The Girl in the Painting

by Monroe, Max

  Her blue eyes turn hazy, and all at once, she blinks and averts her gaze.

  “Well, I’m sorry for bothering you today,” she whispers, “but I just had to meet you.”

  “You didn’t bother me, Indy,” I reassure her.

  And then I do the only thing I can think of to reassure myself that this isn’t the last I’ll see of her. “I was thinking about grabbing a late lunch. Would you like to join me?”

  She opens her mouth and closes it, trying to make words come out, but instead, another quiet moment spreads between us, and I let it.

  The caged little bird can’t sing right now. She’s too uncertain. Too overwhelmed.

  All of the things neither of us has said are written all over her face in shaky script.

  “Um…I really appreciate the offer, but I have somewhere I need to be. It was nice meeting you,” she mutters, shrugging on her coat and heading for the door without delay.

  I follow her as calmly as I can manage until she turns back to look at me over her shoulder.

  “Goodbye, Ansel,” she says softly, and I have the insane urge to chase after her even after the door has closed.

  Instead, I let her go.

  But I know this won’t be the last time I see her.

  Indy Davis.

  It can’t be.

  Indy

  “Family Feud?” Lily questions in outrage between bites of lasagna. “We’d be horrible. We’re more Wheel of Fortune people than anything else.”

  I nearly choke on my garlic bread. Wheel of Fortune? The whole lot of us would get slaughtered. We’d be lucky to walk away without owing Pat Sajak money.

  This, right here, is family dinner at the Davis’s. A night with too much wine, the soft sounds of my dad’s favorite jazz bands playing in the background, my mom’s delicious food, and arguments over ridiculous shit like which game show my family could win.

  The real answer? None of them. But I keep my thoughts to myself.

  While I normally enjoy the company of my family, tonight feels like more of a task than anything else, and the last thing I want to do is incite a riot because I don’t think we’re smart enough to spin the big wheel with Vanna White.

  “Don’t be dramatic, Lil,” my father says, and a piece of cheese from his last bite of lasagna dangles from his beard. It’s normally good manners to let someone know they have food on their face, but when it comes to Mac Davis, we’ve all learned just to let the man be until he finishes his meal. Otherwise, we’d be busy all fucking night.

  “We’d kick ass at the Feud,” he adds after a sip of wine. “And your mother would be our ace in the hole.”

  “Aw, thanks, Mac.” My mother smiles, and the slight waves of the laugh lines around her lips appear. “But I’ll be honest, if I’m going on any game show, it has to be Jeopardy.”

  Instantly, my sister bursts into laughter.

  It’s completely warranted. Our mother’s knowledge of history goes as far as 1990, and her literature expertise ends with Rachael Ray cookbooks and The Notebook.

  “Jeopardy?” Aunt Bethany, my mom’s sister, questions with hilarity in her eyes. “Have you lost your mind? You’d have better luck coming up with an invention for Shark Tank.”

  “I’ll have you know, I’m really good at Jeopardy, Bethie.” Mom is unconvinced and offended. “Tell her, Mac.”

  “She’s good.” Another bite of lasagna. Another piece of cheese added to the beard. “Really good.”

  It’s safe to say everyone at this table has had too much wine.

  Besides me.

  The conversation switches to who Alex Trebek would like the best, and I can hardly focus on the chatter.

  I push a bite of my mom’s lasagna into my mouth and force myself to chew.

  My appetite is nonexistent, which is rare considering lasagna night usually concludes with me feeling like an overinflated balloon.

  But I can’t stop thinking about yesterday.

  About the gallery.

  About him.

  I met the man behind the painting. Yesterday morning, I barely knew who Ansel Bray was, and now I can hardly think about anything else.

  I hate it.

  One glance in his direction and you know he’s incredibly handsome.

  Like a modern-day James Dean. He filled the role perfectly when he walked into the gallery yesterday, an exquisitely worn black leather jacket covering his strong torso, with jeans and boots finishing off the look. His brown hair was perfectly messy, and he had the fullest lips I’ve ever seen on a man.

