Painting Kisses

by Melanie Jacobson

  “Don’t let me scare you off. You haven’t even had a chance to check the view.”

  The accuracy of that irritated me. He was scaring me off, but I was smart enough to know when flight made way more sense than fight. Last time standing my ground had gotten me a much bigger kiss, and I had no room in my brain to store another one to obsess over and deconstruct.

  “You didn’t scare me off,” I said in a bold-faced lie. “You ticked me off. And now I’m leaving.”

  He grabbed my elbow to stop me as I walked away, and I whirled and glared at his hand. He dropped it like I’d electrocuted it. His eyes widened. Of course. Of course it would shock him that not everyone in the whole world was dying for his attention. It had shocked Donovan too when he’d first come around, and it had only made him pursue me harder. In the end, he’d won, and I’d lost . . . so, so badly.

  But I wasn’t a naïve transplant newly arrived in New York this time. I was clear eyed and battle hardened, and Aidan could take my rejection of him as a challenge if he wanted to, but I hadn’t issued a challenge. I was making my way to an exit as fast as I could, and if that was straight down the mountain and into my waiting car, that was fine with me. I sped up, going as fast as I could without letting gravity take over and send me down the mountain head first. I gritted my teeth at the realization that it would mean only hurried snatches of the view I’d climbed all this way to find, but I would retreat all day long if it kept me at a safe distance from Aidan.

  But Aidan was right there, not daring to reach out and physically stop me again, his voice saying my name quietly. “Lia, wait up. Please.”

  He was just one of the challenge guys underneath. I paused and turned, steeling myself to meet his eyes and the predatory gleam I’d learned to recognize too late in Donovan’s, the look that meant he couldn’t accept anyone not falling for his charms.

  It wasn’t there. Instead, Aidan’s eyes had creased in concern, narrowing to study me, trying to read my face.

  “What?” I asked, torn between pushing my bangs out of the way so I could see him clearly and hiding behind them.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I misread you. I wasn’t trying to upset you.”

  “I’m not upset.”

  “You look like you are. I know I’ve been teasing you, but I promise I’m harmless.”

  “I’m annoyed. Not scared.”

  “Annoyed,” he repeated. Now the predatory gleam appeared. “Prove you’re not scared.”

  “Are you kidding me? Reverse psychology? This isn’t eighth grade.”

  “I’m ridiculously aware of that. But I’m going to worry about you until I have proof that I shouldn’t. It’s going to eat me up if I know you’re out there terrified of me.”

  I clapped my hands to my cheeks in frustration. “Does this ever work? Really?”

  “You say that like you think I’m playing an angle.” He was, and his grin underscored the fact that he wasn’t trying hard to hide it.

  “I already told you I don’t play games at all. So bye now.”

  I turned and headed down the trail, trying to focus on the view but too irritated to soak it in.

  “Stop.”

  I kept walking.

  “Please.”

  I turned.

  “Don’t leave because of me. Take as long as you need to look around, sketch, draw, whatever. I’ll wait for you farther down the hill.” He pointed to his lunch box. “I’ll leave that here. Eat whatever you want, and when you’re ready, come find me, and I’ll walk you back.”

  That sounded genuine. And I really did want a chance to look out at the valley from a different perspective. And I couldn’t stay mad at someone offering to give me lunch. And space. Especially not when he had more of a right to both the food and the mountainside than I did.

  “It’s okay,” I said, but I couldn’t make my voice sound convincing. “You can stay if you want. And I’m not going to take your lunch. Just sit there and eat it, and give me a buffer to work.” I pointed off the trail a ways. “I want to look from there.”

  He held up his hands in a gesture of peace. “I’m still going to go down the slope a bit because it would be stupid for me to hang out here in the same way that it’s stupid for pyromaniacs to play with matches. But I won’t be far if you need me. And you should keep the lunch. I made it myself, and you earned it. You hike like a boss.”

  He started off with Chief loping after him, but Aidan crouched and scratched behind Chief’s ears. “Stay here, buddy. Watch Lia, okay?” Chief bounded back up to me and sat, his head cocked. I scratched his ears too. Aidan waved and kept going down the slope.

