by Ashley Love
My bed dips, and the next thing I know, gentle hands are rubbing circles against my back. "What happened?"
I have no idea why I do it, but I find myself uncovering my face and answering the question. "They just...they made me feel like an idiot."
Blake's expression smooths out into an indifferent one. "Not fun when that happens, huh?"
Now my eyes are wet and red, my voice is thick with repressed tears, and guilt churns my stomach. "Blake, I'm—"
"Don't apologize when you don't mean it," he says roughly. He gets off the bed, and I shiver, wishing those hands were still rubbing my back. "I have to—I need to go."
"Go where?"
"Anywhere but here," he says, barely audible, before he leaves the room.
I stare at the closed door, trying to sort out how I feel. But I can't, and I'm too tired, so I pull my blankets in around me and pray for sleep to come before I can dwell on everything that's happened today.
15
The weeks leading up to the holidays are sort of stressful for everyone, even Blake, apparently. Emma has even taken to spending as much time in the library as me, and we're not the only ones. It's more packed during the weeks leading up to exams and the holidays than it has been all year. Twice, even Cadence slumps into a chair at our table, and on one single occasion, so does Blake.
Me and Blake also fuck. A lot. It's like we've just silently agreed to his suggestion to hook up instead of fight, which isn't exactly a good idea. The bad thing (or maybe it's a good one, but I refuse to think of it that way just yet) about it is that we both know how to push each other's buttons so easily. We know how to rile each other up, how to get the other going. And it's like we do it on purpose now. It's like we irritate each other just so we can have an excuse to rip each other's clothes off. Once it's because I turn my pages too loudly as I read; another time it's because Blake left the door unlocked. They're not even valid excuses, at this point. We just rip into each other for the dumbest things, and it inevitably ends with both of us sweating and panting and naked.
Which isn't exactly helping with my stress, because I spend more time naked with Blake than I can really afford to.
The only time that any of us seem to relax our shoulders, in fact, is in the art class. We move on from drawing to sculpting, and it's fun. It's ridiculous, too. I leave every day with clay caked under my fingernails, and even having Blake there doesn't bring me down. Not when he's the most helpless artist I've ever met.
Drawing definitely wasn't his thing, but neither is sculpting. It's almost comical, how bad he is. Only I pity him, a little. And I find myself offering to help with the sculpting, though I don't know why. Blake shows me what he's trying to do, and I try to show him what he does wrong.
Except I'm kind of helpless with the sculpting too, admittedly.
"That looks worse than it did when I started," Blake teased one of the times I tried to help. "What even is that?"
"You said it was supposed to be a squirrel," I had argued. "It looks like a squirrel!"
"It looks like a penis," Cadence had snickered. "And I would know, since I'm actually trying to sculpt a penis."
"Mine looks like a penis, too," Emma added. "But that's because it's supposed to be a banana."
"You've ruined my whole sculpture, Aubrey," Blake joked. He'd pinched my side too, and I had squealed like a little girl before swatting his hand away.
"Look at them flirting," Cadence had cooed. "Aw."
After that, I stopped offering my help. And we eventually moved on from sculpting to painting. Unsurprisingly, Blake is just as terrible at painting as he was at everything else. I'm, on the other hand, great at painting. Well, not great. But I'm better at it than everyone else sitting with me. Emma's bout of artistic talented is apparently limited to drawing; Cadence had given up attempting to do good at any of this in the second week; Blake gets more paint on himself and the table than he does on his canvas, and what he does get on his canvas is just a mess. It sort of looks like a child did it, actually.
Before I know it, the art classes are coming to an end. In the last official class, the instructor stands at the front of the room and thanks us all for attending, and then explains what will happen next.
"You have until Tuesday to complete a single showcase piece. You're free to use any of the mediums we've used in this class. On Tuesday morning we'll all meet here, each of you with your completed piece, and we'll set up a small gallery for everyone attending the Christmas party, which you all are invited to. Later in the evening, well give guests a chance to bid on your pieces. You're allowed to bid, as well, for any work that doesn't belong to you. Afterwards, the person whose piece brought in the most money will get a small prize. Any questions?"
