Chapter 3
Three
Now
Scarlett
22 Years Old
“Fucking amazing, Letti.” Harper stood back and looked at the new artwork hanging on the wall above the espresso maker.
Scarlett smiled beside her but kept a cautious eye on her watercolor painting. She felt as though it could suddenly burst into flames and prove it wasn’t worth a spot on the wall. Her sister was always complimentary, even with paintings Scarlett had made when she was a novice. “I feel like I could have made the steam coming out of the mug a little better. See how it’s a bit off on the left side?” She pointed to where the gray paint faded, twisting and billowing up from the coffee mug in the picture.
“Nope, I see nothing but perfection.” Harper smiled, and when Scarlett frowned, her sister set a hand on her shoulder. “Really. It’s beautiful. I truly don’t see a single flaw.”
Scarlett let out a breath. The thing about art was that it was never going to be perfect, no matter how hard she tried. “All right,” she gave in with a real smile. It was time to let it go.
“So, how was last night?” The suggestive eyebrow pump was quickly followed by Harper’s face falling flat when Scarlett attempted a good-natured smile. She was absolute shit at hiding things from her sister. “Nothing happened? You didn’t do the dirty with Braiden? He seemed like he was all over you at dinner.”
“Yeah, we slept together,” Scarlett confirmed with a shrug and nervous adjustment of her bangs. In the end, her lack of excitement must have been a dead giveaway.
“Dammit. I was hoping he didn’t suck this time.”
“He’s very nice!” Scarlett argued. And Braiden was nice. He was thoughtful, and sweet, and kind to her cat, even though her cat barely gave him the time of day. Most importantly, though, in the six months they had been together, he hadn’t left once. That was more than she could say for some of the people she had dated. So what if he didn’t seem to know where any of her parts were… even with direction?
Harper ignored her. “Why are all the men you date bad in bed?”
Not all of them, Scarlett thought.
Again her sister was too astute at reading her facial expressions because she glared at Scarlett. “Okay, fine. They aren’t all terrible, but if they’re good, then they’re also an asshole.”
“Can we stop talking about this, please?” Scarlett groaned. “This is completely normal. I mean, when’s the last time you had good sex?”
Harper smirked. “Last night.”
“Really?”
“Really.” Harper flushed slightly and bit her lip, the picture of newlywed afterglow. As much as Scarlett loved her sister and brother-in-law, seeing two people so sickeningly in love when she was bound to never have that again made jealousy swarm her heart. “I keep telling you that Marcos has two available younger brothers.”
“And I’ve told you a billion times that Varo is flighty as hell. He’s fun to hang out with, but I’m not about to live in his converted van. He’s bound to leave, and I don’t need another Dad or another…” She trailed off, avoiding his name entirely.
Harper jumped in to save her. “Leo is pretty stable, though.”
“He’s both not in town and also fucking terrifying,” Scarlett argued. The youngest Diaz brother had a domineering presence that suggested he probably had whips stashed in his bedside table. She had discovered a long time ago that she was not into that kind of pain during sex. “You and Saanvi took the two stable and non-threatening male Diaz siblings, and as much as I love Mariana, I don’t love her like that. And she’s also a bit young for me.”
“Maybe Varo will chill out as he ages,” Harper considered.
“Look, I’m fine.” Scarlett waved her off. “Braiden is sweet. He made me breakfast in bed this morning.”
“As an apology?”
Scarlett cringed and pressed her fingers into the bridge of her nose. “He said it was to celebrate.”
“Oh my God. You faked it, didn’t you?”
Scarlett quickly diverted the conversation to something else. “Want to see the other art pieces my class made?”
“Okay, we are not done talking about this, but—” Harper peered over her shoulder, excitement sparking behind her eyes. “Did you bring more from that one kid?”
“Theodore,” Scarlett clarified and broke into a grin. “And of course I did.” It was wrong to have a favorite student in her after-school art program, and she would deny it if any of the kids asked, but Theodore would always be her favorite. The squeal Harper let out at the mere prospect of seeing more of Theo’s artwork was exactly why. Pure talent couldn’t be taught, and while Scarlett had some, she could admit that Theo’s talent far outweighed her own, even at eight years old.
“What’d he paint this time?”
“DNA. It’s his best work, I think.” Scarlett walked into the back room, picked up the largest of the frames leaning against the wall, and flipped it around to display the vibrant colors and hundreds of thousands of tiny dots that made up the picture.
Harper gawked appropriately. “Holy shit.”
“Right?” Scarlett looked down at the painting and grinned wider, recalling how focused Theo had been for the last two months during the creation of this particular project. Unlike all of her other students, for whom she conducted an art lesson each time, Theodore always came in, went to his corner, pulled his headphones over his ears, and started to work. The pointillism pieces he created had only gotten more and more dynamic. For this particular painting, he had used the paintbrush Scarlett had gotten him for his birthday. All of the kids got gifts for their birthdays, but this specific brush was made for Theodore. It was easy to grip, and the material wasn’t as hard or irritating to hold on to, which was important because Theo had once stripped down to his underwear right there in her studio because he couldn’t escape the scratchy feeling of the tag on his shirt. Scarlett had quickly removed the tag and had him change back into his shirt in her office, away from the prying eyes of the other students, while she continued the art lesson. She could tell he was a little embarrassed afterward, but sometimes he couldn’t help the way his body reacted to things.