  “Can you draw?” I asked Chief. “Because that would help.”

  He scratched himself instead.

  “All right. You’re on chipmunk patrol.”

  I wandered to the spot I wanted and soaked in the view the same way Mrs. Beckman liked to wallow in her favorite Hamptons spa. But her thousand-dollar spa treatments couldn’t touch this. It was everything I had smelled and tasted and heard with my eyes closed. Seeing it added not just a new layer but a whole dimension, like all the images flooding in through my eyes were melding into this thing, this feeling bigger than the sum of its parts.

  It filled me so fast this time that I couldn’t breathe because there was no room inside of me with the bigness of the peaks taking up all the space. I wanted to fly down the slope and spill it all out onto a canvas right then, but I forced myself to stay put, to look at it all and see it with more than my eyes. I cataloged every smell, every sound, every shade of blue and green.

  If I tried to sit here in a few months when the leaves morphed into flame-bright tree feathers, I wouldn’t survive it. I couldn’t stretch big enough to fit it all. I couldn’t take it anymore, the sitting and looking without doing. I pulled out my paints and paper and worked on a small study of everything flowing in through my senses.

  Chief nosed over after a while with an inquisitive whine. My stomach growled, and he sniffed at it like he was trying to figure out the sound.

  I reached for Aidan’s lunch box. Stealing his lunch was fair payback for him stealing kisses. I opened it to find a turkey sandwich on artisan bread, and when I bit into it, I detected a sweet trace of fig jam. What kind of self-respecting construction worker ate gourmet sandwiches? I’d expected a cheesesteak and Fritos. Instead, he’d included pita chips and hummus. It begged the question again: why would a guy who packed himself lunches like that be slumming at T&R? Granted, Tom made the best omelets anywhere, but they weren’t exactly full of Cremini mushrooms and gouda.

  I finished the sandwich and packed everything away. My stomach was satisfied, but inside, I was still hungry, the kind of hungry that would only go away by getting things out, not taking things in. I needed to paint. I both loathed and welcomed the restlessness as I rose to my feet. The last three years had been much simpler without it, but for the first time since leaving New York, I stood real, whole, and solid in a way that only falling asleep with Chloe tucked against me had come close to making me feel until now.

  I headed back down the mountain, already knowing I was different from the person who had climbed it.

  Chapter 11

  I stopped at McGill’s and spent an hour picking up tube after tube of oil paints, coveting the ones I wanted but didn’t need and picking up the best paints I could afford to match the feeling in my head. I eyed my favorite Kolinsky brushes locked behind glass but picked up some less-expensive mongoose brushes. If this painting came out like I thought it would, I could afford the Kolinskys soon enough. For now, it was enough to fill my basket with every paint I needed.

  At home, I parked in the driveway now that the garage was fully a studio/playroom, one side littered with toys and the other dominated by a single blank canvas. It had cost almost a thousand dollars by itself, and the manager had had to special order it.

  I went in through the garage door and plunked my bags down in front of the canvas, desperate to throw mys
elf at it but all too aware that I needed to wait until Chloe was in bed before I lost myself in painting. And I would lose myself. But I’d find myself at the same time too. The prospect turned my stomach, but I couldn’t decide if it was fear or pleasure churning in there.

  The door leading to the tiny utility room opened, and Dani poked her head out. “Hey. You got a package.”

  I frowned. “I haven’t ordered anything.”

  “I don’t think it was shipped. Someone left it on the front porch in brown paper and—”

  “Twine?” I finished for her.

  “Yep. Is it your secret admirer?”

  “Sounds like it.” I followed her back in and stopped in surprise at the size of the box on the table. It wasn’t huge, but it was much bigger than the book or the paintbrushes, more the size of two shoe boxes stacked on top of each other.

  “Guess it proves your Griff theory,” Dani said. “There’s no delivery info on here, and he does know your address.”

