Chapter Sixteen
Chapter
Sixteen
April didn’t talk at all on the drive back to Cloverwild.
None of them did, in fact. Daphne wasn’t sure what to say, and the only thing she really wanted to do was hold April’s hand again.
Even Sasha was mostly quiet in the back seat, offering a few meal suggestions for the engagement dinner—which they’d decided would take place at Dylan and Ramona’s lake house in a week’s time, as Sasha had that Friday night off and Ramona’s sister, Olive, would arrive home earlier that afternoon—to which April simply hummed her acquiescence as she drove.
She didn’t talk when they reached the resort, nor did she say anything when Sasha yanked April into her arms for a quick backslapping hug before heading down the path toward her cabin.
April also didn’t speak when she and Daphne walked inside their own cabin, when she fed the mewling cats, or when she finally sat on her bed with a sort of lost look in her eyes.
Daphne stood in the middle of the room, trying to figure out what to do.
If she needed to do anything.
April’s best friend getting engaged was happy news, obviously, but Daphne knew there was a lot more to what April was feeling than that.
Her own mind was spinning from the events of the evening—the hand-holding at the café, how April hadn’t let her go until only a few minutes before they were ready to leave.
The kiss in the woods.
A kiss to end all kisses. Which was a dramatic way to remember it, yes.
Quite possibly, Daphne’s imagination was blowing it into legendary proportions, but she was pretty sure it was the best kiss of her life.
But more than all that, she was worried about April.
She wanted to make it better, make April laugh or smile or even cry if that was what she needed to do.
And she knew—she just knew—that April needed to do something.
“Are you okay?” Daphne asked. Such a banal question, but it was the only one she could think of right now.
April looked up at Daphne slowly, but then she smiled. Which was exactly what Daphne had wanted, but this smile was soulless, didn’t reach her eyes even a little bit, and showed zero teeth.
“I’m fine,” April said, but continued to sit on the bed, fiddling with a loose thread on her moon pants.
“You’re sure?”
April looked annoyed now. “You should really believe people when they answer your questions.”
“I would if everyone around you hadn’t been doing exactly that for a while now.”
April frowned. “Should they not?”
Daphne should probably shut up, but she couldn’t stop the next words from falling out of her mouth. “Letting you lie about being okay? I don’t think so. Not if they care about you.”
April stared at her. “And that’s you? Someone who cares about me?”
Daphne didn’t know what to say to that. April’s tone was multilayered, like a fine perfume.
Top notes of vitriol and irritation, middle notes blooming with exhaustion, bottom notes tinged with a little sadness and actual wonder.
Daphne shuffled in place, unsure of how to proceed, when she had an idea.
She held out her hand. “Come with me.”
“What?” April said, flicking her eyes down to Daphne’s proffered fingers as though they were on fire. As though she hadn’t been clinging to them just an hour earlier, palm sweaty and anxious.
“Just come with me,” Daphne said again, as firmly as she could muster. April intimidated her, but right now, Daphne needed to be in charge. “Don’t think, don’t question, and for god’s sake, don’t assume I have your worst interests at heart.”
April’s mouth fell open, and she looked up at Daphne with those dark eyes full of mysteries. A million stories and ideas and dreams, unknown to everyone but her. She inhaled as though she was going to protest again.
“Don’t,” Daphne said, then pressed her forefinger to her lips, her other hand still reaching for April.
April’s eyes narrowed a little, but her mouth lifted in a subtle smile.
She slid her palm against Daphne’s, let Daphne pull her up from the bed.
She let Daphne lead her out of the cabin and back down the cobbled path to the lodge, and she let Daphne keep hold of her hand all the way to the art studio.
Daphne only released her when they got inside and she flipped on the light, then went straight to the supply cabinet.
April stood there silently as Daphne pulled out a drop cloth, two hunter-green painter aprons, and two large blank canvases.
She spread the cloth onto the floor near the front of the room, then set the canvases up on their instructor easels before handing April an apron and then tying on her own.
After that, she collected bottles of nontoxic acrylic paints, squirting them onto the largest palette she could find.
