Legal Bindings

10. Evan

Evan was bored.And lonely. But mostly bored. Suburbia wasn’t as inspirational as he’d hoped, and after his initial burst of frustrated creativity in the face of Nick’s self-loathing, he hadn’t done much but sit around the attic and stare at a blank canvas. Being around Nick was tough—he made Evan feel like he needed to ask permission to live in the place where he paid rent. Evan was beginning to understand why Ben had divorced him, and he could see what Max meant about Nick being judgmental. He felt it every time Nick looked him up and down, clearly put out by his clothes or his voice or his hair or his… well, existence.

So Evan avoided him as much as possible. However, hiding in the attic wasn’t exactly the cultural immersion he had been hoping for. And he had no excuse for staying up there, considering that Nick worked all day, and he had the house to himself.

“Ugh, fuck this,” he said to his empty cereal bowl, deciding to throw on some clothes and take a walk, maybe scandalize some soccer moms. Not that Seattle soccer moms were easily scandalized—the city wasn’t known for its conservative outlook—but still, he was a city mouse visiting the country, so he ought to at least see where they kept the cheese.

He made a pit stop in his room for his favorite sneakers—an ombre fusion of pink and blue with black laces—and grabbed a cardigan on his way out the door. With no destination in mind, he turned left out of the driveway and started down the sidewalk, which was well maintained and lined with neatly groomed trees—the luxury of high property taxes and residents who appeared wealthy, even if what lay behind their closed doors belied that. Take Nick, whose house was one sparking wire away from an electrical fire. Evan liked the ambience, but he imagined Nick wasn’t the only person paying more for curb appeal than up-to-code circuitry.

The neighborhood was quiet, as it was a weekday, but there were a few signs of life. A woman kneeling in her garden, sporting the world’s biggest sun hat, lifted her head and waved at Evan as he went past. A large rhododendron bush blocked his line of sight as he rounded the corner, and he barely missed colliding with two women coming the opposite direction. One was Black, with dreadlocks flecked with gray, the color complementing the vibrant purple of her lipstick. The other was white with a long auburn braid swinging over one shoulder and no makeup to speak of.

Evan didn’t need to see they were holding hands to clock them as lesbians. Not to trade in stereotypes—though God knew he could be a walking cliché—but the white woman was wearing overalls and work boots, and he’d bet money they had a Subaru parked in their driveway.

“Sorry!” he squeaked, stepping out of the way.

The Black woman did the same, which caused them to collide anyway, a comedy of errors. They laughed and apologized as they sized each other up.

“That damned bush,” said the woman he’d run into, shaking her head. “I keep telling Edie she needs to trim it.”

Evan resisted the need for a pun and offered his hand instead. “I just moved in, so I don’t know Edie, but you’re right—her bush has gotten out of control. I’m Evan.”

“Hi, Evan.” The woman shook his hand then gestured to herself. “I’m Brin. This is my wife, Kim. We live just there.” She pointed to the house on the other side of Edie’s corner lot. “We keep our rhodies in order, unlike some people.”

“Nice to meet you.” He pointed behind himself to Nick’s house, which was only two doors down. “I’m there. So we’re sort of neighbors.”

Kim’s eyebrow rose. “Oh, we’ve been wonderingabout that place. We assumed it was going to be a flip because there was some landscaping work done, but then a guy moved in.”

“Yeah, that’s Nick,” Evan said.

“Your partner?”

“Oh—” he started.

“We invited him to our holiday party,” Kim continued.

“He didn’t come,” Brin said as though that was a cardinal offense. “Didn’t even RSVP.”

“Right. No, he’s not… we’re not together. I’m just renting a room. But he’s a lawyer, so he was probably really busy and forgot.” Evan paused, unsure why he’d defended Nick, who wouldn’t have done the same for him.

“See, honey? He’s not an asshole. He’s just a lawyer,” Brin said.

