Chapter 30
Thirty
Scarlett
23 Years Old
Dad 3:48 PM
Happy birthday, kid.
The message Scarlett had both been dreading and hoping for came at the exact wrong time. Her students were going to show up for class any minute, and she had no time to respond. She promptly locked her phone and stashed it in her pocket out of sight. It probably would have only taken a moment to respond. A simple “thanks” would do because Lord knows her dad didn’t deserve much more than that. Even his use of the word “kid” felt like an insult. After all, the last time he had seen her, she was a kid. If she scrolled back through her messages with her dad, every single one was some sort of a holiday requirement. “Happy Thanksgiving.” “Merry Christmas, Letti.” “Happy New Year! Wishing you all the best.” That last one she hadn’t responded to at all because he clearly wasn’t actually wishing her the best. He was wishing for distance with a cordial text for the holidays that sounded like a Hallmark card. The wildest part about all of it was that Tucker got a grander gesture on his birthday, the roses that would undoubtedly show up later this year like clockwork.
As Scarlett set out the rest of the materials for her students, she did her best to forget about the message. It was her birthday, after all, and it was a special year because it had fallen on a Thursday. She got to do what she loved: work with students and observe Theo as he created his next masterpiece. After a few months of working on a rainy street scene, he was on to something else that required a lot of dark colors. Colin, who had dutifully accompanied Theo to every class, knew what the painting was going to be, because in the shocker of the century, Theo had told him. Scarlett was both extremely jealous that her favorite student was latching onto her ex-boyfriend and so thrilled they were getting on well that she frequently found her eyes watering when she looked over to see their matching noise-canceling headphones and their mostly silent conversations with wild hand gestures.
“Happy birthday.” Colin’s voice and the familiar sound of a waxed paper bag crinkling called out from the doorway just as she finished setting up. The memory of that first day back in chemistry class sliced through her heart when she saw the matching donut bags suspended in Colin’s hand. He was early again, as was his routine.
“Happy birthday to you, too. I think that’s the only time I’ve ever said that and it wasn’t an accident, like when the server at a restaurant tells you to enjoy your food and you go ‘you too,’” Scarlett said, taking the maple bar from his hand as Pepto sprinted to Colin’s side to greet him.
“I don’t think I’ve ever done that.”
“How does it feel to be the chosen one?” Scarlett scoffed.
“Chosen for what exactly? And who’s choosing me? You?” Colin’s eyebrows rose.
“Chosen by God for the great honor of not being an embarrassment at restaurants.”
“Considering he made me awkward in every other social situation, it’s nice that he skipped one.” He took a giant bite of his maple bar and crouched down to scratch behind Pepto’s ears. “Lucky me.”
“I mean, he might have made you socially unaware, but he also made you…” Trailing off, Scarlett could feel her cheeks go hot. This conversation was a trap of her own making.
Colin swallowed, and she watched the dip of his throat closely. “Made me what?”
Along with spring, lately her libido was blossoming, except it wasn’t elegant like the flowers lining her shelves. She was more like a feral raccoon, and she was starting to think Colin’s constant presence over the last few months was the root cause. “Nothing,” she said, not allowing herself to look him up and down like she wanted to.
“He made me nothing?” If he didn’t seem genuinely confused by this, then she wouldn’t have said anything further, but he did, and she was nothing if not a rambler.
“No, I meant ‘nothing’ like ‘never mind’ because I didn’t actually want to say what I was going to say out loud.” Her mouth was its own truth serum as well, apparently.
He downed another bite of his donut before responding slowly. “So, it’s something embarrassing about me, then?”
Scarlett groaned. “I don’t even know what the original question was anymore. You’re conventionally attractive. That’s all I meant. Let’s move on from this conversation forever.”
“Okay.” Colin straightened. “How’s your brother’s painting going?”
Her face fell, and she threw up her hands in frustration. “Out of all the questions, that’s the one you chose? I’d rather talk about you being hot! The gala is in two months, and I have sketched and erased like fifty times. I’ve had six months to paint this. The foundation is prepping for my brother’s birthday 5K now, and I’m still stuck thinking about the gala because I can’t finish up the auction pieces. I’m starting to think I don’t know how to paint at all. What even is art? Some people just glue a bunch of trash together and display it. Maybe I should start doing that? The piece will be called ‘I give up.’”
