Chapter 6 Knox
KNOX
“What do you mean?” Duke hissed through the phone as I shouldered my bag and jammed the key into the lock of Lucy’s door. “You can’t possibly know that you failed the interview. They’ll call you. I know it.”
I rolled my eyes. “You don’t know that. I was there, remember? And they’re not interested. I’m fresh out of school, and I don’t have any experience further than that food truck I forced you to help me with in high school.”
And I’d had to sell that food truck when Nana had been diagnosed with terminal cancer. Someone had to pay for her treatments because her insurance had royally fucked her over.
“But you interview well!” Duke insisted, speaking loudly enough that I could still hear him when I changed the phone to my other shoulder. “You’re personable! You’re hot! How can they say no to you?”
“Pretty fucking easily, Duke. They said I didn’t look committed because there’s a gap in my resume.”
“You were taking care of Nana.”
“Doesn’t matter to them.”
“Like hell! What’s with these rich dickheads and not understanding this shit? Honestly, I’m disappointed in the human race,” Duke grumbled, cracking into the phone connection.
I snorted. At least I knew Duke would always be there.
“Okay, okay,” I chuckled, flipping through my keys until I found the one to Lucy’s apartment, “I have to go. I just got back to his place.”
“Sounds like your boyfriend already,” Duke grumbled. “Spending the night at his place.”
“This was your idea, remember? I’m living here for an entire month because of you.”
“That doesn’t mean you fall in love with him, Knox!”
“I didn’t say I was!” I hissed, pausing at the door now that it was unlocked because I didn’t need Lucy overhearing this.
“I can hear you blushing through the phone,” Duke sang into my ear. “And I know how you act when you’re into someone. You’re rusty, but you’re not dead.”
“None of that sentence made any actual sense, you fucking idiot. I have to go.” I hung up before he could respond, pocketing the phone.
I could feel my own scowl, and I was ignoring the heat that his words had brought to my cheeks.
I wasn’t in love with Lucy. I barely knew the guy.
I’d left him this morning after I made breakfast, his plate on the kitchen island as he finished up with the red paint on his brush.
He saw me put his lunch in the fridge, too, because I was going to be gone until now, well after dinner, given I’d scheduled three interviews back-to-back for different restaurants across town that were looking for a chef.
None of the interviews had gone particularly well.
They had a problem with my resume and the gap in employment.
No executive chef experience, which meant they didn’t even want to hire me for sous chef positions.
I might have to start looking into head chefs and kitchen managers now. Just widen the scope a bit more.
I pushed open the door and let it click shut behind me.
“Hello?” I called out with a frown, shrugging off my jacket and hanging it beside Lucy’s expensive one in the coat closet by the door.
No response.
I toed off my shoes and crept into the apartment. There wasn’t much light, and the silence was almost stifling.
It was a fucking horror movie, that's what it was. I should expect some masked creep to jump out from around the corner in the living room any moment.
Where was Lucy?
I jolted back as a form jumped up in front of me, stumbling and nearly falling back against the front door.
“Jackson!” I hissed, hand over my chest to calm my racing heart.
Jackson Pawlick meowed, perching himself on the tall table in the entryway, right next to the vase of fresh flowers that Lucy’s sister had sent yesterday. Jackson had already pulled out the roses and discarded them onto the floor.
“You scared me, little guy.” I stepped forward and scratched behind his red-splotched ears. He really did look like his namesake, I realized, once Lucy showed me the paintings Jackson Polluck had made in his time.
Jackson purred and pushed his little head into my hand.
“Is your dad not here, buddy?” I chuckled, scooping Jackson up.
He leaned his face into my neck and nuzzled into me, his body folding up like an accordion so he could be curled into a ball in my chest.
I stepped further into the apartment and stilled as I glanced out the windows at the skyline outside.
Lucy was still at that damn easel.
He was painting in the near darkness, the apartment uncomfortably silent despite the record collection I’d snooped through in my room—the room that had been his studio, I recalled.
Wouldn’t that have meant he played music when he painted?
I’d definitely seen him put large discs onto the record player in the corner of the living room before he started painting this week—at least three times, actually.
