Put Me Back Together

by Lola Rooney

  “I just can’t decide what to paint. I’ve been going through my photos for over an hour but…I can’t settle on one,” he said, and there was disappointment in his voice. He sighed as he looked down at the photographs in his hands. For some reason this block was really bothering him.

  “That happens to me sometimes,” I admitted. “Usually when there’s something on my mind, something I could paint but I don’t want to.”

  The look he gave me was full of recognition before it drifted back to the canvas in front of him.

  I wondered what it was he was trying to avoid.

  Settling myself in front of the easel next to his, I said, “You’ll get better at getting past blocks like this as you paint more. Just keep telling yourself to pick the photo that matters to you, the one that makes you feel something.”

  “You mean I should paint what I love?” he asked, and was I imagining it, or did his eyes linger on my lips as he said it?

  I cleared my throat. “I mean paint from the gut,” I said. “The best artists always do.”

  “Is that what you do?” he asked.

  This time I avoided his eyes. “No,” I said. “I paint the past.”

  Then I put in my ear buds, turned on my iPod, and tuned him out. It was easier than I’d expected. Within moments I’d slipped into what I liked to call my “artist trance,” losing myself in the act of painting and letting the rest of the world just fade away. Sometimes when I did this the painting sitting on the easel when I was done looked entirely foreign to me and I had no memory of creating it at all. Those paintings were often the most abstract, full of dark, angry strokes and spatters of paint. I never showed them in class or hung them on my wall. Truthfully, they frightened me.

  A little more than an hour later I turned my music off. My painting was by no means finished, but I’d made a good start. I wasn’t working from a photograph, which I knew would get me into trouble, but I didn’t have much choice. Even if I could go back to that place and take a picture, I knew I never would. Luckily, I didn’t need a photograph to paint the scene. It was seared into my brain.

  Today I’d worked on the sky, which didn’t pose much of a challenge for me. I’d become an expert at painting the fading light of day, the lingering blue, the peeking stars. I’d painted that sky a hundred times. No matter what I did, even if I painted a daytime scene, there was always that sky hanging over it, scattered with darkening clouds.

  I could never escape that sky.

  Looking around, I noticed Lucas wasn’t at his easel. Instead, he was leaning against the counter behind me. As I turned around, I caught him looking at my painting and a wave of panic shot through me. How long had he been watching? Had he seen me in my artist trance? I had no idea what I looked like when I was in that state—probably like I was high or a little mad. To cover my embarrassment, I jumped from my seat.

  “Let’s see yours!” I said, stepping over to his easel.

  “It’s not finished,” Lucas said hesitantly, and he was right; it wasn’t. The right-hand side of the painting was mostly blank. But he’d recreated the trees in his photo with surprising skill. I was impressed by the way he’d managed to make it seem as though the sun was shining through the branches. His style was more realistic than mine, but far more advanced than I’d expected. I couldn’t quite believe it.

  I turned to him and he raised his eyebrows at me. He actually looked anxious to hear what I thought. I’d never seen him look anything but relaxed before.

  “It’s really good,” I said with a genuine smile and he seemed to let out a breath he was holding. “I love your use of light here.” I pointed at the branches. “I can’t wait to see it when it’s finished. I had no idea…” I shook my head.

  “No idea what?” he asked.

  “You surprise me,” I said simply.

  My certainty that the attraction I was feeling was entirely one-sided crumbled in an instant as Lucas stared into my eyes, making my stomach flip. He looked at me like he’d never seen anything like me before, like I was the only girl in the world, like I was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.

  Nobody had ever looked at me that way in my entire life.

  “Go out for coffee with me,” Lucas said, his eyes locked to mine.

  I didn’t even take a second to think about it.

  “Okay,” I said.

  4

  I convinced Lucas to go to a local coffee shop I knew of on a side street off campus. I told him it would be less crowded, when really I just didn’t want to be whispered about for the rest of the day for having a coffee date with Lothario Lucas. If he had any idea I was lying, he didn’t let on, which left me feeling a little buzzed with relief. I didn’t bother asking myself why it mattered so much to me if Lucas thought I was a liar.