  But it’s his eyes that are the most prominent in my mind.

  Honey-brown with sparkles of gold, they suit him incredibly well. And I instantly felt comfortable looking into them.

  Seeing him, talking to him, it was equal parts thrilling and terrifying.

  I wanted to crawl inside his brain and try to understand why. Why does the girl in his painting look so much like me?

  But I could barely find the words to introduce myself, much less ask him all of the questions racing through my mind, and I don’t think he would have had the answers if I’d managed.

  He seemed just as shocked to see me in the flesh as I was to see myself inside his painting.

  By the time I left the gallery, I was overwhelmed.

  It was too much.

  He was too much.

  But now that I’ve had some distance, I regret declining his offer to go to lunch with a stupid fucking excuse.

  Too much or not, I want more time with him.

  “Earth to Indy.” My sister’s voice pulls me from my daydream, and I look up from my plate to meet her eyes. “You okay over there?”

  “Yeah,” I say, clearing figurative cobwebs from my throat. “Of course.”

  “You sure, sweetie?” my mom asks, and I sigh.

  Great. Now they’re all going to get involved.

  “I’m just a little tired tonight, that’s all,” I excuse and then toss in a little white lie to sweeten the deal. “I was up late last night working on lesson plans.”

  I’ve heard that the best lies are founded in truth, and this one fits the bill. Because I was up late last night. I just wasn’t thinking about anything even remotely related to work.

  I was trying not to Google.

  The impulse last night to search anything and everything about Ansel Bray was so intense I could hardly stand it, but I just couldn’t let myself fall down that rabbit hole.

  What if I found something that terrified me? Drew me to him?

  Hell, I’m not entirely sure those questions aren’t the same thing.

  I silently groan at the mental battle and pop a piece of garlic bread into my mouth. It’s savory and warm and just the right size to keep word vomit from spilling out.

  “Where’s Miller?” Aunt Bethany asks, and my mom tilts her head to the side in confusion.

  “Miller?”

  “Indigo’s boyfriend,” my aunt clarifies, and my mom rolls her eyes.

  “Pretty sure you mean Matt,” Lily corrects with a wry grin.

  The mere mention of Matt’s name makes my stomach drop with guilt. I haven’t thought about him at all today. Truthfully, I’ve barely thought about him since he left yesterday morning.

  At least you remembered to check-in this morning and make sure he had a safe flight, I try to reassure myself, but it only magnifies my guilt. Oh, yeah, world’s best girlfriend, right here…

  “His name is Matt?” Aunt Bethany looks at me, and I nod. “Well, shit, maybe if you brought him around more, I’d remember his name.”

  “I do bring him around,” I counter, but my sister flashes me a look that says I’m full of shit. “Well, I try to bring him around, but he travels a lot for work.”

  Aunt Bethany purses her lips. “It’d be nice if at least one of you girls managed to find a husband. I’d love a great-niece or nephew, you know, while I’m still alive.”

  Lily snorts. “You’re sixty, Aunt Bethie. Pretty sure you’ve got a few more
good years in you.”

  Our aunt shrugs and takes a hearty drink of her wine. Her third glass of wine, mind you. “I guess we should at least be thankful this one—” she nods toward me “—has a boyfriend. You, on the other hand, I’m starting to wonder if you’re a lost cause.”

  Uh oh. The storm is a-brewin’.

  Wine, Aunt Bethie, and Lily mix like oil and water.

  “A lost cause?” Lily questions, her voice rising in irritation. “That’s a little harsh, don’t you think? I’m only thirty-one, for fuck’s sake.”

  “Lil!” my mother screeches. “Language!”

  But they ignore her completely.

  My aunt clucks her tongue. “Thirty-one is only four years away from thirty-five, and you know what they say about thirty-five…” My aunt tsks, and Hurricane Lily is now headed for landfall.

  “If it’s something about my eggs going bad, then I don’t want to hear it.”

  “Well, it’s true,” Aunt Bethany continues. “Fertility plummets by the time you reach your mid-thirties. Hell, by that time, menopause might even be kicking in, and you’re more likely to be killed by a terrorist than to get married. I saw it in Sleepless in Seattle.”