  I untied the string and set it aside. It would join the twine ball I had started. I opened the paper carefully too. I didn’t want to tear it. I’d flattened and saved the paper from the first two gifts as well. I wasn’t sure yet what I wanted to do with it all, but the vague idea of a collage had taken shape somewhere in the outer reaches of my imagination. It would come forward if it was ever ready, and I wanted the packaging set aside just in case.

  I gasped when I opened the paper enough to see inside.

  “What?” Dani demanded. “Please say it’s something wildly inappropriate. I’d love to know that Good Boy Griff has a bad side.” It was extra snarky, even for her. Griff came off like a regular guy to me, not a good boy—not that there was anything wrong with that if he was, but I let it drop because I’d opened the box.

  I shook my head, void of words. I held up a jar of Marcona almonds in one hand and a wedge of sheep’s milk cheese in the other. Dani’s eyes widened in appreciation, and she sorted through the rest of the contents. Smoked figs, two more cheeses, aged balsamic vinegar, and two bars of Vosges chocolates. Two!

  “Whoa. I’ve seen some of this at the wine shop next to my store. This stuff is crazy expensive.”

  “I know,” I said, coming out of my daze. I’d indulged in a lot of these foods at the parties the Beckmans had thrown. I waved the chocolate at her. “These are seven-dollar candy bars. Each.”

  “So? What do you think?” Dani asked. “I know you’re not a foodie, but I think you like everything in here.”

  “I’m not sure about a few of the things, but yeah. I like most of it. But I think . . . I think I can’t accept this. This had to cost major bank.” This was more than an “I like you” gesture. This was . . . it was more. Did Griff understand that? I couldn’t let it go unanswered, but I didn’t know what to say.

  “I can’t accept these,” I repeated. “They’re too much.”

  “He probably brought stuff home from Leifson’s.”

  I could live with that. “Convince me, because if you do, I’ll keep it.”

  “Of course he got it from there. Now you have to hope Good Boy didn’t steal it.”

  “Stop calling him that.” I didn’t like the edge in her voice. “That’s not even an insult.”

  She picked up one of the chocolate bars and studied the label. “Keep it. What message does it send if you give it back? Are you ready to shut him down completely? Because that’s what’s going to happen.”

  “What message does it send if I accept a two-hundred-dollar gift?”

  “We knew Griff was nice. Be careful about misinterpreting his generosity. And besides, I told you, it probably didn’t cost him that much if it’s stuff from his restaurant.”

  “You don’t think he’s trying to tell me something with these gifts?”

  “Of course he is,” she snapped, and I drew my head back like she’d swatted at me. “Sorry,” she said, noticing. She softened her tone. “But do you know enough about him to know whether it just makes him happy to do the nice things? Have you noticed that he has kind of expensive taste?”

  I shook my head. “Not really.”

  “He does. He doesn’t seem to have a lot of stuff, but everything he does have is top of the line.”

  “Not his car. It’s nothing fancy.”

  “No, but it’s practical. His watch is crazy expensive, but he always has the same one on when I see him. His clothes are all high-end brands. I bet if we looked up his guitar, it would be expensive too.”

  “How do you even notice all this stuff? And you make him sound like he’s a high roller or something. He wears the same sweatshirt and flip-flops every day.”

  “Yeah, but it’s an expensive sweatshirt and expensive flip-flops. I’m just saying, maybe don’t freak out too much that he’s secretly in love with you. I sell to customers like him all the time. I think it’s part of their MO that if they’re going to buy something, they invest in the top of the line.”

  I scrubbed my hands over my face. “I don’t know what to do next. I have to say something.”

  “No, you don’t. He didn’t leave a note. He doesn’t want you to say anything.”

  “But he’s not exactly trying to hide who it’s from. He delivered it to my doorstep. I can’t not say thank you.”

  I stepped out onto the deck, and Dani said behind me, “I think that’s a bad idea!”

  I ignored her and slipped over the rail, landing with a small thump and the sense that I’d stepped through Alice’s looking glass. I’d never been in Griff’s space before, and it was only about to get weirder. I knocked on his sliding door. It felt more right than going to his front door.