Scarlett had learned the hard way that Theo not only disliked fire but would completely shut down if he was anywhere in the vicinity of it. She had once tried a burnt-edge art piece with some of the older kids, and Theodore’s panic was enough to strike fire art from any future lesson plans. On second thought, she probably shouldn’t have been doing fire art in a studio with flammable chemicals and barely up-to-code wiring. “This one will sell quickly, I’m sure,” Harper said offhandedly as she continued admiring the painting.
“I’m sure it will. Does it kinda… in an off-handed way?—”
“Make me think about Tucker?” Harper’s sister telepathy was on point today. When Scarlett nodded and gave her a sad smile, Harper returned one of her own. “It does. Our bodies are so complex, and if something’s off—one dot out of place—the whole thing is thrown off.”
“He got the short end of the stick,” Scarlett said. She had only been nine when their brother passed away at eleven, but it wasn’t something she forgot or healed from easily. Grief was a fickle thing, especially when you knew someone’s life was cut way too short. Scarlett took another glance at the painting and all the colors that bloomed and intertwined to create something whole. “But he made that short stick a sparkler.”
“He made his mark,” Harper agreed. “Did you finish his piece?”
“If by finish, you mean that I’m agonizing over every detail and I’m still in the sketching period, then yes.” Scarlett looked down at her feet. She hadn’t even started sketching. The fundraiser gala was months out, but she normally didn’t put things off like this. She was a creative type, sure, but she usually hyperfixated on projects with deadlines, sometimes well into the night until they were done. This time was different. She would never capture her brother in the exact way she wanted to. While she was good at portraits and landscapes, and those kinds of commissioned pieces were where most of her income came from, she enjoyed freehanding with only her inspiration to go on even more. She knew when she finished the piece of Tucker she would be disappointed that she could never perfectly portray her brother’s laughter or the way his nose crinkled at the bridge. He had freckles and green eyes that matched her own, darker auburn hair like Harper’s, and he would forever be stuck at the age where fart and poop jokes were the funniest things ever. Something told her that donors would not want a freshly painted poop emoji as an auction item, even as a representation of her brother’s humor.
“It’s going be wonderful, Letti.” Harper patted Scarlett’s shoulder and looked toward the glass doorway, where the first customers of the day were starting to file in. Scarlett quickly took the painting from her sister’s hands so she could get to work. “Oh, look, my favorite people!”
“Girl, you can’t flatter me this early in the morning.” Amala Winston, the co-owner of the local grocery store, sauntered up to the counter with a yawn. “I need coffee to get over the fact that I have a teenage girl at home. She’s driving me up a wall. Save me .”
“Jayla can’t be that bad, can she?” Harper giggled.
“She said this blouse I’m wearing makes me look twenty years older, then requested twenty dollars to go out to lunch with her two best friends, who, mind you, are both teenage boys,” Amala grumbled.
“Okay, that shirt is far from aging. You look hot. And teenage boys are the absolute worst.” The look Harper tossed over her shoulder made Scarlett roll her eyes. Harper was very good at holding grudges on her sister’s behalf, and the slight at teenage boys was a subtle dig at Colin Hartrick. Considering Scarlett tried her very best every day to not think about Colin, it didn’t exactly help that she lived in a town where his name popped up like a phantom memory, taunting her at every turn. One of the teenage boys Amala was referencing was his younger brother, for God’s sake. The old wounds had barely even scarred over before Scarlett was stitching them back up again. “ Hartrick teenage boys especially,” Harper tacked on, just to drive home the point that Colin was on her shit list.
“Nah.” Amala tossed her hand in the air, mistaking the dig as a lighthearted one at the youngest boy. “Cooper’s mostly harmless.”
“Mostly,” a voice called out from behind them. Scarlett looked up to see Talia Hartrick wandering up to the counter. The Hatricks were fucking everywhere, not that Scarlett could be mad about it. Talia and her husband Walker had donated to her after-school art program numerous times. She could never quite figure out if they were doing it out of some sort of pity because they knew how brutally their nephew had destroyed her heart, but she did appreciate the donations nonetheless. “Wait until Jayla’s sixteen. Pearl is so obsessed with boys that I want to rip my hair out.”
That was the other thing about the Hartrick siblings—there were five of them. Five . Back when she was fooling around with Colin, it was nearly impossible to sneak around because he had a constant entourage. That, and Colin’s uncle, Walker, who was the stand-in parent after his mom and dad passed away, watched everyone like a hawk back then. And for good reason. But Scarlett and Colin were both technically legal adults at the time and horny enough to find a way to do whatever the hell they wanted to do, which, admittedly, was a lot. Scarlett was lucky enough that the next two oldest siblings, Piper and Carter, were both away at college, or she would probably have to stitch her heart up even more when she saw them around town. She had heard rumors that Piper would be back soon, but at least Colin had fucked off to Maryland and seemed to be sticking to his plan of never contacting Scarlett or seeing her again. She would never ask, but she assumed that Colin had probably gotten a job somewhere far away. She could easily picture him traveling to remote places to take soil samples from long-dormant volcanoes. It was easier that way. If he didn’t want her, then at least he didn’t want her from a distance.
“I’m going to go make the display cards in the back for these,” Scarlett said, tucking Theodore’s art piece out of the way of the espresso makers. She only looked up briefly to catch an unreadable expression on Talia’s face before hightailing it to the back to bury herself in work. She would spend the rest of the afternoon hanging up her students’ artwork around the coffee shop and forcefully shoving any thoughts of Colin Hartrick into the back corner of her mind behind a brick wall. The problem with her brick wall, however, was that the bricks seemed to be made of sand. It never took more than the sight of a maple bar before the bricks were crumbs at her feet.