“Not sure I see the difference,” Kim replied, which made Brin snort then make a ba-dum-tss sound. As lawyer jokes went, it wasn’t the best. “So, what brings you to our neck of the woods, Evan?”

He couldn’t very well say that he’d come to study suburbanites like an anthropologist, so he waved a hand around like he was conducting the world’s only street-corner orchestra. “My lease was up, and I needed a new place. Plus, I’m an artist, so I wanted studio space, and that house had a whole attic for me to rent. And I needed flexibility—Nick’s letting me go month to month because I’m moving to New York soon.”

Maybe. Hopefully. He was putting his hopes and dreams into the universe, damn it.

“No kidding? Kim’s an artist too.”

“I dabble,” Kim corrected. “Mostly with fiber and found objects, though these days, my job is ninety percent being a mom.”

“Oh wow. How many kids?” he asked because it felt like the thing to say, though his mind was caught on what Kim had said. Ninety percent mom. It sounded so… all-consuming. A lamentation of how parenting co-opted creativity. There was an idea buried in that—something about exploring the sublimation of dreams for the reality of adult life. He needed time to think, and he suddenly wanted the conversation to be over so he could get back to the house and do just that.

“Two,” Brin said. “You ought to come over for dinner sometime and say hello. Kimmy makes a killer lasagna.”

“I love lasagna,” he said, his fingers twitching against the soft cotton of his trousers. “Count me in.”

“Let me get your number, then.”

They exchanged information—including Instagram handles, because Kim seemed interested in learning more about Evan’s work, which he was trying to post more frequently, thanks to Max—before they walked him back in the direction of Nick’s house. Once they’d said a polite goodbye, he ran to the attic, where the spark of an idea turned into something solid, and he got to work.

* * *

Nearly a week later, Evan felt like he had something. Five somethings, in fact, though he’d put four aside to work on later so he could focus on the strongest, which was a painting using Keith the bartender and his new girlfriend, Hailey, as the models. Funnily enough, Keith had turned out to be pretty good at posing, and these days, Evan would almost call him a friend.

The tableau he’d created from their outlines was meant to be exaggerated and uncomfortable, with a swirl of inspirational quotes and the Eiffel Tower superimposed on top, like some fucked-up Hobby Lobby kitsch. Because Evan—never content with scratching the surface of a concept—had gone deep into the dark recesses of farmhouse chic and looping calligraphic mottos to convey the loss of creativity that often came with leaving childhood.

It was reminiscent of work he’d done in college, back when he was angry and passionate and throwing everything he could think of at a canvas to see what stuck. A natural reactionary, he’d never been content to take anything at face value. He liked to poke, provoke, and see what lay beneath the surface. Shit, he’d never have gotten into escorting if not for that need to pry people apart and figure out what made them tick. But he’d lost it in his work over the years, yet this odd little attic and a tossed-off comment from his new neighbors had helped him find it again.

Voices rose from downstairs, and the side door opened and shut. Frowning, Evan checked his watch. It was only three o’clock, but that had to be Nick. With… people?

That didn’t make sense. Nick didn’t have any friends, or at least not any Evan had ever seen, and he worked until at least six every night. Whatever, it wasn’t his business. Nick could do what he liked.

Ten minutes later, though, the voices still rose from below, their muffled words floating to Evan through the floorboards, and he couldn’t keep his nosiness at bay. Plus, the kitchen was downstairs, so he could always pretend he needed a snack.

He took the stairs two at a time, opened the door to the front hall, and attempted nonchalance when passing the living room, where Nick was sitting with a middle-aged woman and a teenage girl who looked straight out of a central casting notice for sullen and disaffected youth.

“Ah, Evan,” Nick said in lieu of a hello, as if Evan were some curiosity trapped in a jar. “Sorry, I should have warned you. This is my roommate, Evan. Evan, these are clients of mine, Sydney and Donna.”

“Hi.” Evan entered the room, surprised that Nick was seeing clients at home. “Sorry to interrupt. I just now realized the time and that I’m starving.”