  Lily slams her fork onto the table. “Well, God forbid I don’t get married or have kids, you know, like you, Aunt Bethie. And Sleepless in Seattle is a damn movie, not a representation of fact.”

  I cringe.

  Oh boy…

  If there is one thing Aunt Bethany is good for, it’s pissing off my sister with her old-fashioned mind-set on things like marriage and kids. Which is insanely hypocritical considering she’s a sixty-year-old spinster who has never been married and has exactly zero children.

  Instantly, my mom tries to put out the flames. “How about we…uh…change the subject?” I’m impressed by her diplomatic nature’s ability to overpower her love for Tom Hanks.

  My sister and aunt engage in some sort of stare-off.

  And my dad, well, he just keeps eating. Dinner is Mac’s favorite meal of the day. It’d take something like a meteor crashing into Earth to distract him from his food.

  “Lily.” Mom continues to fight for peace. “What kind of article should your dad and I look forward to next?”

  The stare-off continues for another moment or two, but eventually, my sister pulls her eyes away from our aunt.

  “I’m working on a piece about Ansel Bray.”

  “Ansel Bray?” my mom asks. “His name sounds familiar. Why do I know him?”

  My stomach dives into my shoes at the sound of his name.

  Shit…maybe we should go back to bad eggs and menopause.

  “Ansel Bray, you say?” my dad finally decides to join the conversation, cheese beard and all. “Isn’t that the artist who’s blind?”

  “Oh yeah!” my mom chimes in, equal parts cheery and relieved that she’s managed to remember how she knows him and change the subject all at once. “He’s not blind anymore. He had transplant surgery a few years back.”

  “That’s him.” Lily nods. “The other night, I went to his art exhibition with Indy and Matt.”

  “Matt?” Aunt Bethany scrunches up her nose. “Who’s Matt?”

  “Indy’s boyfriend, Bethie,” my mother repeats on a sigh. In addition to being a shit-stirrer, Aunt Bethie has a memory that’s only slightly better than Dory from Finding Nemo.

  “Oh, right. The one we never see.”

  Dear God, it’s me, Indy. Please send help.

  “You know,” Lily continues, and I’m not so sure I like the smile that’s sliding its way across her lips. “One of Ansel Bray’s paintings looks like Indy.”

  My dad’s eyes perk up. “Is that right?”

  “Yep.” Lily turns her stupid smile to me, and I kind of want to stab her with my fork. “The girl in his painting looks almost identical to her.”

  “N-no.” I nearly choke on my own tongue and lie through my teeth at the same time. “Don’t be ridiculous, Lil.”

  “Oh, come on,” she retorts. “You know it looks like you. Hell, even Matt thought it looked like you.”

  “Maybe a little,” I continue the lie, because what else am I going to do?

  Tell the outrageous truth?

  The girl in the painting looks so much like me that the sheer shock of it made me vomit. And, oh, by the way, I went ahead and tracked down Ansel Bray. We talked. He’s beautiful and nice, and he’s been on my mind ever since…

  No thank you. I’ll keep that crazy shit to myself.

  “I’m hoping to get an interview with him,” Lily adds, and my jaw goes slack.

  “What?” I question. “Why?”

  “Why wouldn’t I?” she answers like I’m crazy. “He’s the hottest topic in the arts right now. Although, I have to admit, he’s not the easiest man to get in touch with. His assistant is pretty much the worst.”

  Dear God, it’s me again. Can you do me a teensy tiny favor and make sure this interview never happens?

  If there’s anything I’ve learned in the past two minutes of this dinner, it’s that I never should’ve invited my sister to that opening.

  Also, my family is crazy, and my dad’s beard can hold a surprising amount of mozzarella cheese.

  When my mom starts asking Lily more questions about Ansel Bray, I excuse myself from the table and take my barely eaten plate of food into the kitchen.

  It’s all too weird, and I already feel guilty about not telling my sister, my best friend in the whole wide world, about my little day-trip to see Ansel yesterday.