Finally, she handed April a thick paintbrush.
April took it, the apron nearly swallowing her small frame, but then stood there holding the tool like a sword she wasn’t sure how to wield.
“I’m not a painter,” she said.
Daphne ignored this. “When I was a teenager and I was feeling particularly shitty—”
“I think that’s the first time I’ve ever heard you swear,” April said.
Daphne laughed. “You’re a bad influence.”
“You’re welcome.”
They smiled at each other for a second, the air thick between them.
Daphne cleared her throat. “Anyway, when I was feeling particularly shitty about my family or the fact that I had no friends, my art teacher, Ms. Hale, would throw down a drop cloth in the art room and put a canvas on the easel and tell me to paint it.”
“Paint it. What’s it?”
Daphne shrugged and dipped her own brush through a blob of rich paint. “Whatever you need it to be. Usually? I just made a mess, but the product wasn’t the point.”
She turned to face the canvas, then slapped the brush over the surface, marring the clean white with a slash of deep purple.
She didn’t rinse the brush before slicing it through some red paint and throwing it at the canvas.
Crimson dotted the white like blood on snow, splattering onto the drop cloth and her apron as well, speckling her bare arms and legs.
The effect on the canvas was pleasing. Unformed and messy, and that was exactly what it was supposed to be.
After a few moments, April stepped up to her own canvas.
She dipped her brush through a blob of green on the palette between them.
She stood there for a second, frowning at all that white as though it were a window into another world.
Then she started slow, a spread of green in a wobbly arc over the white.
But soon she added more color, more textures, creating a riot of swirls and stripes.
Daphne went back to focus on her own mess, loving the effect of the multi-hued splatters and drops.
They worked like that for a while, and Daphne lost herself in the random patterns, months and years of pain and anger and fear kaleidoscoping over the canvas.
At some point, she heard April laugh.
She paused, glancing over at April’s work, the canvas covered, not in blasts of paint but in slashes. Harsh in some places, but smooth and lyrical in others, layers of color Daphne wouldn’t expect from April—lavender and mint and turquoise and cotton-candy pink.
But then, subtly, shades of gray and black.
The dark started gradually in the right bottom corner but then burgeoned and spread into darker, elegant swirls snaking through the pastel.
The effect was striking.
Beautiful and terrifying.
Just like April.
Daphne smiled and watched April laughing quietly at what she’d created, a single tear escaping her eye and rolling down her paint-splattered cheek. Daphne had the sudden urge to wipe it away, but that wasn’t what this was.
This was tears set loose.
This was tears felt.
April glanced at her, a smile on her face despite the tears, and Daphne smiled back. And soon, the smile turned into more laughter, more tears, an amalgam of emotions mirroring the paint on their canvases.
By the time Daphne slowed down, her canvas a thick explosion of color—speckles and slashes, all done in mostly jewel tones of deep greens and purples and navy, a bit of shocking red here and there—she was breathing hard, her lungs burning for more oxygen.
“Well,” April said, her breathing just as labored.
“Well, indeed,” Daphne said, her eyes locking with April’s.
They stared at each other for a second, then busted out laughing again, because they were both covered in paint.
Not just covered—coated. Paint was everywhere, completely layered over their aprons, in their hair, and splattered over their exposed skin, all mixing together into one dark greenish-bluish hue.
“Oh my god,” Daphne said, inspecting her own arms.
“We look like swamp creatures,” April said, plucking her paint-soaked apron away from her thigh. “It’s starting to dry in places already.”
“On the bright side, I think we got more paint on our bodies than the drop cloth.” Daphne’s cheeks flamed at the usually innocuous word—bodies—but luckily paint concealed any reddening of her face.
“Easy cleanup, then,” April said, glancing down at the lightly speckled cloth.
“Can’t say the same for us,” Daphne said.
April laughed. “I’m trying to think of the best method here.” She wiped her face but only smeared the paint over her skin even more. But then she froze, her eyes snapping to Daphne’s. “Actually, I do have an idea.”
Daphne lifted her brows. “Oh?”
April grinned. “Well. It’s kind of wild.”
Daphne grinned back.