“Evan works from home,” Nick said as if Evan’s presence needed an explanation.

“What do you do?” asked Donna.

“I’m an artist,” he said at the same time that Nick said, “He’s an artist” with what felt like practiced disdain.

Sydney’s head snapped up, her wide eyes the color of fresh sky after a storm. “You’re an artist? What kind?”

“I paint,” he said, leaning against the doorframe and studying her funny little face. She was cute, with Kewpie-doll features that gave her the appearance of a Victorian waif wrapped in Kurt Cobain’s old sweater. “Sculpt sometimes.”

“Sydney does well in art,” said Donna, who clearly had a relationship with the girl—not quite maternal but something close to that.

“Cool. You want to come up and see my studio?” He made the offer casually, half expecting Nick to shut it down, because the kid looked bored, and he could offer a diversion.

“Yes!”

“But we have to discuss the—” Nick started.

“That’s fine.” Donna looked at Nick. “You and I probably need to do the boring bits alone, hmm?”

Nick frowned, but Sydney bounced to her feet, which settled things.

“You have to sign some stuff before you go, Sydney,” Nick said as she crossed the room. “And I need to make sure you understand what we’re asking the prosecutor for in the plea…”

“I know. You already told me that!”

Oh, Evan liked this sardonic little thing. Smiling, he led her to the attic stairs then let her go up first.

When she saw the studio, she stopped short. “Whoa.”

He smiled as he reached the top of the stairs. “Nice, isn’t it?”

“It’s awesome,” she said, taking a few steps into the room.

“So how come you need a lawyer?” he asked, feigning nonchalance. If he was going to let a delinquent use his studio, he needed to know how likely it was she’d pawn his art supplies for, like, Pokémon cards. Kids still do Pokémon, don’t they?

“Oh. I stole a car. Are you using acrylics?”

“Wait, you stole a car?”

“Yes.”

“Are you going to steal any of my shit?”

She fixed him with a withering stare. “Uh, no.”

“Good. I’d be pissed if you did.” He pointed at the fresh canvases stacked against a wall. “You want to mess around, paint a little?”

Another bright smile broke through her guarded expression. “Yeah, the light’s really good up here.”

If Evan believed in kindred spirits, Sydney might be one. He smiled as he helped her get set up with a canvas and some colors. She settled in, stroking a defiant swatch of fuchsia right across the center of her piece. It was an interesting technique—confident—which meant she might be genuinely talented rather than merely good in art class. A lot of kids could copy what a teacher laid out, their skills lying in mimicry rather than creativity. Those who could see something new were special.

Evan went to sit on one of the built-in benches running the length of the room, watching her closely, and noting the way her high brow furrowed in concentration after a few minutes. Stuck, most likely, and in need of a distraction. He could give her that.

“How’d it happen?” he asked.

“How’d what happen?”

“Stealing the car.”

She sighed. “The whole thing was my boyfriend’s idea.”

“Sounds like a lousy boyfriend.”

Another withering stare. “I guess.”

“You still with him?”

“No. His parents made him break up with me. Plus, we weren’t even, like… he didn’t want anyone to know we were dating, and after we got arrested, his dad got him off.”

“Ew.” Evan wrinkled his nose and tugged his legs onto the bench so he could hug his knees. “Don’t date boys like that.”

“Car thieves?”

“Well, that too. But I meant little pricks who won’t acknowledge your existence outside of the back seat of their car.”

Sydney blinked. “How’d you know—”

“I’ve wasted time with boys like that, believe me. Not worth it. Especially when I’m guessing he pinned the car stealing on you.”

“Um, yup.”

“And your… mom hired Nick?” He still didn’t get the relationship between Sydney and Donna, so he was probing.

“Donna’s not my mom,” she said, snapping back on herself like a rubber band. “She’s my social worker. And we didn’t hire Nick. He’s doing it for free.”

