I gaze down at her hands in mine—her fingers slender and stroking—and feel a surge of recklessness. And recklessness breeds honesty. “That woman from last night is my ex. Juliette. I’m just mixed up about a lot of things right now. And I’m sorry you have to see that. Be part of that. I thought I had it all straightened out, but…” I sigh, daring to meet Ash’s gaze. Her grey eyes regard me with such softness, such openness, that I feel my own eyes fill with tears. “God, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have bothered you tonight.”
“It’s no bother, Molly.”
I loose my hands and scrub at my eyes. “But you have your own life to live. You didn’t move here to—I don’t know—be cried on by your landlady. The same landlady, might I add, who hit you with a car.”
Ash leans back, her mouth slanted with amusement. In one easy movement, she stretches her arm over the back of the sofa so that her hand brushes against my shoulder. Her fingers gently caress my arm, feather light. “The same woman, might I add, who has shown this stranger nothing but kindness.”
I swallow, my gaze locked, for a moment, with those soft, soothing, grey eyes. But then I shake my head insistently. “You were painting, and I interrupted you. I know how hard it is to get back into the flow after an interruption.”
Ash laughs lightly. “So you admit it, then?”
“Admit…what?”
She grins, leaning forward with parted lips to tap my nose with her fingertip. “That you’re an artist. You know what it’s like—to shut out the world and give yourself over to beauty.” The smile on her lips fades, and her eyes regard me with a lancing deepness, and a surety. “Don’t you, Molly?”
“Yes,” I say, before I can stop myself. And I remember my dream, the one where Ash handed me the violet-tipped paintbrush, where I told her yes and then…
Then we kissed.
But we don’t kiss now, can’t, because I spring to my feet, upsetting the books on the coffee table so that they tumble to the floor. As I pick them up, I offer Ash a pained smile, gesturing to the paper bag steaming with Chinese food. “Um, anyway…I brought dinner. You know, because you ordered that pizza last night and didn’t even get to eat a slice. Figured it would only be fair to return the favor…” But my words fade away, false and hollow-sounding. I clutch the last book, the one about Georgia O’Keeffe, to my chest, and Ash watches me, her chin tilted up, eyes glinting.
“You wanted to return the favor,” she echoes, one brow arching as she draws her leg onto the sofa and rests a hand upon her knee—giving me no choice but to stare at the tattooed words marking the soft skin beneath her thigh. It’s a phrase, or a poem, but I can’t read it, am too flustered to try to read it. My eyes blur with unshed tears. Stupid, self-pitying tears that I blink back furiously.
I draw in a deep breath and put down the book, seating myself again on the sofa, taking care not to touch Ash.
“No, that’s a lie. Sorry. I didn’t come here to return the favor. I’m not that...admirable. The thing is, I was supposed to go home and talk to Juliette tonight, but I just couldn’t.” I shrug, smiling sadly, my gaze skipping from Ash’s eyes to her mouth to her hands, which look lovely and graceful, even in stillness. “I chickened out and drove out here, instead, which is totally a jerk thing to do, to take advantage of your…nearness. And your empathy. And I’m sorry—”
“You keep saying that.”
“What?”
Ash smiles warmly, her eyes alive with lamplight, and moves nearer to brush the hair back from my face. Her fingers trace circular patterns on my forehead as she gazes at me, brows high and teasing. “I’m sorry,” she whispers, ducking her head, smile flickering.
“Well, that’s because I keep—”
“Molly, I don’t want your apologies.”
I try to swallow, but my mouth is too dry, my throat tight and resistant. “You don’t want…”
“No.”
Her eyes are so intense that the air between us takes on an electric aura, an invisible sparking.
“Then…” I feel as if an inner tennis match has broken out in my chest cavity. Another event in the Anxiety Olympics—only this time, the tiny athletes have faces: mine, Ash’s…and Juliette’s. And I’m not sure who’s playing with whom. I don’t know whose team I’m on, if I’m on any team at all.
But despite my worry and, worse, my shame, I say it, anyway—because it feels right, like a turning point, or more than a little bit like fate: “What do you want, Ash?”
With liquid slowness, she grins.
Her fingers trail over the side of my face, nails lightly tracing my skin, sending shivers all throughout my body.
