11. Brittney #2
I could lie. I’m good at lying. I’ve spent my whole life lying - to others, to myself, to the woman who deserved better than my silence.
“My wife is an architect.” I stare at my terrible sketch - a building that looks more like a collapsed cake than the structure I was trying to capture.
“She draws like breathing. Her hands never stop moving. Every napkin, every envelope, every margin of every book - she fills them with buildings and bridges and impossible things.”
I smudge a shadow that’s all wrong.
“I spent years never once asking her to teach me anything about her world. Never asked what she was drawing. Never asked what she was dreaming. I just… assumed she’d always be there. Assumed I had time.”
“And now?”
“Now I’m sitting in a community center on Tuesday nights, trying to understand why the thing she loves has always felt like a foreign language.”
I look up at Margaret. Her expression has softened, just slightly.
“She’s gone,” I say. “She left me. Because I earned it. Because I was so busy not seeing her that she finally believed she was invisible.”
Margaret says nothing for a while.
“That’s either the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard or the saddest.”
“Probably both.”
“And you think learning to draw will fix it?”
“No.” I set down my pencil. “I think learning to draw will help me understand what I missed. All those nights she stayed up late, all those sketches I walked past without looking - she was building something. Creating something from nothing. And I never once asked to see it.”
I look at my hands. Charcoal under my fingernails. Calluses forming in new places.
“I’m not doing this to win her back,” I say. “I’m doing it to understand what I threw away. So that if I ever get another chance - with her or anyone - I’ll know how to actually see them.”
Margaret pats my shoulder. Her hand is spotted with age and charcoal, strong despite the tremor.
“Keep practicing. You’re terrible, but you’re trying. That counts for something.”
***
She moves on to the next student. I stay an extra hour, long after everyone else has left.
I’m not drawing buildings anymore. I’m drawing her face.
Over and over. Getting it wrong every time.
Her eyes are the hardest part. I can’t capture the way they light up when she’s excited about something.
Can’t capture the way they’d go soft and warm when she looked at me, back when she still looked at me that way.
Can’t capture the particular shade of brown that I used to think was ordinary until I spent years staring into them and realized they were the color of honey in sunlight.
My hands are black with charcoal by the time I leave.
She can’t know. Not yet. Not until I have something worth showing her.
Not until I’ve become someone worth seeing.
***
Brittney
The day goes sideways around four o’clock.
The client who was supposed to fund half the community center pulls out. Budget concerns, they say. Shifting priorities. Nothing personal.
It’s always personal.
I sit in my car in the parking lot for twenty minutes, watching the rain sheet down the windshield, trying to decide if I have enough energy to drive home or if I should just sleep here.
When I finally pull myself together enough to get out, he’s there.
Shawn. In the parking lot. Not in his car - standing beside it, like he was about to leave and then… didn’t.
He’s already soaked. His shirt is plastered to his chest, translucent with water, clinging to muscles I try very hard not to notice.
His hair is dark and dripping. He looks like a man who stood outside in a downpour on purpose, which is insane, except I’m doing the same thing, so maybe I can’t judge.
“What are you doing?” I have to shout over the rain.
“I heard it went bad.” He crosses toward me. Water runs down his face, catches on his jaw, drips from his chin.
“So you’re standing in the rain?”
“I needed to make sure you were okay.”
I stare at him. The rain is cold and getting colder, soaking through my blouse until it clings to my skin, running down my back in icy rivulets.
I should go to my car. I should go inside.
I should do anything except stand here looking at my soaking wet husband like I’m trying to memorize the way water traces the lines of his body.
“Fern told you.”
“Fern texted me. Said you lost funding and you’d probably need someone who wasn’t going to try to fix it.”
“And that’s you?”
“I’m trying to be.”
He takes another step closer. Close enough that I can see individual droplets caught in his eyelashes. Close enough that I can see the way his chest rises and falls, too fast, like he’s been running.
Close enough that I can see his eyes drop to my chest.
His eyes drop.
My blouse is white. I realize it too late, soaked through, plastered to my skin, the thin fabric gone almost translucent.
The dark circles of my nipples are obvious, tight from cold and from the way he’s looking at me.
His gaze lingers there, hungry and unguarded, like he’s remembering exactly how they felt in his mouth.
How he’d drag his tongue over them until I arched and begged.
How he’d bite down just shy of too hard when he was inside me and close.
He snaps his eyes back up to my face. But it’s too late. I already saw it - the flare of want, the way his hands twitch at his sides like he’s fighting the urge to put them on me.
Rain slides down his temple, over the cheekbone I used to kiss.
Neither of us moves.
“You’re crazy.”
“Completely. For you.”
“You’re going to get pneumonia.”
“Britt. I don’t care.” His voice is rough. “I miss you so much.”
The words hit me like a physical blow.
“You can’t say things like that.”
“Why not?”
“Because-” I stop. My voice is shaking. My whole body is shaking, and it’s not just the cold. “Because I don’t know what to do with it. Because I spent years wanting you to say things like that and you didn’t, and now you’re standing in a parking lot in a rainstorm looking at me like-”
“Like what?”
Like you want to devour me. Like you’re barely holding yourself back. Like if I gave you permission, you’d have me against that car in seconds.
“Like that,” I manage.
His eyes darken. “I know how I’m looking at you. I can’t help it.”
“Try harder.”
“I’ve been trying for weeks.” He steps closer still.
We’re inches apart now. The rain is nothing compared to the heat building between us.
“I’ve been trying every goddamn night, sitting in that car, thinking about you.
Wanting you. Remembering every single time I ever touched you and wondering if I’ll ever get to touch you again. ”
My breath catches.
“Shawn-”
“Do you know what it’s like?” His voice cracks. “Lying awake at three in the morning, hard as a rock, because I dreamed about the sounds you make when I’m inside you? Do you know how many cold showers I’ve taken? How many times I’ve had to handle it myself because the alternative is going insane?”
I should be offended. I should tell him that’s inappropriate, that we’re not there yet, that he doesn’t get to say things like that to me.
Instead, my thighs clench involuntarily.
He notices. Of course he notices.
“Britt.” My name comes out strangled.
“Don’t.” My hand comes up - shaking, useless. “Don’t say anything else.”
“I’m not going to kiss you.” He reaches up. Slowly. Giving me time to pull away. “I know I haven’t earned it. I just… need to touch you. Once. Just to know you’re real.”
His hand cups my face. His palm is warm despite the rain. His thumb traces my cheekbone, feather-light, and I feel the touch everywhere - down my spine, across my chest, between my legs.
“Do you know what I do out there?” His voice is barely audible over the rain. “In that car. Every night.”
“Sit.”
“I watch the light in your window. It goes off around eleven-thirty. Sometimes midnight if you’re working.” His thumb moves to the corner of my mouth. “And I sit there afterward and I think about all the years I was on the other side of that light and never once looked at it.”
My eyes burn.
“Shawn-”