  We passed one of our cat flyers stapled to a telephone pole, flapping depressingly in the wind. In the end Lucas had insisted we put his number on the bottom, just in case some kook ended up calling, but he said he hadn’t gotten any calls.

  As we walked through the door to the coffee place, my cell buzzed in my hand.

  Em: Econ is sooooo boring. Make me laugh. Now. Go.

  I considered telling my sister I was about to sit down for coffee with “Lucas Matthews is a hottie,” but decided against it. Knowing Em, she’d probably scream right there in class and hold it against me later. Better to make her wait.

  Me: But how? I’m so boring, too.

  Em: True. Sighhhhh.

  Me: Might have a story for you later, tho.

  Em: What what?

  Me: Maybe something about a certain hottie…

  Em: WHAT!

  Me: Oh, sorry, gotta go.

  Em: Evil tease!

  Me: TTYL :)

  As much as everything to do with Lucas felt completely ill advised to me, it was fun to have something to gossip with my sister about, even if I was pretending—it was just coffee; I was pretty sure there wouldn’t be much of a story to tell. She was usually the one coming to me with juicy tales of heartbreak and outrage and adventure. I liked the idea of being able to deliver something back.

  It was almost like I had a life.

  Lucas had been waiting behind me in line, respectfully not asking whom I was texting with. When it was my turn to order, I got a giant hot chocolate with extra whipped cream and covered it with chocolate and cinnamon shavings. I liked my beverages to be as much like dessert as possible. I collected my drink and grabbed a seat at a table by the window, wondering only after I’d sat down if that was the socially correct thing to do. Should I have waited with him while they made his drink? Should I have paid for his drink? (In actuality, he’d paid for mine, even though he was behind me in line. Was that normal?) I eyed him nervously as he stood with his coat under his arm, chatting with the guy behind the counter. I could say I didn’t check out his ass from across the room, but that would be another lie.

  His coffee in hand—he got it black and in the smallest size, like he was trying to make me look like the biggest pig in the world—he walked over to where I sat, and a dozen female eyes followed him.

  “Is this how you live?” I asked, fixing him with a horrified look.

  “What? Did I spill?” he said checking the front of his shirt for stains, as I glanced back around the room with lowered lids. Now those same female eyes were looking at me instead. Middle-aged ladies and teenage girls and soccer moms. A skinny girl with long brown hair stared daggers at me. Apparently it didn’t really matter if we were on campus or off. Lucas caused a stir everywhere he went.

  I took a breath, detesting the feeling of being stared at. I remembered that feeling. Like everyone knew something about you. All of them pitying you. And then, later, like everyone was wondering what the hell was wrong with you.

  I felt rather than saw Lucas leaning toward me over the table, my eyes glued to the wooden surface.

  “They wouldn’t be staring if you weren’t so beautiful,” he whispered.

  What?
>
  I gulped my drink, burning my tongue and getting whipped cream all over my nose and upper lip, which I wiped off with amazing speed, though I was pretty sure he’d seen it. I couldn’t be certain, because I still hadn’t looked him in the eye.

  “Uh,” I muttered as I squeezed my napkin into a ball in my fist. “That’s just so…completely not…whatever.”

  He kept quiet—though I was pretty sure he was laughing at me under his breath—until I calmed down enough to look up at him. In what seemed to be his typical fashion, he was sitting back in his chair, completely at ease.

  “How can you be so okay with all of…this?” I blurted, gesturing at the room at large. “How can you stand being stared at and talked about and stalked by random girls? Don’t you ever get sick of being Lucas Matthews?”

  I bit my lips hard, realizing I’d probably way overstepped my bounds. As Em would have said, You really should have backed the truck up there, Katie. I’d basically implied I would hate myself if I were him. And just ten seconds after he’d called me beautiful.