Huh. A kid in—presumably—foster care, and Nick doing something out of the goodness of his heart? That didn’t make a lick of sense.

“That’s nice of him,” he offered.

“Yeah. He’s going to fix it.” She turned back to her canvas, where she began layering the fuchsia explosion with incongruous strokes of yellow and green. It ought to have been hideous—like a Lisa Frank folder mated with Jefferson Starship—but it wasn’t. “He’s a good lawyer.”

“I bet he is,” Evan said because Nick seemed like what a good lawyer ought to be. Uptight, prickly, and emotionless.

“Is he your boyfriend?”

The question caused Evan to giggle, and he shook his head. “God, no.”

“Why not?”

“Because he’s not. How do you know he isn’t straight?”

Sydney scoffed and shook her head, echoing Evan’s words. “Uh, because he’s not. I asked him if he was married, and he said he was divorced, so I asked about his wife, and he said he’d had a husband.”

That was disappointingly straightforward. “Oh. Right, yeah. That’s… that makes sense. But to answer your question, he’s not my boyfriend. And it’s rude to assume that gay people just… gravitate toward each other.”

She gave him another stare, followed by an award-worthy eye roll. “Obviously. I’m not an idiot. Plus, I’m bisexual,” she said, making a meal of every syllable. “But you live together, so that’s, like, a reasonable assumption.”

“Nick said I was his roommate. Believe that.” Just thinking about Nick as a boyfriend was weirding Evan out. He was probably super predictable and vanilla in bed—shit, he most likely masturbated on a strict schedule.

“Okay, jeez,” she said. “How come this house is so messed up inside?”

“Because we’re—he’s—fixing it up.”

“Oh.” She went back to work, continuing to cover the canvas in a complex contrast of colors that made Evan want to crawl inside her head and see where she was getting her inspiration.

“Where’s your stuff?” she asked after a while.

“Hmm? Oh, around.” He pointed to his sketchbooks and the not-yet-finished canvas he’d set face down against the wall.

Sydney ambled over to look at his things, flipping through a sketchbook and pausing on some pages. Evan watched, his shoulders tense with a feeling he hadn’t felt since he was in school, waiting for a critique from a lauded professor. Teenagers and academics had that attitude of superiority in common.

“So, what?” she said after turning over and studying the unfinished piece with Keith and Hailey. “Is it, like, flipping a Norman Rockwell thing on its head?”

Who says they aren’t teaching kids anything in schools these days?“Sort of. But Rockwell was subversive in his own way. Everyone wrote him off as conventional, so they missed the subtleties in his work. Mine’s more… an examination of why we surround ourselves with inspirational bullshit proclaiming that life is getting better when it’s mostly getting worse.”

“Yeah, I could see that,” she said, a smile creeping across her features. “Like those ‘wine mom’ shirts? There’s always a ton of them at the Goodwill, and it’s so depressing. Sorry your life is so hard that having kids means you have to down a whole bottle just to feel good again.”

He could see where that would be particularly galling to a kid in her situation, presuming her own mother either wasn’t in the picture, or wasn’t up to the task of parenting. He grabbed a spare notebook to jot down her observation. “Right, exactly. I’m trying to pinpoint the moment where we give in to the late-stage capitalism and—”

“Sydney!” Donna’s voice floated up the stairwell. “Honey, we’ve gotta go. I have to pick up my kids by five.”

Once again, Sydney’s expression snapped back on itself, turning her inquisitive face into something sullen. “Coming!” She glanced at Evan from beneath her thick bangs. “Thanks for letting me paint.”

“Sure.” He hesitated. “You’re really talented, okay? Keep it up.”

Her eyes flicked to her canvas. “It’s not done.”

“I know. Want me to hang onto it for you in case Nick has you over again?”

A brief smile flickered and died before she nodded. “Yeah. Thanks. Um, bye.”

She headed for the stairs. Evan crossed to the window then watched as she left the house with Donna, slumping her way down the drive to the waiting car.