“What I want, Molly Mason,” Ash says then, reaching to draw something from the back pocket of her shorts, “is to reawaken your inner artist. To stitch together and resurrect the scattered pieces of your muse.” With a sly smile, she brandishes the paintbrush in her hand—its bristles tipped with dried, deep violet paint—and glides it to rest behind my ear.
Ash’s scent surrounds me, cool and flower-steeped, like peppermint-rose iced tea, as she again taps my nose, her mouth close enough to kiss.
And she whispers, “I want to teach you to paint again.”
I breathe out, falling deeply into her impassioned grey gaze.
“Say yes, Molly.”
“Yes,” I say, though I can scarcely hear the sound of my own voice over the frantic careening of my heart.
---
I stand, saucer-eyed, before the life-size stretched canvas. “Ash…” My eyes drink in the painting’s liquid hues and undulating lines. “Ash, this is fantastic.”
Squatting next to a paint-streaked bucket full of brushes and palette knives, she glances over her shoulder to grin at me. “You think so?”
“Um…yeah.”
“Thanks.” Ash rises, holding a brush and some tubes of oil paint in her hand. She strides over to me wearing an adorably bashful smile. “To be honest, I was kind of nervous to show you my work.”
“But why?” I gesture to the painting before me and again admire its clever use of color, space and form. “You’re clearly gifted.”
“Clearly, hmm?”
“More than clearly. Brilliantly. Magnificently.” I steal a glance at the painting again and laugh softly to myself. “And, um… Defiantly.”
I hadn’t known what to expect from Ash’s work; she had given few clues as to her subjects or mediums. But the comment she’d made to Terry about her paintings not being a “good fit” for the citizens of Normal had piqued my curiosity—and now I understand her reservation about agreeing to exhibit at the gala.
All of her subjects are female nudes, but not classic nudes. These women are passionately unclothed. Sensually disrobed. Many of the paintings feature only a single body part—a breast, a thigh, a hipbone colored and angled to resemble a stem and leaf. In fact, all of the paintings have a botanical influence. A mouth doesn’t merely look like a mouth but like the satiny petals of a rosebud…
“Obviously, I take a lot of inspiration from Georgia O’Keeffe,” Ash says, standing beside me and gazing at the painting before us, gently shrugging her shoulders and drawing a deep breath into her lungs. “Her color work fascinates me, and the way that her organic shapes bring to mind the female anatomy… I wondered if I could evoke something similar to that—only the opposite. I wanted to suggest flowers where there was only skin; blooming in the place of joints and muscles. The body as a garden.” She laughs huskily, lowering her gaze. “It’s become something of an obsession.”
I bite my lip, glancing at the gorgeous woman beside me. Her eyes move from the painting to rove over my face, and her mouth draws up into a wide, open smile.
“It’s your calling, Ash,” I tell her softly, holding her gaze. “I’ve never seen anything like this before. And I don’t think I ever will again.”
That rich, husky laugh: I feel it in my bones—and shiver, though I’m warmed from head to toe. “Careful.” Ash’s eyes darken, and her lips
part, baring small white teeth and the pink tip of her tongue. “Flattery, Molly, will get you…everywhere.”
God, I want to kiss her.
She lifts one hand to the side of my face and cups my cheek for a heart-stopping moment. Then she draws back, the paintbrush she’d placed behind my ear gripped between her fingers. “Now, shall we start our lesson?”
I take the brush from her and blink at it, heart hammering. “Right,” I whisper then, coughing into my hand. “The lesson. I hope you don’t expect much… I mean, I was never as talented as you are. I never had a style, or a purpose.”
Ash presses one finger to my lips, her mouth sly, her grey eyes teasing. “No more nevers. All right?”
“Yeah,” I breathe, lips still grazing the skin of her finger—almost kissing… She draws her finger back, and I smile sheepishly. “No more nevers,” I state more resolutely, and Ash claps her hands.
“Cool. Now, come on over here.”
I follow her to the small breakfast table in the corner of the room, draped with a paint-splattered sheet and topped with a small easel. From the floor, Ash produces a blank stretched canvas, threateningly white.
I look at it and gulp.
