by M. Leighton
I make no comment, just release Levi’s hand and reach into the top drawer of the table that holds my paints. I feel around until my fingers brush soft cotton. I pull out one long strip and close the drawer.
I turn to face Levi.
“Hold still,” I tell him.
“Oh,” he says, his tone very telling. Undoubtedly, he’s looking at the blindfold.
I try not to smile. I’m sure a man like him, a man like I imagine him to be, hates not being in control. But that makes a situation like this all the sweeter. And the best part is, he sought me out, so he’s got no one to blame but himself.
“I think you’re enjoying this a little too much,” he muses as I fold the material lengthwise.
“So what if I am?” I skim my palm up his chest and neck, toward the side of his face. “I…I have to feel where to put this,” I explain, pausing at his jawline.
“Feel as much as you want,” he permits in a husky purr.
I slow my touch, switching to my fingertips rather than my palm, discerning, imagining, memorizing. I allow the brightness that filters in through my sunglasses to give me a vague outline of his head and I touch.
I don’t take my time like I want to, but I go slow enough to get some detail. I feel a firm, square jaw, lightly dusted with stubble. I feel the hollow of one lean cheek and the high arch of a cheekbone. I feel the deep-set orbit surrounding his eye, and I wonder what color the irises are.
I might not be able to see, but I can feel and interpret pretty well after all these years, and I know it won’t matter. It won’t matter what color his eyes are. Green or brown, blue or gray, light or dark, it won’t change what I already know, what I can feel.
Levi is gorgeous.
I know from last night that he’s tall, that his chest is wide and hard, and that he’s strong. I felt all that when I landed in his arms. The embarrassing way.
I know from last night that his voice is like smoky velvet, and that his personality is the dangerous kind—devilishly charming and fascinatingly witty—but still, I didn’t know what he looked like. I will never know what he really looks like, but I’ve had to feel my way through life long enough to know gorgeous features when I touch them.
And his are gorgeous.
I smother a sigh.
There’s no reason I should be disappointed.
But I am.
He’s tall, charming, probably wealthy since he was at my art show, and that was all fine and good until now.
But now he’s gorgeous, too.
He’s got the whole package, a package that can land him any woman he meets. Beautiful ones who can see. And that means I have no shot with him. That I never did.
And yet, as stupid as it is, I feel disappointed, and my heart plummets.
I stopped believing love would find me a long time ago, so it’s not like I was looking for someone, searching for a man. But I’ve never had such instant chemistry with someone before. Not since the days when I could see. And maybe not even then. I can’t remember the last time someone made me feel this way, blind or not.
I suppose I just got caught up, caught up in all the sensation. I stopped thinking and simply felt.
But that really doesn’t change anything. Chemistry or not, I should’ve known it wouldn’t end well.
For me, it never does.
If he’d only been flawed, too, I might’ve stood a chance. But with a man like this? Someone who’s practically perfect it seems? Not a chance in hell.
There’s no way he’s really interested in me.
No. Possible. Way.
I try to swallow my regret as I stretch the swath of material across Levi’s eyes, leaning against him as I tie it behind his head. He brings one hand up to the small of my back, holding me close to steady me.
Only it does not steady me.
At all.
Quite the opposite, in fact.
It turns my insides to boiled mush. Hot, liquid mush.
I may not stand a chance with this guy and would be much better off running the other way, but my body has its own opinion. It’s obviously refusing to get on board with shutting this down immediately. It’s doing, feeling, reacting the way it wants to, smart or not.
Some part of my brain is resisting, too, for that matter. It’s telling me that there’s no harm in flirting, no harm in enjoying this. It’s nice to have the attention of a charming, attractive man, even if it’s just for a little while. Nothing wrong with that. I am a woman after all. Human. Made of flesh and bone. And we all need attention.
Right?
So, despite what the realistic portion of my mind knows and warns me of, the rest of me is running toward the danger rather than away from it.
Basically, it’s a mutiny.
The cautious, skeptical part of me is totally overwhelmed, of course. It’s being drowned out, efficiently and effectively, and this guy’s proximity isn’t helping.
Rattled, I cinch the material over his eyes and run my fingers around to make sure it’s in place.
“Can you see anything?”
“Nope. Not one beautiful sight.”
“Good. Now you know how I feel.”
“I do know how you feel,” he replies cheekily as he pulls me in snug against him, molding me to his every ridge and plane, making me catch my breath like a virgin on her wedding night.
Sweet God, what’s wrong with me?
“Maybe I shouldn’t have asked you to treat me like every other woman on the planet,” I mutter quietly as I wriggle out of his grasp.
“Too late. Can’t unring that bell.”
I don’t have to be able to see or feel his face to know that he’s probably wearing a shit-eatin’ smirk. I just shake my head and reach back around for my paints. There’s no point in arguing with either one of us—him or myself. Neither is going to make it easy to resist him.
“Evie?” he whispers, his voice close, sending chills racing down my arms.
God, the way he says that… It’s like I can picture him saying it during sex, with his hands on me and his mouth on me and… God!