Cadence raises her hand, and the instructor nods for her to go on. "What kind of prize are we talking here? Like money, or is it a five-dollar gift certificate for the school cafeteria?"
"That's a good question, Cadence." She smiles brightly at all of us. "The prize will be two coupons for a free movie, popcorn, drink and candy at the local movie theater, as well as a gift basket of goodies. Any other questions?"
A few people raise their hands, but I tune them out, too busy looking out the window. Snow falls in fat, wet flakes outside, and I smile. I might hate the cold, and the winter, but I can't deny that it's pretty, the snow. As long as I'm looking at it from the warmth of the indoors.
"Have you decided what you want to do?" Blake whispers to me.
I blink, pulling my gaze from the window. "Painting," I answer automatically. "I think."
"Painting of what?" he pushes.
I think on it. I've had a vague idea for weeks, but I'm not fully sure why. It's not even a good idea. It's so dumb, but I can't get it out of my head.
"Our room, I think," I respond, because I know that I won't be able to do anything else. Not with the way it's been nagging at me since I first thought of it.
"Our room," Blake repeats. "Huh."
"What about you?"
He shrugs. "No idea," he says. "I'm sort of terrible at it all, you know? Either way it's going to be bad."
"You're not—"
Blake gives me a pointed look, and I cut myself off.
"Okay, you're horrible."
Blake doesn't even look offended. He just shrugs and brushes it off, probably because we both know it's true, and there's no point arguing with that.
16
On the Monday before the Christmas party, I come into our room to find it completely trashed. It's not like it had been that time the guys from the other team broke in and left silly string and shaving cream everywhere, though. It's a more controlled mess.
There's a lumpy clay thing on Blake's dresser. There are balls of bunched up paper thrown around the room. And there's newspaper covering every inch of the floor between the ends of our beds and the door. Newspaper that's topped with about ten different bottles of paint, three different paintbrushes, a single large canvas, and a defeated-looking Blake.
"What are you doing?" I ask. "What did you do to our room?"
Blake looks up at me with wide brown eyes. "I can't do anything," he says. "I have to have this done by tomorrow and it's going to look like a five-year-old made it."
I shut the door, trying not to look as surprised as I feel. "You're still working on your piece for the show tomorrow?"
"Tomorrow," Blake groans. "God, I'm so fucked."
"Um." I pick my way through the room, past his mess. I drop my bag on my bed and sit on the edge of it. "What are you trying to do, exactly?"
Blake sighs. He pushes a hand through his hair and gestures at his dresser. "I tried sculpting again, but that was...that's just not happening. So I tried drawing, but it's almost as bad. So now I'm on my last chance: painting. Only I was just as bad at painting as I was at everything else, if you remember."
"Vividly," I admit.
Blake glares at me. "So now what am I supposed to
do? I've got to get this done so it can dry, and I only have one chance. If I screw it up, I don't have another canvas."
I chew the inside of my lip. My own piece for the show is in the art room, where I'd left it. It's been done for two days now, and I'm sort of proud of it. Proud of the contrast I'd captured between mine and Blake's sides of the room. The difference between Blake's wall, with the poster of Megan Fox and shelf with the sports trophy and the football sitting on it. With his messy clothes hanging off the edge of his unmade bed, and his bright red comforter. Contrasting with my plain black comforter and my immaculately made bed. With my shelf of books and comics, and the lack of clothes left around.
And then, the focus of the painting, the desk. With my work on it, but one of Blake's shirts hanging off the back of the chair, which is pulled out and not neatly tucked in. I like it, the way the desk is the only shared item in the whole room, and the way we both had our own ways of staking claim to it.
I hadn't struggled much with it, but Blake's clearly struggling with his own.
"What are you trying to paint?" I ask him.