  Nice.

  But Lucas didn’t look particularly insulted. Instead, he was looking thoughtfully out the window.

  “Do I ever get sick of being Lucas Matthews?” he said to his own reflection. Then he looked at me again, his expression melancholic. “All the time,” he said.

  Never in a million years would I have thought that Lucas and I would have a single thing in common, let alone two things in one day. Maybe I would have something to tell Em when I got home after all.

  Shaking away the gloom, Lucas set his elbows on the table and crossed his arms like he meant business.

  “So, Katie,” he said. “Your turn. Tell me something about you.”

  I busied myself with taking another abnormally long sip of my drink. Uh-oh. He wanted to do the whole ‘getting to know you’ thing. I heard mayday cries blaring in my ears. Luckily, I’d spent years learning evasive tactics for just this situation.

  “I really love this drink!” I said happily, holding it up for him to see.

  He nodded at me as if agreeing and then his nodding turned to head shaking. “Really?” he said with some amusement. “That’s all you’re going to give me? You love chocolate?”

  “But I really do,” I said seriously.

  A mischievous grin spread over his face as the girl who’d taken our drink orders came over to us with a plate in her hand. She set it down on the table and batted her eyelashes at Lucas as he thanked her. I tried not to roll my eyes in return, but did not succeed.

  On the plate now sitting between us was a warm and delicious looking brownie so thick and glistening with chocolaty goodness that my mouth started watering just looking at it. Then Lucas took his fork and cut it in half and the thick, fudgy insides began to flow out onto the plate, like some kind of volcanic eruption of chocolate delight.

  I looked up at Lucas, my mouth still hanging partly open.

  “I want that,” I said.

  Lucas smiled even wider, holding the fork out of my reach. “Well I was going to just share it with you,” he said, “but now I have a better idea. Let’s call this our official Getting To Know Katie brownie. For every bite you take you have to answer a question about yourself. No answers, no brownie.”

  “Every bite!” I said, gazing hopelessly at the treat and trying to count the number of bites with my eyes. There were ten bites there at least, unless I made them really big, which I imagined he wouldn’t let me.

  Ten questions. I could do that…couldn’t I?

  “What do you say?” Lucas said.

  “Fine,” I said crossly, snatching the fork out of his hand. He didn’t put up much of a fight. “But I get the first bite for free. I need to make sure it’s worth it.”

  Lucas nodded in agreement, his eyes twinkling. He said, “What the lady wants, the lady gets.”

  Pulling the plate toward me, I cut the brownie into ten equal bites, letting the molten insides ooze out everywhere.

  “You’re making a mess,” Lucas commented.

  “Hush, you!” I said.

  I dragged my fork through the chocolate sauce, then scooped up the first bite of brownie and brought it to my lips, inhaling that freshly baked smell before putting it into my mouth. It tasted so good I had to close my eyes as I chewed. I liked to worship my desserts in private.

  When I looked up at Lucas again his eyes were so dilated they looked black.

  “Forget the questions,” he said. “I just want to watch you eat it.”

  I froze with the fork still in my mouth and there was a pregnant pause as we stared at each other. Then I set the fork down and looked away. A part of me liked this, just a little, while another part of me was seriously freaking the hell out. I wasn’t sure which part was winning.

  Lucas sat back in his chair, as though he thought it would be better if there were a full table-length between us. He shook his head a few times like it was an Etch-A-Sketch and he was trying to clear it.

  I just want to watch you eat it.

  I couldn’t deny that when he’d said those words I’d wanted nothing more than to let him watch me eat it.

  Oh God, what was happening to me?

  “First question,” Lucas said, rubbing his hands together. “What’s your last name?”

  Okay, not too bad. Easy does it. “Archer,” I said, claiming my second bite.

  “That’s British, isn’t it?” he said. “Like the author, Jeffrey Archer.”

