4. Imry
4
IMRY
There was this painter on TV from the eighties to the nineties who had over 400 episodes and something like twenty seasons known for his ‘ big brush painting ’ and stunning landscapes. I found reruns of his shows when I was a kid, and I’d spend hours watching him paint ‘ just one more tree, right here ’ and ‘ a happy little cloud ’. His encouragement to the audience of ‘ you can do it ’ felt like those words were just to me.
Sometimes, I’d think he was speaking to me. I think he’s the reason I got into painting. My parents were all too happy to provide me with the tools and classes as a child. My mother was convinced I’d be the next Rembrandt or Picasso.
When I was eight or nine, that was exciting. I wanted my name to be known all over the world as the greatest artist of his time. I wanted to recreate the TV series in my own image, all soothing coos and stunning art pieces.
As I grew up, Mom became a jackass and my paintings stopped being something I wanted to show other people outside my family. They were private expressions of thoughts jumbled in my mind that I didn’t want to share with many people. When I was twelve, Mom started being a tool to my two/thirds brothers—in addition to Loren—and it became too much. I stopped showing her.
She was upset. But she was no longer on my team. If you weren’t on my brothers’ teams, then you weren’t on mine. My paintings became a little more private.
This pissed my mother off, so she’d look at them when I wasn’t home or occupied elsewhere. Then she’d get all smug and taunt me that she looked at them and they were amazing.
I stopped painting. She was furious, demanding that I didn’t need to be like that just because she won.
She won.
I didn’t pick up a paintbrush again until our father took us out of the house. When we moved to the Van Doren Estate officially, we also began homeschooling, so I had far more time to lose myself in painting again. I used every wall in the big house my father had a million workers fixing up. It was being expanded according to the vision our great-great-great (how many greats?) granddad had envisioned.
With every new wall they put up, I had a painting to go on it. Believe it or not, I ran out of walls far before paintings. Now I have painting storage.
I think homeschooling was the best decision for all of us. Myro had already graduated, and Voss was on his way out too. But my two/thirds triplet brothers, Loren, and I finished high school via homeschool. Some of our uncles were homeschooled. Uncle Noaz was beginning in second grade because their teacher and the kids were dicks and Kairo might have beaten up a few kids in defense of his brother.
By the time we were in school, the Van Doren name had gotten a little out of hand, and even eight- and nine-year-olds knew we were a rich, powerful family. Being picked on wasn’t a thing, thankfully. I can only imagine the number of bodies Loren would have buried otherwise.
I loved homeschool. It meant I could paint without interruption. Without worrying whether someone was going to walk in on me or snoop into my paintings without permission. I could turn on the TV painting sensation and let him coo to me while I created the scenes in my head.
Unlike the famous painter, I focused primarily on people. The people surrounding me—my brothers, father, uncles, and when we moved into the house across from them, Oakley and all his friends.
The household fascinated me. Not going to lie, but I was giving Honey Bee some major kudos for landing five really attractive men. She’s a beautiful, sassy woman, so I wasn’t at all surprised. When we learned that wasn’t the case, the whole household became even more fascinating to me.
One friend in particular truly captured my muse. And right now, there’s one distinct image burned into the back of my eyelids.
I don’t have one specific method of painting. I know most people would begin with the background. And while I do that a lot, when painting figures, it’s not as important to get the background right. Your individual isn’t necessarily dependent on the background.
Since the background was pretty dark, it’s more or less nonexistent right now. I’m focusing on the eyes burned into my memory. That stunningly unique color of blue and gray. The way his head was slightly bowed, lips just barely parted. How his chest and shoulders rose with quick, somewhat shallow breaths.
It’s not easy showing that movement, but I think I’ve captured it. I think I’ve captured the lust in his face. The way he looked at me.
And if you’re not sure what you’re looking at, you can just scroll your eyes down to the outline of his hard dick. Yep, that’s there too.
I love how he’s enveloped in shadows, almost as if they’re holding him back. A little more on the left side of his body than his right, since my living room light is shining through the window to his right. The folds in his clothes hide more shadows. With the only true illumination coming straight on from my open door, he looks… almost possessed.
I no longer listen to the TV show when I paint. Now I have earbuds in, and I’m listening to one of two bands. One is what I think of as everyday music. When I’m not in a particular mood. Just something to distract me from all the little noises around the house—the fridge kicking on, the trees moving outside, the near-silent A/C unless the rest of the house is silent.
Music just blocks it all out so I can concentrate on what I’m doing.
The second band is when I’m in my feels, which I am as I paint Haze because I’m so fucking torn.
I’m being a jerk. I know that. But I’ve now let it go on for too many days to say simply, ‘ I’m sorry. I can’t do this again .’ Now it’s going to require an explanation, and I’m not interested in providing one. I can’t expect him to accept an apology but follow it up with ‘ I’m not going to tell you why I was a dick, so don’t ask, but can we go back to being friends now? ’
Not that we were friends. I mean, we were friendly, but the most we ever talked about was turning a normal asinine subject into innuendos. Can we really be considered friends if we’ve not talked about anything other than teasing sexy things or straight-out sexting?
So why does it hurt my chest so badly right now to think that we’re no longer… that?
Because I’m an idiot and let myself get too close to someone. Which is stupid because I don’t think we were close at all. Ah . That’s the problem. I let my guard down, thinking I was protecting myself when really, I was opening myself up to liking someone.
Ew.
I follow the curve of his arm with my brush, giving him more definition. Shadowing his bare arms both to detail and hide the strength he has. It’s fun trying to get it just right. Painting people is difficult. Painting them well is a frustrating, endless practice filled with learning new techniques.
Dipping my brush into the paint again, I raise it to the canvas and pause as I stare into Haze’s eyes. I think I’ve captured them the best. Staring into them on the canvas has my blood simmering just under the surface as I remember the way he looked at me.
