Chapter 27
Tristan
Earlier That Afternoon
“You two are the cutest,” Reagan giggles over the top of her Kindle.
My phone’s just vibrated with yet another text alert, and since I’ve started keeping it in my back pocket lately, the fact that I’d been leaning back against the counter when this one came in made the sound hella loud.
Not that anyone except Reagan noticed. Weekends aren’t as quiet as weekdays at Upshot, more friends hanging and dates than people tucked up with laptops and books, so it’s not like the sound stood out. Besides, what customer’s gonna care if the barista’s texting between orders?
“And oh my god, look at that smile you’ve got,” Reagan squeals as I fish my phone out of my pocket. “What’d he say?”
Mostly to piss her off, I turn away from her when I swipe open the message.
Not because I’m gonna be a dick and actually not tell her, but ‘cause, unlike most people who scare the hell out of me when they’re pissed, Reagan just cracks me up.
Girl’s five foot nothing, hella bossy, and gets all squeaky when she thinks she’s not gonna get her way.
Dodging her, I glance down at my screen.
Sunshine: Do you want to go somewhere on Monday that might give you some ideas?
Fuck, my face hurts from how big my smile stretches as I tap out my response.
Me: What do u have in mind?
Sunshine: Do you like surprises?
Me: Hell yeah
I fucking hate surprises.
Those damn butterflies apparently don’t though, ‘cause just the thought of Jesse being the one doing the surprising? Totally got them all kinds of worked up.
“Um,” Reagan titters, tugging at my wrist as she cranes her neck around to get a better look at my phone that I’d kinda forgotten to be hiding from her. “What kind of ideas is he trying to give you?” She waggles her coppery eyebrows, making me laugh. “Sounds kinda dirty for at work texting.”
“You read too much smut,” I smirk, shaking my head as she tosses me a so-what shrug as I open a fresh bag of espresso beans. “Annnd, you read it at work.”
Another shrug from Reagan.
“I on the other hand,” I gesture at myself, flashing her my most innocent face, which only makes her roll her eyes, “wasn’t being dirty at work, thank you very much. I am a good boy. Unlike some.”
“Is that what he calls you in bed? His good boy?”
I don’t actually drop the bag of coffee I was pouring into the espresso machine hopper. Just almost.
“Oh my god!” Reagan’s giggle nearly makes me slam my finger in the lid of the damn thing as I tip it closed. “He does call you that!”
This time, customers really do look over at us. Because Reagan just legitimately shrieked that shit.
“Look at your face!”
“Way. Too much. Smut, Reagan,” I deadpan, shaking my head at her as she wipes her eyes.
“So? And besides, you’re the one whose jaw fell on the floor when I said it,” she giggles.
“For your information,” I plant my hands on my hips, raising an eyebrow at her. “Jesse and I are taking things slow.”
She blinks in surprise at that little nugget of information, but the next moment, she brushes it away. Going straight back to full on smutty-Reagan mode. “Well then, you know you want him to call you that, don’t you? You want to be his good boy.”
I don’t blush. Blushing is totally Jesse’s thing, not mine. That prickly heat running along the tips of my ears? Definitely not a blush. Nope.
“Guess you don’t wanna know what Jesse was texting me about then.”
It’s my turn to laugh as she goes suddenly and totally silent, zipping her lips closed and arching her eyebrows in expectation.
“Jesse was telling me about how he’s been stuck on his dissertation,” I tell her, smirking as her face settles into a look of disappointment.
Probably at how very not dirty what I’m telling her is turning out to be.
“Says he’s just not having any ideas. Like he’s hit a dead-end.
So I told him about how I haven’t had any real inspiration for my paintings lately—”
“Ooohh, you paint? Do you have pictures of anything you’ve done?”
Seriously, this girl is like me on steroids. Half my tiny-ass attention span and twice my obsession with all things sexy. And you wondered why I love her?
