” I lied.
Aayla slid the other menu toward me. I flipped it open and peered down at the options, which were as uninspiring as the joint itself. I scanned the entrees: roast dry rub chicken with rosemary, pot roast with red wine gravy and green beans, tenderloin steak smothered in a peppercorn sauce.
There were other menu items that were mildly appealing. I opted for the pot roast to pair nicely with a glass of merlot. Aayla ordered, unsurprisingly, a fresh arugula and apple salad with dates and pecans with a side of chardonnay.
“I prefer zinfandel,” she said after the waitress dropped off our drinks. Aayla took a sip. Her cheeks puckered. “But sometimes you have to compromise.”
I arched an eyebrow. What was she going on about?
Aayla giggled lightly. “I’m limiting my sugars right now.”
“Ah.”
“A woman has to make sacrifices to stay trim. You don’t think this happens all by itself, do you?” Aayla gestured down at herself. She looked incredible in her skin-tight emerald dress. It hugged her model-like form and cut off above the knee, revealing long legs any man with eyes would dream about getting between.
I had no idea what to say. She’d backed me into a corner. When it came to a woman’s body, especially where there were subtle undertones about her size—regardless of whether she was a size one or size eighteen—I chose not to have an opinion.
It was none of my business.
“Well,” I said, hoping I was going in the right direction, “you look beautiful tonight, Aayla.”
She smiled and rested her chin in her hand. “The salad will be worth it just for that. Thank you, Walker. You’re very sweet when you want to be. Did you know that?”
“Only when I want to be? What am I the rest of the time?”
Aayla shrugged a slender shoulder. The soft light in the exposed ceiling shone down on her skin and seemed to make her glow. “Focused. Distracted.”
“You mean in the studio?”
“Yes, it’s not very often I keep male company who can pay attention to anything else in a room besides me. You keep me on my toes. I have to work for your attention. And at last, it seems that I have it.”
For some reason, I felt like I’d just waded out into dark, troubled waters. Or quicksand.
“You are an impossible woman not to notice,” I told her, expecting this was the kind of thing she was used to hearing. Apparently, she didn’t tire of compliments because she smiled again and batted her lashes bashfully. “The studio is a place where I separate work and play. It’s not personal.”
“Oh, I know, darling. This is just a nice change of pace, is all.” She tipped her head back and sipped her wine. She watched me over the rim of her glass all the while, so I picked up my wine and took a sip too. “You know, I’m not opposed to the idea of you painting me in the nude in another setting.”
I coughed into my wine glass. Beads of red sprayed against the rim.
Aayla giggled. “Am I too forward?”
I pressed a fist to my chest and coughed, trying to dislodge the wine from my throat. “No, I don’t believe in being too forward. You just… caught me off guard.”
Aayla crossed one leg over the other and watched me the way a cat might watch a mouse—a mouse that said cat had pinned by its tail under its paw. “Have you ever painted a woman from the comfort of your own home?”
“No, I try not to mix work with pleasure.”
“Maybe we should try it.”
If Wes were here, he’d be rolling on his back laughing at me. This wasn’t what I’d had in mind when I asked Aayla on this date. At that time, Nora hadn’t even come into the picture and I’d asked Aayla out simply to appease Wes and show him that I was just fine with or without the social commitment of dating. Now I regretted that choice tenfold.
How was I supposed to go back to the studio for one last session with Aayla when she was hitting on me like this? It seemed highly unlikely that things would return to the professional level we’d had so far.
Damn you, Wes, for getting in my head.
“I’ve never been on a date with an artist before,” Aayla mused as she swirled her wine in dainty fingers. “Are you usually this reserved?”
“Compared to what?”
“Well, my usual type are CEOs or men in uniform. I have a particular soft spot for military men. Something about that fit that just gets my engine running, you know?”
No, I didn’t know.
Before I had a chance to answer, our meals arrived. Grateful for the interruption, I picked up my cutlery and dug in as Aayla took tiny bites and chewed delicately.
She ate a quarter of the salad before putting her fork down and sitting back with her wine.
I nodded at her bowl. “Are you finished?”
“I’m stuffed.” She patted her very flat stomach.
“Did you eat before you came?”
“God no,” she said, shaking her head.
I held my tongue. There was nothing I could say to bring value to this conversation. Not only that but Aayla’s eating habits were entirely her
business and not my own, and whether or not I thought she was actually full or not wasn’t relevant.
What was relevant was how badly I wished I was somewhere else.
Or rather, how badly I wished I was with someone else.
Nora.
If she’d accompanied me on this date, both of us would already have critiqued this restaurant down to its bare bones. We’d have supplied commentary to the moving mouths of the sports fans at the bar, rolled our eyes at the poor female employees being forced to wear skin-tight dresses and four-inch heels, and gorged ourselves on a decent-sized meal that might have made the whole affair worthwhile in the end.
If not, there was no doubt in my mind we would have gone somewhere else for a greasy burger to appease our cravings.
I wondered how long it had been since Aayla ate a burger or something similar.
“You never answered my question,” the goddess of a woman across the table from me purred.
I never looked up from my plate. “What question is that?”
“Would you like to take me home and paint me in the nude under more intimate circumstances?”
This time, I’d played my cards right. There was no wine or food in my mouth, so I had nothing to choke on in surprise. Instead, I dabbed my mouth with a napkin and straightened. “I think it would be best to keep such things to the studio—for my peace of mind and our working relationship.”
Her head tilted to the side by a miniscule degree. “Is that all we are to you, Walker? A working relationship? Why did you ask me to dinner?”
Shit. “To see if there was something more between us.”
“And?” she pressed, dark eyes narrowing, lips pressing into a firm line, tension gathering in her shoulders.
“And,” I said, choosing my words slowly, “I think it would be best if we kept it that way. Professional. Artist and model.”
Aayla’s sharp stare never wavered. She picked up her fork and skewered her arugula the way I imagined she wanted to skewer me. “Fine,” she said before taking a big bite.
Despite her anger, I almost smiled. I knew you were still hungry.
Chapter 17