27. Casanova Takes No Prisoners #2
I wasn’t wearing any underwear tonight because panty lines, and now I had an entire situation happening between my legs.
I was panicked, I was turned on, I was a fucking mess.
“Of course, sweetie .” I bit out in warning, shooting Carter my own determined look, but Carter was having none of that as his eyes flashed with something lethal.
As if he fucking knew everything that had happened that night, without me ever saying a word.
I swallowed hard as his gaze turned venomous and he slid his hands into his pockets, trailing Isaac like a shark who smelled blood in the water.
“You didn’t tell me you had a boyfriend.” Lila, perky as ever, materialized next to me, shooting me a wide-eyed jealous look.
No point in explaining. Not when Carter was practically acting like he wanted people to think he was my boyfriend. What the hell was up with him tonight? “It’s new.” I said, grabbing a champagne flute off a passing tray and knocking it back in one go.
“I’d knock back a few more of those if I were you.” She scoffed. “I think you’re in for a long night.” Lila left, grumbling to herself. “I need to get back on the apps.”
Just then, a buyer came up, inquiring about purchasing the collection in its entirety.
As they gushed over how fabulous it was, I thanked them profusely and kindly directed them to the gallery desk to place a bid request. Lila had been right.
I was going to be able to sell the collection in its entirety, and there were so many interested parties that it was going to auction.
In fact, there were several bidders who were adamant they get their hands on it, and a few had offered absolutely outrageous prices to ensure they would be the ones to take the pieces home.
The whole thing was surreal, and I wondered if it was a dream, or maybe this was another one of my nightmares, and everyone here was just a monster in disguise. Totally possible.
Across the gallery, I could basically figure out what Carter was saying to Isaac. His face was laced with mild disgust, and though he pointed out different elements of the piece giving an analysis, Carter was no doubt shredding him apart. One subtle but calculated comment after another.
When Carter finally left, Isaac’s shoulders slumped. In disappointment or relief, I wasn’t entirely sure.
I breathlessly realized Carter was coming straight for me, and I whirled around, darting across the gallery. Before I could hide, I found myself stuck in a conversation with a very sweet Swedish couple while they so kindly gushed over the collection.
It wasn’t that I didn’t want to talk to them.
The woman was very generous in sharing how she’d lost her own mother, and that my exploration of grief had impacted her deeply.
In fact, I was thrilled to hear that my collection was resonating with so many people.
It was just that, the longer I stood here, the closer Carter got, and if he reached me, it was totally possible a tear might actually start running down my leg.
Right on cue, I felt Carter’s presence looming behind me, and then his hand slid over my stomach possessively, and he pulled me flush against him.
I might have been on the verge of fainting as that hand stayed splayed wide over my belly, and I couldn’t help but notice the solid wall behind me growing even harder.
It was an effort to keep on conversing as if I couldn’t smell his cologne, as if I couldn’t feel what had been nestled between my legs last night, now that it was pressing firmly into my back.
“Would you excuse us?” Carter interjected politely, adjusting his moonstone cufflinks in front of me. “I’ve yet to view the collection, and I’d like to do so with the artist.”
The woman’s eyes sparkled, and she shot me a smile. “Yes, of course.”
“Thank you so much.” I said, “You can connect with the gallery owner, Lila. I believe she’s already taking bids. ”
“Fantastic,” the man said, and they quickly headed to the back of the gallery.
Carter spun me around, his hands gripping my hips as he pulled me to him. “My turn.” His voice was low. “No more hiding. Let’s see this fantastic collection everyone is absolutely obsessed with.”
I bit my lip and nodded, suddenly feeling even more nervous than I had. Carter took my hand and guided me through the crowd to the center of the gallery. “Here it is.” I waved my arm in front of the start of the piece nervously.
Carter didn’t let go of my hand as he clasped his own behind his back, observing it, taking it in. I pointed to the plaque. “Read this, and then I’ll explain how it works.”
“How it works?” His eyes were twinkling, but he focused intently on the plaque, reading the poem about mothers and daughters that I’d written.