  I breathed in, readying to make my speech. “My mother is Indian and my father is Danish, but his father was English, hence the last name Archer. My mother is actually from Australia, she was born and grew up there, but her parents emigrated there from India and then eventually to Canada, so here we are.”

  I readied myself for the typical remarks Em and I had gotten all our lives. Exclamations of, “Danish and Indian. What an interesting combination!” and, “You’re so lucky. I’m just plain old Canadian.” They were all basically conversation killers. What exactly was there to say about your diverse ethnic background? Thanks for finding my racial mix fascinating? (Emily had once told a man in a checkout line that he had her to thank for keeping his world diverse. “You’re welcome,” she’d said to him, perfectly seriously. He’d tipped his hat to her.)

  Lucas just looked at me and said, “I’m one-eighth French-Canadian.”

  “Oh, I totally win,” I said, spearing two bites of brownie on my fork at once and shoving them both in my mouth.

  “Cheater!” Lucas cried, picking up the plate and holding it to his chest. “Now you have to answer two questions in a row.”

  “Fine,” I said, holding up my hands to prove my innocence.

  He narrowed his eyes at me but placed the plate back down between us.

  “Where are you from?” he said, his voice still laced with suspicion.

  “Vancouver,” I answered honestly. Good. A nice big, anonymous city. Nothing to see here, move along. “And where are you from?”

  He raised his eyebrows at me, but didn’t protest my table-turning move.

  “A little town called Christie,” he said.

  I shook my head slowly to show I didn’t know it.

  “It’s a tiny place about an hour northwest of here. Blink on the highway and you’ll miss it,” he said. “There’s nothing much there, just a lake and a four-street square downtown, a rundown movie theatre, and a girl’s boarding school, but it’s home to me.”

  I’d noticed that students who came from small towns were often apologetic about it, as though they thought their homes were too boring to mention. But not Lucas. I liked that about him. I liked that he wasn’t embarrassed to come from some small town nobody had ever heard of, like his past was nothing to be ashamed of.

  I wished I could say the same.

  “So your parents still live there?” I asked, claiming another bite while he wasn’t looking. A muscle clenched in his jaw and he scratched at the back of his head. When he smiled at me this time,
I could see the strain. This wasn’t a question he wanted to answer.

  “I thought I was the one asking the questions,” he said.

  But he didn’t. I drew designs in the fudge with the tines of the fork and he watched me do it. It was the first time in a long time that I’d been able to stand being quiet with someone. Usually I would obsess about what they were thinking of me or how to get away or what to say next, because God knew I wasn’t exactly a stellar conversationalist. I didn’t know why I wasn’t feeling that way now, but I didn’t question it.

  “Sometimes I miss living at home,” Lucas said. “That town was the world to me in high school. Everything was so much simpler then.”

  “I bet you were the king of the school,” I said with a smirk. “You had a hundred close friends and you were class president.” His sheepish look told me I was on the right track. “I bet everyone knew your name, just like here.”

  “What? Didn’t the kids all know your name at your school?” he said.

  I winced internally. I’d walked right into that one.

  “Oh, they knew my name, all right,” I said. They hadn’t printed my name in the papers, but every kid in my high school had still known exactly who I was even before I’d set foot on school grounds.

  “Were you one of those popular girls?” he said with laughter in his voice. “Did you walk down the hall, swinging your ponytail around and making snarky remarks to your underlings?”

  I had to laugh along. “No!” I said. “That was Emily.” I had another bite of brownie.

  “But I’m sure you had boyfriends,” he continued, he tone light and teasing while my stomach dropped like a stone. “How many were there? Dozens, I bet.”

  Nope, just one.

  In my lap I began twisting my fingers, an anxious and painful habit I’d developed during the trial. I would twist my digits until the skin puffed red and the bones cracked, gripping so hard it felt as though my fingers would actually break. My hands would throb for nearly an hour afterwards as I went over in my head everything the prosecutors had said, and every look the Wesleys had given me, and every lie I’d told. Especially the lies.