Just ‘cause I know I won’t hear the end of it unless I do, I sidetrack with her, flipping through photos of a few of my paintings I’d snapped pictures of before whiting out the canvases to paint something new. And for once, okay, once when she doesn’t have her nose buried in a book, she’s silent.
“Holy shit, Tristan,” she breathes when I click out of the photos. “Those are—” she shakes her head. “Shit.”
“You saying my paintings are shit?” I put on an injured pout.
“Shut up,” she swats my shoulder. “You know what I mean. Do you sell them, or are they in a gallery or something?”
“Okay, I get it. You don’t think they’re shit. But can we please move on now?”
“Tristan, I’m serious. Your paintings are amazing. Please tell me you’re doing something with them. And if you’re not, that one of the half dead tree out on that rock? You’re giving it to me for my birthday next month.”
Oh. Shit.
“I gave that one to someone back in Cali,” I quickly lie. Is it fucked up that that feels better than telling her the truth? “I’ll paint you a new one. But nah, I don’t sell them.”
“Text Mitchel. Right. Now.”
Mitchel is the owner of Upshot. The guy who hired me. I’d never really thought about it until now, but I guess he’s gotta be the one who the people who sell art on the back wall go to if they want to display their work.
Reagan’s hand is in my back pocket, snagging my phone and shoving it under my nose before I know what’s hit me.
“Send him pictures of a couple of those you just showed me. Ask him if you can sell them here. He’ll go crazy over them. Trust me.”
My stomach flips and knots as I stare down at my phone.
Painting has always just been for me. Something I couldn’t help doing, just like I couldn’t help playing my music once Mindy started teaching me.
I’ve got a few memories of when I was super little, before things got fucked up by Fucking Bruce, back when my mom was happy and it was just the two of us.
We’d lived in a clean, bright little apartment in the outskirts of Reno, and after Mom would pick me up from daycare on her way home from work, we’d sit at the kitchen table and paint together.
She sold her paintings at a farmers’ market on Saturdays. One day, she’d tell me, maybe she’d sell so many that I wouldn’t have to go to daycare anymore while she worked.
I liked daycare just fine, but I liked that idea even better.
I don’t really remember what her paintings looked like. I just remember thinking they were the best things I’d ever seen. All I’d wanted was to be able to paint like that.
Then Fucking Bruce showed up and everything went to hell.
Mom would be late to get me from daycare, which didn’t make any sense, ‘cause she’d quit her job. Sometimes, she and Bruce would stay up all night for days at a time, keeping me awake banging around or screaming at each other or fucking so loudly I couldn’t sleep.
Not that I knew they were fucking back then at least.
Then other times, she’d pass out on the couch and sleep so long I’d have to feed myself, if there was any food around, and get back and forth from the school bus on my own. By then, no one took me to daycare anymore.
She didn’t laugh or play with me like she used to, and we didn’t paint together.
And after that, that story she’d fed me when we’d run away to Dallas that night on the bus? That everything would be better once we got there? Nothing but bullshit.
A few days before the lady from social services came for me, Mom had woken up from one of her passed-out-sessions and found me painting by myself in the kitchen.
The counter was all piled up with shit, just like everywhere in the trailer we were renting, so I’d just stacked my paper and water cup and paints on top of a flattish looking spot and gone to work.
I was so focused on what I’d been doing that I didn’t pay any attention to her crashing around until she was right behind me.
And then it was because I could smell her that I’d turned around.
Some kids at school had said I smelled bad. I didn’t think I did, but they wouldn’t stop saying it, so there had to be something wrong with my nose. So if I could smell her? Like that much? That had to mean she smelled extra bad.
“Can I show you what I painted?”
I don’t know what I was thinking. She was always pissed off when she’d wake up.
I knew better. I knew to stay the fuck out of her way and let her have a smoke and some coffee.
Then, after she’d disappear into the bathroom for what felt like hours and come back out again, it sometimes might be safe to talk to her. Maybe.