His eyes moved to the next plaque, a brief explanation of my mother, the woman she had been, and then finally the last plaque. A short explanation of my grieving process this year, and how the collection had come into formation.
“A single thread.” Carter read the title of the piece aloud, and his eyes were already glassy.
I smiled to myself, relishing in the warmth of his hand around mine, and we started at the beginning.
The very first painting was actually one of the few paintings I hadn’t totally destroyed from my previous collection. I explained how it represented nurtured girlhood. It was colorful, complex, innocent, na?ve, joyful, and unrestrained.
As we moved down the display, the pieces became progressively more covered in black paint, and less of the original collection was visible underneath.
A representation of how female innocence gets stripped away over time.
Girlhood, adulthood, relationships, experiences, and how they all begin to overtake that original purity of essence.
In the center was the all-black piece, the one I’d literally scooped black paint onto with my bare hands that day in the studio. It was the death of girlhood, the separation of mother and daughter, the ultimate darkness that choked out everything it touched.
Carter leaned in, squinting at the black paint, and his eyes flared as he found it. “Is this your mother’s handwriting?” He asked.
I nodded. “Everywhere there is black paint, her words are overlayed because even in the lowest, darkest parts of my grief, she’s still with me. We are two threads braided into a strand that can’t be separated. Not really.”
It had been a painstaking process to transfer her words, one by one, onto the canvas. Emotionally devastating too, but also healing. I’d come across so many special discoveries.
“I love you to the moon and back. Don’t forget your art project.
” He cleared his throat. “We may have a maid, but this builds character. Take this upstairs and fold it, please.” He chuckled.
“I’ve made the most beautiful thing I ever could have,” Carter looked at me, misty-eyed before he finished reading the passage aloud, “My daughter. Nothing I do, no matter how grand, will ever compare.” Now I was nearly crying.
When I’d come across it in her journal for the first time, I had cried.
So hard my eyes had nearly swollen shut, and there were dozens more, just as poetic, just as devastating, just as precious to me.
“What are these?” He asked, gripping my hand tighter in his.
“Birthday cards, sticky notes with chores.” I shrugged as nonchalantly as I could. “Entries from her journals.”
“You kept all this stuff?” He asked in wonder.
“I’ve always been a bit of a hoarder, I guess.” It was a relief realizing that he didn’t totally hate the collection. “There’s more.” I gently tugged him down the display, and he let me, even as his eyes lingered.
Beyond that darkest piece, the paintings began to get less and less black again, and they shimmered as if liquid were running over them, representing the process of moving forward, the darkness being washed away.
“This is beautiful.” Carter murmured. “It’s symbolic, raw, profoundly moving, visually captivating.”
“What’s this?” he asked, pointing to the plaque that said, start peeling .
I smiled, nodding. “Go ahead.”
He reached out and found one of the thousands and thousands of colorful threads that I’d painstakingly embedded in black wax over several new pieces I’d painted. “It’s interactive?” He asked, waiting for my permission to start pulling the thread. “I saw one of these at your school.”
“It’s on trend.” I teased, shrugging with a shy smile. “Go ahead.”
Carter slowly pulled one of the threads, and it peeled up in a wild swirling pattern, revealing a new colorful painting underneath, exposed only by the thinnest line of color exploding out where the thread had once been.
He looked at me curiously, and I tipped my head towards the bucket. He dropped the thread into the all-black bucket and suddenly, the clear tube that fed out the side exploded with color, swirling around to the other side of the display.
It was a bit of an illusion I’d rigged up with the help of someone from the engineering department, but it looked like the threads were swallowed up into the darkness and then transformed into liquid color.
“This represents the process that you have to go into the darkness, into the grief, to find the light.” I said. “You pull one thread at a time and then you let them go. It seems insignificant in the moment, but in reality, this is what you’re creating.”
I tugged Carter to the other side of the display, where the explosion of color swirled through a complex network of tiny clear tubes that weaved around the new collection I’d created.
It was colorful and joyful, but in an entirely different way than my old work had been.
It was chaotic, nuanced, and a bit dark in some places, too.
“The joy was always there under the surface.” I explained. “Turns out grief and joy can coexist. You just have to know where to look.”