Exposed - Chapter 27 #2
After a few minutes she shifted slightly. But I didn’t even care. I wanted her to move. Break the pose. Do whatever she wanted. I was just happy she was breathing. That she was here with me.
I paused and stared at her toned legs. “Do you still like to run?”
She turned her head slightly to me. “Yeah.”
“I can tell.”
She laughed and turned her gaze back to the ceiling.
“Tell me what a normal day was like at the lake house,” I said. Even though it was hard for me to hear it, I wanted to. I needed to know about those years that I’d missed out on.
“I’d bake every morning with Jacob. And deliver the desserts to the restaurant where Miller was the chef. And in the afternoons I’d try to teach Jacob, but I mostly just played with him.”
I smiled. “It must have been hard to persuade Jacob to do something he didn’t want to do. Because of how he says nooooo.” I did my best interpretation of him.
She laughed. “Exactly. He knows just how to make me give him whatever he wants.”
I got that. I certainly didn’t know how to say no to him. I was used to spoiling Scarlett and Sophie. But I’d probably need to do more than that if I was going to be a good father figure to Jacob. “Tell me more.”
“I don’t know what you want me to say, Matt.”
“I want you to tell me the truth. I want to know everything.”
She didn’t reply.
I was pretty sure this was as hard for her as it was for me. I focused on painting her left breast. Because it was easy to not be upset when I was staring at her breasts. “You told Jacob that his father is a star?”
“The North Star.”
I was quiet as I painted her.
She cleared her throat. “Miller put up string lights like the ones you hung for me outside. He said we were written in the stars.”
I stayed quiet. Even though it felt like there was a knife in my chest. I focused on her other breast.
“I feel close to him when I look at the stars. And I wanted to give Jacob that. And maybe Miller is up there, you know? I don’t know if I believe in any of that.
It’s hard when so many people I know died too young.
Is there really someone out there watching over us?
If there is, it feels like all he does is take. ”
“I felt that too. Bitter that you were taken away from me. And I liked having your tombstone to visit. And going to the school. But I only started visiting the school after I came back from college. Before then it was too hard to go to Empire High. But mostly I felt close to you by doing this.” I nodded to the canvas.
“Painting nude portraits of me?”
I laughed. “No. Usually just your face. Sometimes when I really felt like shit, I’d think that maybe I made you cry more than I made you laugh.”
“Well that certainly wasn’t true.”
I saw the curve of her lip as she smiled at the ceiling. Her words and that smile made me feel better about how I’d treated her when we first met.
“You were everything to me, Matt.”
Were. “Tell me more. About the lake.”
“I used to run around it. I wore down a path around it. Miller used to run with me, but he secretly hated running. But I used to feel someone watching me. I was paranoid about it. And he knew I felt safer when he was beside me.”
“I like running,” I said.
She tilted her head toward me again. “Do you run in Central Park?”
“No, usually at the gym. But I can do that. For you.” I used to avoid Central Park because it reminded me of her. And sometimes when I remembered it was hard to breathe. Which wasn’t great in the middle of a workout.
She looked back up at the ceiling. “I think I’d like that.”
I smiled. This was good. We were making progress. “Tell me more.”
“I have a question for you first.”
I didn’t respond, I just kept painting.
“Penny and Daphne mentioned a date setting your dick on fire?”
I laughed. “Yeah. Not my finest moment.”
“Did you like…upset her or something?”
“No. At least…I don’t think so.” I put another blob of paint on my palette.
“She was a little all over the place. In a cute way. Or maybe just a crazy way. I never talked about you with anyone I was close to. But for some reason with her, it just came out. And when I said you’d died, I think she was trying to reach for my hand on the table.
She hit a candle into the bread oil. And then proceeded to try to put it out with the tablecloth.
But when she yanked it, she hurled the flaming oil right onto the front of my pants. ”
Brooklyn’s body shook with laughter. “I think that’s the best reaction ever to hearing about someone’s death.”
“Oh and then she just ran out of the restaurant. Leaving me with singed pants. The next time I saw her, she jumped into a lake to avoid me.”
“What?” Brooklyn was laughing so hard now.
I stared at the way her breasts bounced.
“I kind of want to meet this girl.”
“You’d like her. Get this, she was married to Cupcake.”
Brooklyn turned to me. “No.”
I nodded.
“Ugh. That poor girl. Oh my God, I have the best idea. We should set her up with Nigel!”
“Nigel? I don’t think he’s into girls.”
“What? Of course he is.”
My paintbrush hovered in the air. “I don’t think so.”
“He tried to see me naked like ten times the other night when he surprised us with that bath,” Brooklyn said. “And he was very flirtatious while we were baking. He’s quite charming. And suave. But yes, he’s a little awkward. I think the two of them could be perfect.”
I laughed. Flirtatious, charming, and suave?
Were we talking about the same Nigel? Because that sounded nothing like Nigel to me.
I’d describe him as perverted, over-attentive, and really into meat.
But then I thought about when he’d been able to infiltrate that restaurant as Francois.
He said the hostess let him because he had a way with the ladies.
Did he actually? I kind of always thought he was into me…
I shook my head. “If you say so.”
“Or if not Nigel, maybe she’d be a good fit for Tanner. Tanner’s not awkward at all, but he’s always saying strange things. And he’s funny. They’d probably laugh a lot together.”
“Tanner usually dates super tall models.”
“Oh. Interesting. He doesn’t seem that superficial to me.”
“He’s not. But his type definitely isn’t someone who’s going to set his dick on fire.”
Brooklyn laughed. “Fair enough. He does seem kind of lonely, though, doesn’t he?”
“Yeah. His girlfriend died when he was young too. One of the reasons we started hanging out so much. He just understood better than anyone else could.”
“Hmm.” She kept staring at the ceiling, doing her best to hold the pose.
“Back to you,” I said. “Tell me more. Tell me all of it.”
She told me about fall days similar to the one I’d given her at my parents’ house.
She talked about playing in the snow and cozy nights in front of the fireplace.
She smiled as she reminisced about playing football in the yard and swimming in the lake.
The sounds of the cicadas lulling them to sleep during the summer. And her huge garden.
Brooklyn had a simple life. A beautiful life. The life I wanted with her. And as I painted her, and listened to her stories, I felt closer to the real her. The one that had lived. It felt like falling in love all over again.
My hand paused as I painted the dip of her stomach. This was probably the part of her that was the most different. She had a few stretchmarks from her pregnancy. But that wasn’t what I was fixated on.
I stepped away from my easel and walked over to her. I could feel her eyes on me as I knelt down beside her. But she didn’t say a word as I reached out and traced the ragged scar on the side of her stomach.