1. June #2
I shrink inside myself a little because if I’d known Dorien had been selected for this exhibit, maybe I wouldn’t have submitted my work. I normally love sharing, but with him…
I just feel too exposed.
I clear my throat again and finish the rest of my cider, setting the empty glass on a small table. “Thanks.” The word comes out clipped and defensive, and I’m sure he can hear it.
We walk toward the east wall together, and I’m acutely aware of the space between us.
Two feet. Maybe less. Close enough that I catch his scent again, that woodsmoke-and-rain combination that has no business being so distracting.
I focus on the paintings we pass instead.
A watercolor landscape that’s moody and actually something I’m into. An oil portrait with muddy shadows.
From somewhere outside the gallery, faint through the walls, a few notes of music drift in. It must be from someone’s booming car as they drive by, but it sounds like a child’s tune because it’s tinny and repetitive. My heart races. If I think about that music much longer…
It passes, so I take a breath. Maybe it was never there. Maybe my brain invented it just to torture me.
Dorien gives me a sideways glance. “You’re quiet.”
“I’m always quiet when I’m not actively insulting you.”
“So never, then.”
I don’t dignify that with a response, but one corner of my lips curves up.
We reach my painting and stop. His comment earlier about one of my other pieces looking like a murder scene is still lodged in my head.
So the first thing I see hanging on the gallery wall is all the cadmium red bleeding into prussian blue.
My teeth are gnawing at my bottom lip. Crap, maybe I’m using too much red lately.
Is that what I’ll be known for? The mediocre sophomore who smothers her canvases in buckets of crimson.
The figure at the center is caught mid-motion. Or mid-collapse. I remember painting it over the summer, the way the brush felt like an extension of my pulse. I thought I was painting anger. Rage at nothing and everything. The kind of fury that has no target so it just burns and burns and burns.
But standing here now, next to Dorien, with his sculpture behind me haunting the western walls, I see my painting differently. It’s grief. That’s what I painted. And it’s so similar to Dorien’s figure that I want to scream.
My figure isn’t raging the way I had thought. She’s drowning. The red isn’t anger; it’s the color of a wound that won’t close. And the blue creeping in at the edges is the cold that follows when you’ve been bleeding too long.
“There it is,” Dorien says quietly.
I glance at him. “There what is?”
He’s not looking at the painting anymore. He’s looking at me, and there’s nothing sharp in his expression. No smirk. No armor. Just those eyes, open and clear in a way I’ve only seen a handful of times.
“You see it now,” he says, like he knows everything about me. “What you were really making.”
My throat tightens, and I want to deflect. I want to say something cutting about how he’s projecting, how not everything is some deep psychological revelation, or how maybe I just like the color red, dammit.
But I can’t because he’s right. And worse, he understands why.
We spent our entire teens only saying a polite “how are you” when Dorien was at my house hanging out with my cousin, only hearing about each other through friends and family, and yet he can see right through me as if we’ve been in each other’s lives all along.
Maybe worse than that is how our shared demon still taunts us, guiding our hands so we produce similar art through different mediums.
We stare at each other, and the gallery falls away again. The murmur of voices becomes static. The lights blur into a soft glow, and suddenly I’m not standing in front of my painting anymore. I’m not even at AlariaU. I’m standing face-to-face with everything I’ve tried to forget for twelve years.
I see Dorien at nine years old, laughing with real joy and love. His eyes shining, his voice calling my name. My best friend.
Before everything.
The memory stabs me and I have to look away.
“June.” His voice is barely a whisper.
“Don’t.” Mine is equally quiet, but my tone warns him there’s a line neither of us can cross. Ever. Not if we don’t want bad things to happen, like someone we love getting hurt.
I need out.
My eyes sweep the gallery, desperate for any excuse to leave, and that’s when I spot my brother. Aeron is hovering near the entrance, half-hidden behind a group of upperclassmen, his sketchbook open in his hands. His pencil moves in quick, furtive strokes as he captures something only he can see.
Relief floods through me so fast it almost makes me dizzy.
I didn’t think he’d come for opening night because my brother hates crowds. I figured he’d wait until later in the week when the gallery was empty and he could stand in front of each piece without anyone watching.
But he’s here tonight. For me. So sweet of him.