He shrugs. "I don't know. Does it even matter? Remember when I tried to paint that bowl of fruit? It looked like I'd done it with my fingers."
It had. It was a bunch of lopsided, colorful blobs, all sitting inside of one big, colorful blob. It was the worst of the class, hands down, and I had laughed at it until Blake flushed red, and then I'd stopped because I felt like an asshole. It hadn't looked at all like the bowl of fruit that he had used as inspiration, though. And he has a point; it had sort of looked like a child made it.
"Maybe that's your problem," I say slowly. "Maybe it's because you're trying too hard to replicate something."
Blake makes a face. "So what do you suggest I do, then? Just wing it?"
"No." I shake my head and slide off the bed to sit beside him on the newspaper. "I just...it doesn't have to look like something, you know? You keep trying to draw or paint or make a specific thing, but art doesn't always work that way. Sometimes you just have to feel, you know? Just do it and not worry about the end product, and it might turn out a million times better if you do."
Blake looks lost. "I have no idea what you even just said."
I roll my eyes and reach for a paint brush and the red paint. I dump a bit of red paint onto the newspaper beside me, dip the brush in it, and hand it over to Blake. "Just paint with it, don't think about it."
"You want me to just paint," he clarifies. "With nothing in mind. No guidelines."
I nod. "Make a mess of it. Who cares. Just paint however you want. Use whatever colors you want. Use your hands, if you want. If you're trying to make it look like a mess, no one can judge you when it does because that's the point."
I have a feeling that the more I talk, the more confused he gets. But I watch as he hesitantly brings the red-tipped paintbrush to the canvas, and then he brushes a long, diagonal red swipe over it. When he's done, he looks back up at me. "Now what?"
"Can I help?" I ask. He nods, so I uncap the blue and the green and the yellow too, pouring a bit of each color onto the newspaper so we can use them, and then I grab my own brush. "Just paint, Blake."
He paints, and I help. I stick to the darker colors, like the navy blue and the burgundy and the rusted orange. Blake sticks to the bright yellows and the grassy greens. I slide my brush carelessly over the canvas, colors swirling with his. He uses careful, hesitant strokes. Until I grab his paintbrush by the bristles and flick them back, splattering bright red all over the painting.
"You just—"
"Yep," I say happily. "I told you, it doesn't matter. Just do whatever you think is going to look nice, and if it doesn't, well, who cares?"
Blake looks delighted by this. He dips his brush in the yellow and sprays it everywhere, and then he uses a clean brush to swirl together different parts of the painting until the colors mix and mingle. When there's no more white left on the canvas, I drop my brush and grin down at it.
"Huh," Blake says.
"Huh," I say too.
It's kind of... interesting. It's not exactly nice, but it's not exactly bad. It's a mess, though. But maybe in a kind of abstract way that someone will find really interesting. That people will interpret as meaningful and deep because that's what people do with art, even if the artist never meant for it to be interpreted that way. The changing of colors works, though. And so does the way that we'd both taken such different approaches to it, because it's like half of the painting is fighting with the other half, one side all bright and happy, the other side darker.
"I like it," I decide.
"So do I," Blake admits. He carefully picks up the painting, leaning it against his dresser so it can dry. And then he falls back onto the newspaper next to me, scoops up a bit of green paint, and wipes it along my jaw.
I gasp, hand coming up to touch the side of my face. The paint is cold, and my fingertips come back green. Which means that actually happened. Blake just wiped paint on me.
"What the fuck was that for?"
Blake laughs and leans back so he's resting on his hands. "You should see your face," he gets out through the laughter. "You look so...and the green—"
I dip my entire hand in the red paint, and then I wipe it across his shirt. "You should see your face," I mock.
He gapes at me. "I didn't get it on your clothes!" he says heatedly. "This isn't going to come out!"
"You started it," I remind him. "Don't start something you can't finish next time, Blake."