Want. Needy frustration. Desire I could feel deep in my bones.
I take a step back and let the brush fall to my side. The edges of the canvas are white. It isn’t exactly full body. It starts just above his knees. Partially because he was wearing shorts, and I hate painting knees. They always look weird.
The canvas is two-and-a-half feet by four feet. I’m not sure the last time I used a small canvas. Taking another couple steps backwards, I glance around the room and frown. If anyone saw this, they’d think I was obsessed with this man.
There are more than a dozen finished paintings, just of Haze. There are now five unfinished paintings of Haze. They’re not finished for any particular reason, except that when a new image fills my mind, and I need to paint it.
They’re all in the same stage of completion, though. Haze himself is done. The rest of the painting is not. Maybe I can call it a collection. I’m capturing memories or dream states.
Or not. Since they’re all of a single person who doesn’t know I’m painting him, that could be a little awkward to explain. Not that he’ll ever see them. No one is going to see them.
I turn toward my sink, needing a break, and am unsurprised to see my two/thirds brothers sitting on the couch that’s there just for them. Okay, no one will see these paintings except them.
Setting the brush across my plate of paints, I pull out my earbuds and slip them into my pocket. “How long have you been here?” I ask on the way to the sink.
In the far corner is a slop sink cleaning station for my brushes and paint. It’s single-handedly the best, most used feature in this entire house.
“I don’t know,” Ellory says. “Forty minutes, maybe. You didn’t hear the door and when we came in, you were so deep in the zone I practically stood right over you, and you didn’t notice. So we sat to watch you.”
I sigh. He might be exaggerating, but I’m relatively sure he’s not. Haze has my attention completely.
“This is a new look,” Avory says.
I glance over my shoulder as I continue to clean the bristles of my brush. He’s standing a few feet from the painting I was working on, admiring Haze.
“I didn’t expect a dick shot,” Ellory agrees.
A grin covers my lips as I turn back to cleaning my brushes and paint tray. “His dick is fully covered.”
“You think that’s really what we’re working with here?” Ellory asks as he joins Avory in front of the painting. “It’s a really nice dick.”
“It’s covered,” I point out. “You can only see a suggested shape.”
“Im, I can see the lip of his mushroom tip!” Ellory says.
The memory of him in the door with his hard cock barely concealed flashes before my eyes for a second and I don’t answer. I haven’t practiced a lot of erotic paintings. There’s a part of me that’s afraid if I start doing them, they’re all I’m going to do. Men have the sexiest bodies, and yeah, I would love to spend all day capturing that beauty on canvas.
I have a feeling I’ll never paint anything else if I let myself start down that route and I truly love capturing moments of the people I love. And Haze.
I’m wrapped up in thought again, so I startle when my brothers sandwich me between them as I’m finishing up. I grin, shaking my head.
“What’s wrong, Im? You’ve been so quiet lately,” Ellory says.
“Just being a slave to my muse,” I say, which isn’t entirely a lie. That’s exactly what I’ve been doing the last three days as I ignore Haze and my guilt at doing so unsettles my stomach.
“You really want us to believe that?” Avory asks.
I smirk and turn the water off, resting my hands on the sides of the sink. “Yes. It’s the truth.”
“You realize we know what we sound like when we lie, right?” Avory asks.
I snort. Wiggling out of their hold, I dry my hands and arms and hang my smock. Before leaving the room, I clip my earbuds into their charger, glance at Haze covered in shadow once more, and follow my brothers into the hall, shutting the door behind me.
“Want to color with us?” Ellory asks.
Avory gives me a crooked smile. No one would look at Ellory’s two entire rooms of craft hobbies and think this guy is a killer . Sometimes I wonder if that’s why he loves gem art, beading, mixed media, model kits, coloring, resin, and practically everything under the sun when it comes to crafting hobbies.
“Sure,” I answer, though I think the question was more so I could have the pretense of a choice. Ellory is already taking out the large, rolled-up poster we’ve been working on for the past month from the bag by the door.
“Cool. You make hot cocoa, and Av will sit pretty and watch me set up.”
Avory sighs, dropping into the chair. I laugh silently at him as I head into the kitchen to do as I’m told. Ellory’s probably the softest, sweetest, most sensitive one among the three of us, but he definitely calls the shots. Hands down.
I turn the stove on and place a pot over the burner before using travel mugs to pour two and a half fills of milk into the pot. Added to that are six scoops of milk chocolate cocoa, two scoops of dark chocolate cocoa, two scoops of Aztek cocoa—which has a kick of heat in it—a bit of half and half, and a splash of sweetened condensed milk for some sweetness. Then I’m continuously stirring with a mini spatula until all the lumps of cocoa are melted into the mix.
When all three of my travel mugs are filled with hot cocoa and my pot and spatula are washed, I join my brothers at the table. Ellory has the poster clipped down and we each have our big squares.
One of the things we did as kids was coloring the same page in books, but we each took a different third, covering what the previous brother/s did so we couldn’t match it. We now do a variation of that and have fashioned plastic windows so we can only see in a very specific square to color, abutting it right up next to the square of one of our brothers’.
The only rule is we’re not allowed to color next to our own square and we can’t peek at the squares next to ours.
“Perfect cocoa, Im,” Ellory says, flashing me a smile.
I smile in return, though my eyes remain on my square. Not going to lie; I love my afternoons with my two/thirds brothers. There’s nothing more peaceful and healing than this.
At least, it would be healing if my watch didn’t tell me I had a new text message notification. A glance at my phone has Haze Prosser’s name coming up. My stomach rolls. I keep in my sigh so Avory and Ellory don’t ask.
I need this part of my life to be over now, please. Can’t we just speed into the future when this whole thing is behind us?