“Yes?”
“You smell incredible. Like sweet oranges. Makes my mouth water. Makes me want a taste.”
I swallow, which is difficult because my mouth is the opposite of watering. It’s as dry as a bone. “It’s my…it’s my body wash. It…cheers me up.”
“It makes me…thirsty. For something juicy and sweet.”
I clear my throat and try frantically to collect myself. Out of sheer desperation, I force my attention back to work before this gets out of hand. I’d hate to get myself in trouble right here in front of a class full of children.
I have never…
“Okay, everybody, let’s start with the stem.”
Thankfully, Levi goes along with my change in direction.
I grab four tubes of paint, two that I need and two to show something to Levi, and I squirt a streak of each onto the pallet. To Levi, I explain my process.
“Over the years, I’ve learned to tell the difference in the way certain colors feel. The braille on the side of these tubes tells me that they’re van dyke brown and sap green, mars black and zinc white, but to me they feel different.” I take Levi’s hand again and dip one finger into the white. “Now rub your fingers together.”
Levi does as I ask. I feel the tendons in his wrist working because I’m still lightly holding the base of his hand. I can’t seem to make myself let go.
“Feels sort of like toothpaste, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah, it does.”
I take a towel from the table and wipe his fingers clean then dip one into the black paint. “Now tell me how this one feels.”
“It’s a lot thinner, like oil.”
“Exactly! Some people can’t tell the difference at all, but most can. I’ve just done this for long enough, and my tactile senses are so developed, that I can tell the difference between dozens of colors. The whole process is called ‘haptic painting’. It just means
to use touch.”
“So that’s how you mix your paints to get such beautiful colors.”
My face heats, and I know I’m blushing. “Yes. That’s how I get what I hope are beautiful colors.”
“They are. Trust me. I’ve never seen anything like them. They look like they could leap off the canvas. Become a part of the air, part of the real world.”
I fall quiet, as does he. As we stand facing each other, neither able to see the other, something happens. Something shifts. Something changes.
I don’t know what it is or how to describe it, but I know it’s significant. I can feel the difference. The irrevocable plunge into something deeper, more meaningful. Like some invisible cog clicked and fell into place, and now we just…fit.
Maybe it’s that, for the first time since losing my sight, someone has bothered to come into my world to find me.
Maybe it’s that he was looking for me, searching for me, as much as I was looking for him, even though I thought I’d given up.
Maybe it’s that he seems to understand me now. Really understand me.
Or maybe it’s just my overactive imagination.
It could be.
But I hope it’s not.
For a woman like me, hope is a dangerous thing. For people with disabilities, dashed hopes can be crushing. They’re harder to recover from.
I know as surely as I’m standing here, as surely as I feel his body heat gushing toward me, that this man could destroy me. That this—whatever this is—could be devastating for me.
I should run.
I know I should run.
But I know that I won’t.
I know that without a doubt, too.
Because some things are worth hurting over. I just hope Levi is one of them.
I shake my head to clear it, forcing myself out of the moment.
“Now try the brown,” I urge in an unsteady voice, moving on as if nothing happened, even though my every nerve and sense is trained solely on him.
We repeat the process and he tests the brown, but rather than wiping his finger, I guide it to the canvas. “Use your free hand to feel the outline of the flower. Find the long line of the stem. Can you feel it?”
“Yes.”
“Now take the finger with the paint on it and swipe from the bottom of the stem upward, toward the center in smooth strokes. Go slowly. Stay inside the line.”
I lead Levi and the rest of the class through filling in the stem, and then the leaves, right down to the thin veins that run along them. Then we move on to work on the large, velvety brown center.
I feel every movement of Levi’s body as it brushes mine. The lift of his arms, the shift of his legs, the way he lists toward me when he speaks, like he’s as drawn to me as I am to him.
I show him how to work the paint and the canvas, touching him freely, unabashedly while I can.
In my mind’s eye, I can see the flower taking on life and breath as clearly as I can feel the awakening of something between us. Suddenly, like the sun breaking through the clouds, I realize what it is, and what it can be. Something fresh and beautiful—simple, uncomplicated attraction. Nothing more, nothing less.
No pressure.
No motives.
Just attraction.
That I can deal with. That I can fall into. That I can let myself go to.
Relief and excitement run through me like a river, flooding the dry creek bed of my soul. Filling that part of me that never really stopped longing for this.
The feelings he evokes in me… They’re as thrilling as painting is.
I refuse to think how scary that should be.
How scary it will be when I wake from this dream.
My painting is all I have. For years, this has been it. And for years to come, this will be my life. What would happen if something (or someone) stole that from me like the accident stole my vision, stole the life I had planned out?
I would die.
I would wither and die.
I would have nothing. Nothing to live for, nothing to contribute. No way to breathe.
That thought functions like a spritz of ice water to my dreaming face. It reminds me that, for that reason alone, I have to keep a tight grip on myself. I can enjoy this, but only so much. I can’t let this man get under my skin. My skin is all I have protecting me from the world, from the sharp objects of life. From utter destruction.