So why not today?
Lucy’s hair was messy—loose like it usually was, but messed up. It was like he’d run his fingers through it incessantly, making it stand up on end and come undone from his hair tie.
Or like someone had taken him apart in bed and he’d been writhing against his pillows.
Jackson nudged my neck, and I resumed scratching his ears, pretending I hadn’t heard that thought cross my mind. It brought certain body parts to attention that shouldn’t be when I’m watching someone who doesn’t seem to realize I’m there.
I glanced at the kitchen next, only to find the breakfast plate for Lucy from this morning.
The French toast was still there, the whipped cream melted and oozy now, with both eggs looking pristine, except for some small bites that looked suspiciously the size of Jackson’s greedy little teeth taken out of the yolks.
Suspicious now, and feeling this familiar sense of disapproval—the same I’d felt when Nana would skip the meds that were there to help her—I opened the refrigerator.
Lucy’s lunch sat exactly where I’d left it that morning.
I closed the door and exhaled evenly. What the fuck? Had he been standing at that easel for the past ten hours? Without food?
I whipped around and spied his water glass on the small table beside Lucy.
It was barely two inches from his mason jar, which was perched there filled with water for him to dip his paintbrushes into.
The water in what was now a second paintbrush cup was filthy and dark, with two paintbrush handles sticking out of the top.
So, not just hungry, but thirsty too?
I clenched my teeth to hold back the curses. He hadn’t even noticed I was back yet; he was too wrapped up in that stupid painting.
He was holding his chin contemplatively, but the rigidity of his shoulders screamed that he was probably scowling at the canvas like he had been all week.
Jackson wriggled out of my arms and flopped heavily onto the ground, without an ounce of feline grace.
He trotted over to Lucy and hopped up onto the table beside him.
Almost mindlessly, Lucy switched his wooden paint palette to his right hand and used his left to scratch under Jackson’s chin.
Jackson purred loud enough that I could hear him from the kitchen.
I stepped around the island, and I could see Lucy’s glazed expression from his side profile.
His delicate eyebrows were twisted, his expression strained, and his lips bitten red and raw from what must have been hours of abuse under his teeth.
There were far more pleasant circumstances that would produce such a swollen lower lip. Preferably, it would have been from my teeth, not his, and I would have been far more careful in administering it.
Just as I blinked away the mental image of Lucy biting his lip under much more pleasant circumstances, he bit his lip again, his teeth scraping against the rosy flesh and bruising it from his stress.
What was so important about this painting anyway? Lucy said his dad signed him up for an art show, but that couldn’t have caused this level of stress, could it? Lucy was a painter, after all. Didn’t he enjoy it?
But, thinking back, I couldn’t recall a moment where Lucy had looked happy to be in front of his easel.
He painted stiff strokes over each other, layering paint onto a canvas that was bright, stippled, and warm.
It truly was a romantic painting, with its pinks and reds, a splash of vibrant blue, and brushstrokes that looked like flower petals.
And yet…
He’d said his mom told him that he transported himself into another world when he painted. I was beginning to think that was true, but for all the wrong reasons. Maybe that’s why he said this one was different, that it “wasn’t what he was used to.”
Getting to know Lucy was starting to bring up these details.
Maybe it was bad I was noticing. I shouldn’t be.
I should just make him some food and go to bed.
I shouldn’t be worried about that crease between his eyebrows, or how stiff he must be after standing in the same spot for ten hours.
He hadn’t eaten, he’d turned his drinking water into a paintbrush cup, and his cat had helped himself to Lucy’s food.
My fingers twitched with the urge to cook something. I thought about the look on Lucy’s face when I made him a grilled cheese. It had made him happy. I knew what Lucy without stress looked like from that small moment, and I wanted to give him that again.
“Guess that’s it then,” I muttered before busying myself making grilled cheese sandwiches for two. There was no soup today, but I used sourdough bread instead of white, and I added ham and Swiss cheese. It still wasn’t gourmet, but that had never been the point.
Convincing myself this was purely platonic—or even professional—was something I had to just push from my mind, because I was running out of excuses.