“Ash, maybe this isn’t such a—”
“Good idea? Yes, it is. I promise you, Molly.” Pressing her hands lightly against my shoulders, she steers me until I’m fully facing that intimidating, empty canvas.
I feel cold suddenly. I feel like running.
I feel—
“It’s only natural to be afraid. I’m afraid every time I pick up a paintbrush.” Ash arches around to face me, pressing her front against my back, which causes my palms to sweat and my spine to stiffen. But she’s so warm, the pressure of her long, lean length so comforting… “Use that fear to do something incredible, Molly. It’s when we’re afraid that we’re the most powerful. Use the adrenaline, the quick thinking, the instinct to do what it is you know you’re meant to do. Don’t question it.” She moves to my side now and places a tube of Cerulean Blue in my hand, along with a colorful wooden palette. When I hesitate, she nods encouragingly.
I draw in a shallow breath and uncap the paint, squeezing a bit of the thick pigment onto the palette, feeling that old, familiar pang of excitement as I glance from the paint to the canvas, imagining the possibilities…
“Now close your eyes.”
“What?” I look at Ash, smiling, confused.
“Lesson number one,” she says, staring intensely—no, sternly—into my eyes.
I gulp again.
That look does…things to me, things that quadruple both my anxiety and my arousal, but I bite my lip and close my eyes and try to breathe like a normal person, rather than an awkward, ungainly dog. “Um…like this?”
“Exactly like that,” Ash’s warm voice smiles near my ear, and then I feel her move behind me again, and her arms almost embrace me, but then her hand reaches for my hand, the one holding the paintbrush, and guides it toward the palette. I feel the give of the paint beneath the bristles.
“It’s all about trust,” Ash says, soft and low. Her hand moves to my wrist, lifting it higher and higher until the brush meets canvas; I let out a sigh.
“God, it’s been so long…”
“You missed it, didn’t you?”
The strength of my emotions in this moment catches me by surprise, and I begin to feel a little shaky. My eyes, still closed, sting, and I swallow back a sob. “I really did miss it. I forgot… I just…” I breathe out, shaking my head. “I just forgot.”
“But you haven’t forgotten how to paint, Molly. It’s still there, only sleeping.” Her lips brush my ear as she whispers, “C’mon. Let’s wake you up.”
At Ash’s instruction, I keep my eyes closed during the lesson. Painting is not confined to the visual, she explains, as she guides my hand, or chooses colors for me, or whispers gentle encouragements, her breath hot against my face. In the dark now, I must focus on my instinct, she says—on my simple need to put brush to canvas, to stroke on color and make manifest internal longings too deep and complex for words.
“You are what you paint,” Ash says, sliding the brush from my fingers, leaving my hand cold, empty, grasping at air. “And your painting,” she laughs then, taking me by the shoulders and shifting me around to face her, “is done. Open your eyes, Molly.”
I open one eye first, squinting at the overhead chandelier. Ash stands before me, her face flushed and alight, beaming. “Hi,” I say shyly, meeting her excited gaze.
“Hi yourself.”
“That was…intense.”
She arches an eyebrow, smile falling away. “Too intense?”
“No. No.” I almost press a hand against her chest to reassure her, to thank her, but then I stop myself, blushing, overheated. “Just the right amount of intense. I mean, I needed that.” Then I cock my head at her, bemused. “How did you know? What I needed, I mean.”
She laughs lightly, crafty smile stealing over her mouth, adding a wicked gleam to her shadowed eyes. “I’ve been there, remember? And I was lucky enough to have a friend to shove me in front of a canvas. Actually,” she smirks, “Billy kind of kicked my butt. But in a loving way.”
I can’t help grinning back. “Now I’m the lucky one. To have you to kick my butt.”
Ash arches a brow. “Figuratively speaking, I hope. I did try to be gentle.”
“Oh, you were. You were…” I swallow, blush deepening. “Very gentle.”
She continues to gaze into my eyes, and I realize that her hands are still on my shoulders, that there are only inches between us, and that space seems to shimmer with heat—despite the cottage’s central air-conditioning.
“Thank you, Ash.”
“It was my pleasure.”
I begin to turn around to steal a glance at my painting—which I expect to look like something a sea lion might paint if a brush were inserted between its teeth—but Ash stills me by tightening her hands on my arms, a pointed gleam in her warm grey eyes.
