Chapter 9 #2
After dinner, I looked at Chelsea with a strange mix of feelings roiling around in my stomach.
I rarely had women in this house, and when I did, they weren’t usually sitting at my kitchen island.
In fact, over the past six months, I think the only woman I’d had in here was Winona Chambers, and she didn’t even count.
Winona was one of the guys, and played poker with me, Eli, and a couple of other dudes every month, sometimes at my place.
Chelsea was an entirely different story.
The hardest part had been watching her eat. She devoured her food with the effusiveness of someone who hadn’t seen food in weeks. She was so expressive with the supper I’d made her—a burger with blue cheese and soft, sweet caramelized onions—I had to put my own down to watch.
“Maff goff,” she’d said around her mouthful. I think that was my God. Then something that sounded more or less like this was the best burger she’d ever tasted.
Now I knew, as she leaned back in her barstool and stretched, closing her eyes contentedly, that that same down-low part of me knew getting her to stay wasn’t completely innocent.
Even after everything that had passed between me and Eli.
Somehow I had meant everything I’d said to him—that I’d look after her; that I understood his worry—that she felt at peace here.
But I’d also wanted her to stay, just for me.
And now I felt like a traitorous asshole about it.
“What?” she asked.
Shit. She’d opened her eyes and was staring right at me.
“Do I have something on my face?”
Incidentally, she did. A spot of something up on her cheek—a crumb from the toasted bun. I was standing close to her—I’d come over to clear her plate—and before I knew what I was doing, I reached up and thumbed it off her cheek.
Only I kept my hand there a moment too long. It was like my hand had a mind of its own and wanted to stay touching the soft skin there.
Then I realized what I was doing and lowered my hand.
“You liked it?” I asked.
“What, you touching me?”
I felt my cheeks go hot.
Then she grinned. She was fucking with me. “The burger.”
“Yeah, I liked it, Seamus. How come Eli never told me you were such a good cook?”
“I don’t cook for Eli.”
She laughed. “No, I guess not. Well, thanks for cooking for me, even if it was because you were obliged to, you know, take care of me.”
“It’s not an obligation.”
She blinked. I’d said that too fast.
I knew she was teasing me, but suddenly I wanted her to stop.
It was too much. Too confusing. Too like flirting.
Back before everything, when she first came back, I’d told myself she was flighty.
Preoccupied with partying. But she wasn’t that girl anymore.
And hell, even if she was, I knew now that there was more to her.
I think I must have always known that.
I pulled my eyes from her, trying to focus on anything but her. My eyes landed on her empty glass. “Let me get you some more.”
While my back was turned, she said, “Basquiat!”
She was looking at the print in my living room, I knew. It was a huge print, hanging over my rock fireplace.
I was surprised—most people wouldn’t go straight to identifying the artist. But then I remembered Chelsea had been an artist—at least I’d considered her that, back when we were kids.
“Yeah,” I said, snapping the top of the can. “You’re a fan?”
“I love him.” I heard the scrape of her stool, then Chelsea Kelly was in my living room, her back to me as she inspected the print.
A memory popped, from so long ago I was surprised it appeared with such clarity.
I’d been picking Eli up for our baseball game—we must have been fourteen or so.
The entryway was right next to the kitchen, and Chelsea—maybe eight?
—had been sitting at their kitchen table, charcoal and pastels strewn around its surface.
She’d been drawing, which wasn’t unusual for a little kid.
Except I remember even then, they were good.
There were some childlike elements—the proportions were slightly off, some of the detail not quite accurate.
But they were still better by far than anything I could have done.
By a long shot. She was shading faces; putting color in the trees that wasn’t just green.
“How did you learn how to do that?” I’d asked.
“I didn’t learn it anywhere.” She didn’t look up.
“She’s a natural,” Mr. Kelly had said, from the sink. Something on the stove was bubbling. “God knows I don’t have an artistic bone in my body.”
One I could see poking out of the stack was of a baseball player. It was small, the size of a postcard. But she must have done it off one of Eli’s baseball cards, because I could swear it looked just like Roberto Alomar.
She must have felt me staring because she looked up then, meeting my eyes.
“You’re really good,” I’d said. Then felt the flush of embarrassment at having shared my opinion, and with my friend’s sister.