She’d ripped my painting out of my hand and crumpled it into a ball before I’d known what was happening. And then there was pain. A flash of hot, sharp pain across my cheek. It took me way too long to realize she’d smacked me with the back of her hand.
“Look at this mess!” she’d screeched. “Look at the fucking mess you’ve made!”
At some point, the cup of water with my brushes in it had gotten tipped over. Green-grey water was spreading through the pile of papers and old food wrappers and clothes on the counter, dripping down onto the grimy floor.
Then she’d snatched up my paints and thrown them toward the overflowing trash.
“Do something real with your time,” she’d screamed, grabbing me by the shoulders so that her nails dug through my shirt. Shaking me hard enough that my back hit the counter. “Don’t fucking waste your time on that shit. You want to end up like me? Is that what you fucking want?”
I didn’t. That was the last thing I wanted. And I fucking hated it. Because even to me, it didn’t feel like all that long ago that it had been all I’d wanted.
If painting was gonna make me end up like her, I wouldn’t do it.
When I’d showed up at Mindy and Neal’s house though? There’d been a little paint set mixed in with all the other kids’ stuff they’d set up for me. And could I stay away from it? Nope.
So I just painted when no one was around. Didn’t show anyone what I’d done, ‘cause I probably shouldn’t have been doing it anyway.
Not like I actually believed, even then, that art was what fucked things up for my mom. Not the actual painting at least, just maybe the idea that painting was something real. Something that wasn’t just fucking around for the hell of it.
It really all was just a waste of time.
“Hello? Tristan?”
Reagan waves my phone under my nose again.
Thank fuck it’s her voice and she hasn’t already gone and dialed Mitchel’s number or something.
It’s not like I still think that trying to sell my paintings is gonna turn me into a methed-out drunk. I’m not seven anymore.
But what I do just isn’t good enough for anyone to actually buy. It’s just me fucking around. Wasting time.
“I’ll think about it.” I give Reagan a smile that I hope doesn’t look too fake. She’s a sweetheart, and I don’t want to make her feel shitty for trying to give me a compliment.
And by the way, all that reading I did online about confronting shit from your childhood or whatever else is fucking you up? Fuck. That. Shit.
This latest little trip down good ole memory lane? All it’s done is give me the fucking worst headache, and instead of a stomach full of butterflies, now I just feel like plain old puking.
I’m tucking my phone back in my pocket when it vibrates again.
Exactly how bad is it that just that alone is enough to cut through my nauseous headache?
That, in the last week and a half, I’ve somehow gone from the guy who doesn’t want anything to do with anything more than a one-night stand to holding my goddamn breath every time a text comes in, hoping that this time, sunshine’s gonna tell me he wants to see me sooner than Monday?
There’s just no fucking way that I’m telling him I don’t know how I’m going to make it through ‘til then without getting a taste of those sweet, soft lips of his. And he really doesn’t need to know that, since those two nights I spent in his bed, I’ve slept even worse than I usually do, without his warm, just-a-teeny-bit-squishy body to use as my very own personal pillow.
For one, I still don’t even know how I feel about all that shit. Last thing I need to do while I’m trying to work that out is go around broadcasting it to the guy who’s gone and turned every last thing I thought I knew about myself upside down.
Two, and totally more important, he said he needs to take things slow. Yeah, so I’d kinda thought he just meant we couldn’t jump straight to the part where I get to peel him out of his ugly-ass sweater and lick every last inch of his delicious body.
Seems like he actually meant more than just that though, considering how he hasn’t said a word about wanting to see me since I left his place Wednesday night. I guess he needs a bit of distance too.
So that’s fine. Obviously.
Since it looks like Reagan’s apparently lost interest in harassing me about calling Mitchel, thank fuck, and turned all her attention to her Kindle, I can finally read Jesse’s text. ‘Cause, you know, having to wait a whole thirty seconds? End of the fucking world apparently.
Rolling my eyes at myself—yeah, that’s a thing, okay?—I swipe open my phone, goofy-ass grin in place, and pull up my messages.