“This lesson was about regaining trust, Molly, and your identity as an artist. It doesn’t matter what the finished product looks like. That wasn’t the point.”
“But—”
“Hmm-mm.” She moves closer, tilting her head near to mine. Her mouth is smiling, but her eyes have taken on that stern look again, and my knees, as if on cue, commence jellification. “No buts and no nevers,” she whispers then, her breath causing my hair to move beside my face, tickling my cheek. “All right?”
“Yeah. Um, all right.”
Her gaze is amused now, and it rakes over my length as she takes a single step back, smiling widely, as if with some secret gratification.
“Oh!” I press a hand to my forehead, which causes Ash, regrettably, to remove her own hands from my arms. “Sorry. The Chinese food. It’s probably cold by now. Cold egg rolls…” I make a face.
“Hey, we’ve got an oven, right?”
We. The word is electrifying, even though it’s harmless, meaningless. There is no we… Only Ash and Molly. Separate. Tenant and landlady. Artist and museum curator. Gorgeous, smoldering, sexy-as-hell her and flailing, confused, awkward-as-hell me.
“Right,” I manage, though my voice is a hushed squeak.
But I’m starving, and when Ash and I sit together at the kitchen table fifteen minutes later shoveling warm forkfuls of vegetable fried rice and lo mein into our mouths, I let out a groan of pure, unadulterated bliss.
Ash pauses in taking a drink from her water glass to laugh. “I take it you were hungry?”
“Ravenous.” I smile at her apologetically around a mouthful of rice, waving my fork in the air. “I haven’t eaten all day. No appetite. Until now, obviously.”
“No appetite because of…” But Ash’s voice trails off, and she glances down at her plate, a serious expression on her face. “Sorry. I don’t want to pry.”
For a moment, I can only gaze at her, at the smooth planes of her cheekbones; at her half-open mouth, which
naturally turns up at the corners, giving her a look of soft amusement even when she isn’t smiling; at the long-lashed lids now hooding her eyes. And I marvel at how comfortable I feel with her, even though we only, well, ran into each other a couple of days ago.
I’m not like this. I don’t just show up at friends’ houses, no matter how long I’ve known them, no matter how close we are. I always call Pauline before I’m coming over—to make sure that she doesn’t have plans. And I felt terribly guilty barging in on Ash unannounced, but at the same time…it felt natural. When she opened the door and all but pulled me inside, I felt wanted.
And all throughout that impromptu painting lesson, despite my raging doubts over my artistic skills, I felt safe. Perfectly safe. Held. By her.
I lean my head on my hand and watch Ash twirl lo mein around her fork, my eyes following the lines of her fingers and hand and then moving up along her bare arm, to the tattoos there and the small sprinkling of freckles just above her elbow.
Then I blink and sit back in my chair, biting my bottom lip.
It’s undeniable.
I’m falling for Ash. Have fallen.
Really, really hard. Like, concussion hard. Seeing-stars hard.
So, Molly, what are you going to do about it?
“Is something wrong?” Ash asks me, tilting her head to catch my eye.
I stare at her, stricken breathless by the compassion in her soft, grey gaze. Slowly, I shake my head, summoning a small smile. “No. I was just thinking about how grateful I am for you. To you. I mean, how…lucky it was that our paths crossed here in tiny Normal, Michigan. What are the chances, really?”
“Pretty high, I’d say.”
I watch her curiously. “Why do you think that?”
She draws the lo mein off of her fork with her teeth and chews slowly, her lips coy, curved into a half-smile. “I told you, remember?” Putting down her fork, Ash leans toward me, arms crossed on the tabletop. “Our meeting one another was meant to be.”
Her gaze is too deep, too intense: I shift my eyes away, focusing on the refrigerator door. Ash has put a photograph of an ocean wave there, held in place by two plastic apple-shaped magnets, refugees from my vintage collection of fruit and vegetable refrigerator magnets that Juliette insisted were too “disgustingly kitsch” to put in our own house. I bought them because they reminded me of my grandmother; she had the same magnets on her fridge and always used them to display the finger paint pictures I made for her. You will be the next Monet! she used to say. It’s your destiny, Molly-girl.
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