“You do the petals,” Levi finally says to me as I absently mix bright yellow into a rich gold. “I want to see you work.”
“He took off his blindfold, Ms. Evie!” Alana tattles merrily.
“It’s okay, Alana. He’s going to watch me paint for a while. That’s all right, isn’t it?”
“Yeah!” she replies exuberantly. Nothing gets that child down. Not even the hands she lost when an automatic van door closed and locked on them two years ago. She is the very definition of resilience, and I won’t be a bit surprised to see her take the world by storm as she grows.
“Well, how does your part look?” I ask Levi as I dip my own fingertip into the bold golden mixture.
“Uhhh, like a dog wiped his feet on it.”
I chuckle. “Maybe I can help.”
I raise my left hand and trail it from the top of the canvas downward, so as not to get into Levi’s wet paint. I feel the first of the petal outlines graze my fingertips, so I skim around the outside to familiarize myself with the shape again, to learn the edges and the design. I trace each line until I find one to the right of the center of the sunflower, and I sweep my finger along the top border, following the shape in a smooth arc.
I redip and go again.
As I wipe my finger and add different colors, yellows and whites and browns, I’m constantly picturing the subtleties of each petal in my mind, adding life and depth, highlight and shadow, feeling the flower come alive as I go. Before I realize it, I’m lost in a world of color and shape and texture that only I can see. As if I’m alone in the universe, my fingers move in a rhythm that comes from deep within me.
Levi’s voice almost startles me when he speaks.
“This is incredible,” he whispers from just over my right shoulder. He’s so close I can feel the heat of his chest warming my back.
I smile, secure in my happy place. I feel protected. Unbreakable. “Thank you.”
“This looks different from some of your other work, though. Do you always use your fingers?”
“Not always. I use brushes, too, but it takes longer, and this class isn’t about perfection. It’s about expression and learning and healing.”
There’s a long pause, and I wish I could see his expression right now.
“What you do…” he begins quietly, his voice full of enough awe to make my heart swell. “All of it…it’s amazing. You’re amazing,” he adds even more softly.
Of all the accolades I’ve gotten since I began painting, of all the praise, both public and private, I’ve gotten in recent months, none have seemed quite as pleasing, quite as genuine as this. None have thrilled me quite so much.
I smile. “No. I’m just a good maker of lemonade.”
CHAPTER 6
LEVI
I DON’T quite know how I feel about things when the class is over and I’m left to watch Evie clean up as the kids leave with their parents.
Most of the children hug Evie before they go. All of the parents thank her. And they mean it. It’s there in every line on their haggard, exhausted faces. I imagine that many of them tried all sorts of things to help their sons and daughters find a way to cope with their disabilities before they found Evie. Maybe some worked. Maybe some didn’t.
But Evie obviously has.
I watch her as she moves about the quiet room, barely having to feel her way along the cabinets to store things away where they belong. Sometimes I could almost forget that she’s blind.
She stops suddenly and whirls to face me. It’s odd that she always seems to know where I am in relation to her, like she can feel me
. “What are you thinking right now?”
Her question takes me so off guard that I answer with complete honesty. “That you move in this intuitive way, like you can feel things around you.”
Well, sort of complete.
“Everyone who has a key to this room knows not to move anything. Not only is it comforting for the kids to have familiar, expected surroundings, but it keeps me from busting my ass.”
She laughs at that, a self-deprecating smile wreathing her face.
“And what an ass it is,” I quip. I can’t seem to help myself. She does have a phenomenal ass.
“Right?” she says, slapping her hand against it in a sassy way that makes me grit my teeth and go pleasantly rigid from head to toe.
I smile tightly so that I don’t groan out loud.
“You also have this way of making everyone around you feel happy and optimistic and…normal.”
She shrugs one shoulder, unseating the tip of her blonde ponytail and sending it slithering down her back. “I learned a long time ago that people like me can’t let their guard down. We can’t stop trying. Not ever. Not for one second. It’s too easy to give up. To give in. So I take my lemons and make them as sweet as I can. Every day. And hopefully, I can help others do the same.”
“I’m pretty sure my life is meaningless compared to yours.”
She chuckles. “I doubt that. You can tell me all about your amazing accomplishments at lunch. I’m almost done.”
“Are you sure there’s nothing I can do to help?”
“Actually, you can take that extra stool back to the corner and je suis fini,” she says with a flourish.
“French? Are you fluent?”
“Oh, hell no! I wish.”
“So, you never studied it?”
“I did in high school. I was going to be a world class photographer. You know, go to college then study abroad for a few years. Paris, Prague, Italy. The regular.”
She’s trying to be nonchalant, but she’s not entirely successful. “But that didn’t work out like you planned.” I verbalize the unspoken words that were left dangling from the end of her sentence like bodies from a hanging tree.
The twist of her lips turns wry, disappointed. For a second, I can feel her sadness like a physical coolness seeping in to steal the warmth from the room. “No, not by a long shot. Now my grandest travel wish is to go to the bayou.”