She’d tightened her lips and suddenly gathered all the drawings together, stacking them and flipping them over. Like she was embarrassed by them.
My own embarrassment flared. Why had I said that?
“Sorry,” I’d said.
She hadn’t responded. But the next day, at baseball practice, Eli had shoved something in my hand when I’d arrived at the field.
“My sister said you could have this one,” he said, his face screwed up like it was something gross.
“I don’t know why she thinks you want a little kid’s drawing, but whatever. You can throw it out if you want.”
The soda water fizzed as I poured it now. Chelsea came back over at the sound, but not before staring at the Basquiat a moment longer over her shoulder.
“It’s not what I would have expected to see on your wall,” she said as she reached the kitchen again. “Are you into art?”
I’d kept that drawing, I remembered now. I wasn’t sure where it was, but I think I’d stuck it in a box of Kevin’s things. If we still had them, they’d be in the old barn at my dad’s place.
I looked over at the Basquiat now, not wanting to think about Kevin or his things, all dust now.
But the next words out of my mouth were about another dead person. “My mom was.”
Something shifted in her expression. Chelsea knew my mom was gone. Just like hers.
“Do you still draw?” I asked. Blurted, wanting to shift us away from dead people.
Moms, specifically, and especially hers, given what she’d said earlier.
I didn’t want to corner her into a conversation about that with me, like I was looking to win a saddest story contest. “I remember you used to draw when you were a kid.”
But apparently that question was worse, because Chelsea stiffened, gripping the edge of the counter as she sat down. I thought of her embarrassment at her kitchen table all those years ago.
She took a sip of the water.
I gritted my teeth, turning back to the sink. This was going great. I felt just as stupid as I had way back then. “Sorry,” I said. Grunted, more like. “I don’t know why I asked. Just—”
“No,” she said softly. “I don’t.”
For a moment, only the sound of the tap running filled the space. I shut it off. There was more, and suddenly, I wanted to hear it. I turned around, my back against the counter.
Chelsea’s expression was pensive, almost. “I kept my supplies for a long time,” she said. “Even when I stopped showing anyone my stuff.”
For a moment, I wondered, asininely, if she’d stopped because of me. That time.
“Then I gave them away when I moved.” She considered for a moment, then, as if confessing something, said, “I missed it, though, over there.”
“Martha’s Vineyard?”
“Yeah. There was a lot to draw. And the landscapes were all so different from the ones back here. Not better, just… different. But I was so busy with being on my own; learning the ropes at the event company I worked at. Plus, finally having freedom from always having family around… I got kind of caught up with life. I never went back to it.”
“Well, you were good at it. At least back then.”
“You think I’d suck now?”
I gaped, but Chelsea smiled, and just like that, the tension broke.
I shrugged. “Probably.”
She laughed. She knew I was kidding.
I began pouring hot water in the sink; followed by a squirt of soap. “I’m not artistic at all, so I’m always surprised when people don’t use the talents they have.”
Chelsea appeared next to me, pulling a towel from the hook on the counter.
I frowned. “You’re supposed to be relaxing.”
She ignored me, holding her hand out for the dish I was rinsing under the stream of water.
I reached past her and put it on the rack.
Chelsea gaped, but I could see the smile. I did the same to the next one, and that time she huffed while snatching it right off the rack again. The next, she plucked from my hand as I leaned over.
“Not so smooth now, huh?”
I twisted my lips to hide the smile, aware, but not caring that I was treading in slightly dangerous waters.
If I were to shift just a few inches over, my arm would brush against hers.
So what if I did? What if the next dish I just leaned over so my arm brushed her shoulder?
That would be innocent, right? This was all innocent.
Except the sensation riding down my groin just thinking about her soft little body pressed against mine. That was very not innocent.
Getting a boner while washing dishes would be a first. But getting it because of Chelsea would be goddamned shameful.
But for once, I let myself enjoy being next to her. It was just dishes. I asked her about her time in Martha’s Vineyard. She told me about working for a small events company there, and how different it was than the Rolling Hills. How she missed the variety.
“Have you thought about doing something like that here?” I asked.
She’d frowned and half-laughed. “I’m a co-owner of my family resort—the events management job there was made for me.”