  But how can I explain something to her that I don’t even understand myself?

  Once my plate is scraped clean and in the dishwasher, I quietly sneak into my dad’s “office.” He calls it that, but it’s really just a television room with a lot of books and a desktop computer he hardly uses.

  I run my finger along the edges of his books and savor the one room in the house that’s devoid of conversations that stress me out.

  But it doesn’t take long before I’m not alone.

  “So, tell me, Indigo, how is teaching going?” my dad asks and sits down in his favorite leather chair. “Still happy at that private school?”

  “I can’t complain.” I shrug. “I love the kids.”

  “You still giving private music lessons, too?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “You have a lot of students taking them?”

  I nod. “More than I have time for, if I’m being honest.”

  “That’s good,” he says and taps his fingers along the armrests. “It’s nice to hear not all the kids in this country are killing their brains with video games and YouTube videos.”

  I grin at that.

  “The world always needs more music, Indy. It’s what keeps us going. It’s what inspires us. It’s what connects us all.”

  Mac Davis, while retired now, was a music professor at NYU. He also played saxophone in a jazz band for most of my life and is an expert on the piano.

  The only time music isn’t playing in this house is when he’s sleeping. Miles Davis, Billie Holiday, Bach, Frank Sinatra, and Led Zeppelin, I heard them all for the first time because of him.

  His tastes are about as eclectic as they can get, and there is no doubt his love for all things music was passed on to me. Ever since I was a little girl, music has had a pivotal presence in my life. My first true love.

  “You know, I sure do miss seeing you play,” my dad says softly, and my heart clenches tight in my chest.

  I don’t respond, but he’s too lost in whatever memories flit about inside his mind to see my visible discomfort.

  “I don’t think I’ll ever forget the night you graduated from Julliard and the New York Orchestra found out you were something special.” His words are wistful and sad at the same time.

  Tears threaten to prick my eyes, but I discreetly pinch the skin of my thigh with my thumb and forefinger to distract myself from the emotional pain even the idea of playing publicly brings me.

&nb
sp; “I hope one day I’ll get to see you play again, Indigo,” my dad adds before he eventually drops the subject altogether and turns on the nightly news on the television.

  I wish I could tell him he will.

  But I can’t.

  The tragic truth? I don’t know if I’ll ever be that girl again.

  Ansel

  I’ve only managed to get half of my body into the front office of my studio when Lucy holds out her hand and wiggles her fingers, demanding, “Give me your phone.”

  She’s obviously been waiting on my arrival for a while, but she’s going to be waiting even longer for me to follow orders she barks at me.

  Like, however long it takes for hell to freeze over.

  “No.”

  “Seriously.” She purses her silicone-filled lips. “Give me your phone.”

  “Seriously, no,” I emphasize.

  Luce is unaffected, and apparently, willing to take her life into her own hands because, without care or caution, she reaches into the pocket of my jacket and grabs my phone herself.

  What. The. Fuck.

  “Jesus Christ. You’re fired!”

  My anger is an inconvenience to her, and she shows it through a scowl. “Someone named Lily Davis has been demon-dialing the studio, and I’m literally done trying to avoid her and her obnoxious calls. You need to speak with her because I’m positive she is going to drive me insane until you do.”

  “Who is this woman?”

  “A columnist with the New York Press.”

  “Luce,” I growl, but she ignores me completely and uses one dramatic, red-painted fingernail to tap send on the call.

  “Talk to her,” she orders, placing the phone to my ear.

  “You really are fired,” I mouth as it rings.

  She rolls her eyes in the face of my glare and steps away—out of reach.

  Probably a smart idea.

  I’m about to end the call when a woman answers. “This is Lily Davis.”

  I’m still half tempted to hang up, but if Lily is even half as dogged as Luce claims she is, she’ll just call back. This time, thanks to my soon-to-be ex-assistant, on my personal phone.

  “Hello,” I say as I glower at Luce. “This is Ansel Bray.”

  “Wow. What a pleasant surprise,” she replies. “I’ve been trying to schedule an interview with you, but your assistant is the opposite of accommodating.”