That was probably the wrong thing to say. He sits up, hands sliding through the red and green and yellow paint until his entire palms are covered, and then he slaps his hands down on my thighs. When he lifts them, there are perfect, rainbow-colored handprints in their wake, discoloring the thighs of my jeans.
"You're so dead," I warn, making a beeline for the nearest bottle of paint. Only Blake gets to it first, and he pops the lid before dumping the entire bottle on me. It slides down my shoulder, some gets in my hair, and my clothes are ruined. There's no way I'm getting this out. "Blake!"
"It's a good color on you," he smirks. "I like the blue."
I tackle him back against the newspaper. He's stronger than me, though, and it's only a matter of seconds before I'm being turned over, my back smearing in the paint covering the newspaper. Blake balances on top of me, easily holding all his weight so he doesn't crush me, and he smiles. It's no longer a smirk; it's not teasing, or spiteful. It's just a bright, incredibly happy smile.
I can feel that smile when he kisses me. It's gentle, soft, his lips ghosting over my own. His eyes are closed too, his lashes brushing my cheeks. And I go with it, tilting my head to the side, parting my lips. There's no heat, though. There's no anger or anything else burning through me. There's just a pleasant, simmering warmth that makes my toes curl when his tongue licks carefully into my mouth.
When he pulls back, his eyes dart between mine for a moment before he goes back in, a little bolder in the way he pushes his lips against mine, but never getting to that hurtful, almost violent stage that we always do. There's no hair pulling or scratching or shoving at each other. His hand comes up to cup my jaw, thumb sliding over the green paint that covers my skin.
I push my hips up against his, wanting him move this along, if that's where it's going. I whine lowly, too, in case he doesn't get the message, and he pulls back, but only for a second.
This time his lips move to my jaw, the side without the paint. His teeth graze over it, but it's still more of a gentle sting than the normal rough, sharp bites I get.
"God, you're so..." He trails off in favor of kissing my neck.
"Annoying?" I supply. "Or I think it's usually infuriating, the word you use."
"Mm." One of Blake's hands slip under my shirt. "I think the word I was looking for is beautiful, actually."
I try to pull back, but there's nowhere for me to go. My head hits the newspaper-covered floor with
a thunk, and the pain of it feels like being doused in ice water while you're asleep. It wakes me up, clears away the fog in my mind. Blake is still kissing away at my neck, making content little noises. When he comes back up to my lips, there's blue paint on his chin now from where he'd poured it all over my shoulders.
"What?" He asks. "You look—"
I shake my head. I can't think past the word 'beautiful' echoing over and over in my mind. Did Blake really say that? No, he couldn't have. That wouldn't make sense. That's not what this is about. It's not about us liking each other. It's not even about us being attracted to each other (which we have to be, I know, on some level, but still); it's always been about the fact that we piss each other off. Which is why there's always the hair tugging, the biting, the scratching. The gentle touches and soft brush of his lips is throwing me off. It makes me feel unbalanced.
He kisses me again, and I slide paint-covered hands up his back. I want the shirt off, want to decorate his skin in an array of colors, so I fist my hands in his shirt and tug until it's gone, and he's kissing me again. I stretch out my hand, searching for a bottle of paint. I dump the contents out onto the newspaper and dip my hand in it before bringing it to Blake's back.
"Could we...do you think that you could... I mean, maybe we could switch it up this time," he stutters out, cheeks as red as the paint that I'm smudging against his shoulders.
I frown, moving my eyes to my hands, drawing a tiny happy face on his skin just because I can. "What was that?"
He tucks his head into the crook of my neck, the one without paint there (for now, but I have a feeling that paint will coat both me and him by the time we're done with this).
"I want to go slow this time," he mumbles. "I want to make love to you. Okay?"
I shudder under him. I never thought Blake would ask for that, honestly. We've got a certain routine down. After the fighting, and the discarding of clothes, he lays me down on whatever surface he likes (his bed, my bed, the desk twice which makes doing my work hard because it's all I can think about when I'm sitting at it) and fucks me, and that's just how we do it.