I smile and wave at my brother as I tell Dorien, “Aeron made it. I should say hi.”
Dorien follows my gaze. If he’s bothered by the abrupt subject change, he doesn’t show it. “Yeah,” he says.
Aeron finally glances up from his sketchbook and notices me.
He hesitates. I can sense him calculating whether it’s worth crossing the crowded room, weighing the social discomfort against whatever sibling obligation he feels.
After a long moment, he closes his sketchbook and starts making his way toward us.
Thanks for the save, baby bro.
He’s almost reached us when an arm loops through mine from behind. I know the shape of that arm, and vanilla tickles my nose—the expensive shampoo Cinna insists is worth the $50 price.
“There you are!” Cinna’s voice is bright and excited. Honestly, she’s the sunshine I desperately need in my life. “I’ve been looking everywhere,” she says. “Then I saw your piece from back there and almost screamed. June, it’s incredible.”
I face her, and just like that, the heaviness Dorien brought with him dissolves.
Cinna is pure positive vibes in human form, her honey-blonde hair shining—maybe the shampoo is worth it—and her champagne-brown eyes sparkling with genuine enthusiasm.
She’s wearing a soft pink blouse that makes her look like she wandered out of a watercolor painting, and her smile is the kind that makes you feel like the most important person in the room.
“You’re biased,” I say, but I’m smiling too.
“I’m honest.” She squeezes my arm and looks at the canvas. “Seriously, the emotion in this gives me goosebumps.”
Behind me, I hear Dorien shift and clear his throat. “Cinna.”
Her attention flicks to him, and I feel her grip on my arm tighten. “Oh, I didn’t see you there.”
Liar. Cinna always sees Dorien. I’ve watched her track him across rooms, cafeterias, campus quads. She thinks she’s subtle about it. She’s not.
Dorien doesn’t know, and I’m not yet sure how I feel about it, but I’ve known about her interest for a while.
“I was just leaving,” he says. “Carter’s waiting for me.”
“Tell him I say hi.” My voice is lighter now because the canyon is firmly back between us.
Dorien nods, then glances past me. “Aeron. Good to see you. Let me know if you need any pointers about your freshman year.” He gives my brother a smirk. “I have plenty. Especially about hookups.”
Just leave already, I want to snap at him.
After an eye roll, I turn and find my brother standing there—silent as always, sketchbook pressed against his chest. His ocean-teal eyes flick between me, Dorien, and Cinna, taking everything in. What details is he picking up about all of us?
“Hey,” Aeron says. Just that. One syllable.
Dorien slips away and it’s like I can expand my lungs fully again. He cuts through the crowd with an effortless grace that makes people step aside without realizing they’re doing it.
Out of sight, out of mind.
“So,” Cinna says, her voice taking on a teasing lilt, “you and Dorien looked cozy.”
“We looked homicidal. There’s a difference.”
“Mmm. If you say so.”
I elbow her, and she laughs. When I turn to include Aeron in the conversation, he’s already drifting away, gravitating toward the outskirts of the room again. His sketchbook is open, his pencil moving. He doesn’t look back.
I should go after him and make sure he’s doing okay in this crowd. But Cinna is already pulling me toward a ceramic installation on the far wall, chatting about the color theory and how it reminds her of something she saw in a gallery in Chelsea last summer.
“Have you eaten?” she asks as we pause in front of a wooden sculpture of ballerinas. It’s better than the pieces I dismissed earlier. More risk in the form.
“Not since lunch.”
“June.” She says my name like it’s a diagnosis. “The showcase started at six. It’s almost seven.”
“I was nervous. Nerves kill my appetite. You know that.”
“Well, you’re not nervous anymore, right? I bet everyone here loves your piece.”
Yeah, if they’re obsessed with the color red, like I clearly am.
She loops her arm through mine again. “Come on. Let’s do one more lap, and then I’m taking you to dinner. That new ramen place on Maple finally opened, and I refuse to try it alone.”
I let her lead me through the gallery. We pass Dorien’s sculpture, and I deliberately don’t look at it. I can feel its presence everywhere, that burnt umber grief reaching out. Reaching toward my painting, which is directly opposite on the other end of the gallery.
Why do they compliment each other so well? I’d rather lose my painting hand than have that be true.