  It took a minute before he stepped into view. He was almost dressed for work. His button-down shirt hung halfway open, untucked over his slacks, and he was toweling off his wet hair. He paused when he saw me, then hurried to slide the door open.

  “Hi,” he said, his warm smile replacing his surprise.

  “Hi. So . . . thank you.”

  The surprise reappeared. I guess Dani was right. He hadn’t expected me to call him out. “You’re welcome. For what?”

  “Um.” I didn’t know the rules here. “For . . . being a good neighbor.” I questioned it as soon as I said it. Would he think I was trying to put us back on friend footing?

  “You’re welcome. And now I’m going to be the world’s worst neighbor, because I want to hang out and talk about . . . neighborliness, but I’m running late for work.”

  “Oh! Sorry,” I said, stepping back and toward my side of the rail again. “Have fun.”

  “I won’t. Remember I said it’s slow?”

  “It’s a forty-dollar-steak kind of place. It’s hard to believe it ever gets busy with prices like that. I guess I’m a burger kind of girl.”

  “You’re missing out. Are you watching Chloe tonight?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You guys should come eat. My treat. I get a discount.”

  “Not a big enough discount,” I mumbled, thinking about the basket he’d given me.

  “Free is a pretty good discount. Seriously, come by tonight.”

  “You’ve fed us enough.” There. That was a bold hint.

  “I like doing it. I mean it. Come.”

  “You’ve seen Chloe in action. You want to inflict that on Leifson’s?”

  He laughed. “She’s a good girl. And it’ll be fine. We’ll be half full at most, and I’ll make sure you guys get a quiet corner and a patient waiter.”

  I climbed back over to my side. “We’ll see how she does this afternoon. Maybe we will. Dress code?”

  “Clothes.”

  “Ha.”

  “I’m serious. Don’t stress. And come by, okay?”

  Instead of answering, I waved and slipped back inside. Dani looked up from the table, where she was writing out Chloe’s name for Chloe to practice copying. “What did he say?”

  “He said Chloe and I should stop by his restaurant for dinner tonight.”

&nbs
p; “But what about the gift? What did you say to him?”

  “I said thanks.”

  “And he said come on over and buy an expensive steak to show your appreciation?”

  “No, he said come on over and he’d give us an expensive steak for free.”

  Dani leaned back in her chair. “You’re kidding. He didn’t admit it? I don’t understand that guy at all.”

  “What’s not to understand? You said it yourself: he’s generous. He really does like to do nice things for people.”

  “For you. He’s barely even talked to me, and I’ve been his neighbor as long as you have.”

  “You’re not home as much. And he only started coming out on the deck when the weather changed. It’s not like we’ve been hanging out all winter.”

  “You don’t have to defend him. I’m not mad about it. I just don’t get it.”

  “You shouldn’t be mad about it. He’s so good with Chloe.”

  She snorted. “I know. I hear all about it.”

  “Don’t you have to go learn something? Or earn some money?”

  “I have my pathology class tonight. We’ll see what actually sticks.” She stood and smoothed her hair into a ponytail. Her blunt-cut bangs made it look chic.

  My ponytails looked like I didn’t want to do my hair, because I didn’t. I laughed.

  “What?”

  “We’re both wearing T-shirts and jeans, but you look amazing, and I look like I need an intervention.”

  “Duh,” she said, tossing her ponytail. “You could upgrade with zero effort and a tiny bit of thought. It’s the accessories, dummy.” Her T-shirt was black and fitted, and she wore a yellow beaded necklace and turquoise ballet flats. My T-shirt said “Arches National Park” and had a grease stain that had never washed completely out after I did an emergency repair on my mountain bike on the trail one hot, miserable afternoon.

  I stared down at it and frowned. “I guess I should have changed before I went over to Griff’s.”

  “You need to drop by Leifson’s for dinner now, and you need to get something decent out of my closet before you go.”

  Dani didn’t have a lot of clothes, but like Griff, she picked quality pieces with her store discount and kept it all fresh with inexpensive but interesting jewelry. She was the queen of the statement necklace.