Ignoring her catastrophizing, Colin walked past her to the toned but blank canvas at the front of her classroom and picked up the photo of her brother leaning against it. “This is what you’re trying to copy?”
“I’m not even trying at this point, I’m just failing,” she grumbled, taking a large bite of her maple bar before tossing it on top of the cube storage behind her easel.
“You have like five portraits of people hanging up on your wall.” He peered around the room. “I’m going to assume that skill is not the problem here. Am I right in thinking that it’s more of a mental hang-up?”
“I just…” Scarlett’s voice cracked. “I don’t think I can do him justice. It’s never going to be exactly right. I thought maybe I’d wake up this morning and have the sudden inspiration to finish it because that picture was taken on my birthday, but I woke up and I feel the same way I did yesterday. I was really banking on my motivation to be through the roof today because I’m pretty much out of time.”
“Hmm.” Colin looked down at Tucker’s picture, up to the canvas, and back down again. “The project I’m working on right now at work has many variables, but my team is only testing one of them repetitively until we have sufficient data. Like how our chemistry teacher would have us run three trials, except we’re running hundreds, changing one tiny thing and running it again. I don’t have a problem with repetition, but sometimes my lab partner, Warren, gets bored of doing the same thing for weeks on end. Maybe you should… change the variable?”
“What, like, choose a different picture?” Scarlett asked. She was almost certain now after a few scattered comments Colin had made that he was working in a lab of some sort. And given the random commentary he had on medical science, she was starting to think he wasn’t a research geologist like he had planned.
“No, change what you’re doing entirely. Do you enjoy painting portraits?”
“Sometimes. I don’t like doing people I’m close to much because I feel like I can’t get it exactly right.” She used to paint people she knew all the time, but at some point, she had found she was trying too hard and was never satisfied with the result.
“So, don’t make it perfect.” He shrugged. “Maybe you need to make it your own. Change all the things you want to change. You once said you loved repainting memories and fixing all the details you wished were different, so put your own spin on it. Add things. Get rid of things. Make it an expression instead of a portrait.”
The heartbeat in Scarlett’s chest quickened as she took the photo from Colin’s hand, looking down at it. This particular memory, captured in a still, was all wrong. She had seen this picture a billion times, but it wasn’t how she recalled that day. Her mind had remembered things that the camera had missed and filled in things that were never there. But even so, she wished there was a way to make the picture real somehow. If there was some way she could incorporate all the things her brother had missed since he passed, that would make this picture special. Not a portrait dwelling on the past, but a painting looking forward to the future. That elusive spark she didn’t have that morning ignited under her skin, and she smiled down at the photo for the first time since she had started this project.
In an outward expression of the joy brewing inside her, Scarlett set the picture back down on the easel and whipped around to fling her arms around Colin’s middle. “Thank you.” Since the day in January Colin had shown up to meet Theo for the first time, they had mostly been able to avoid touching. There had only been two or three instances of their hands brushing when cleaning up or grabbing supplies. The wall she had carefully crafted to avoid him was blown to pieces with one embrace. Colin’s warm arms tightened around her, their fronts pressing together in a way that didn’t feel at all platonic. His fingertips were digging into her shoulders like the hug was too gentle and he needed more pressure, but she had been pretty forceful to begin with.
“You’re welcome,” Colin’s low voice brushed against her ear, painting her body in warmth from head to toe. She could feel the way his mouth wasn’t far away from hers, and if she just tilted her head, she could make a huge mistake.
“Oh.” Scarlett panicked, pushing off his chest and jumping away from him. “Sorry. I didn’t—that wasn’t—I don’t know.”
Colin straightened easily, as if it hadn’t affected him at all. “It was just a hug.” That statement alone was enough to reel her back in. Whatever her body was feeling and reacting to was one-sided. He didn’t want her then, and he didn’t want her now. Nothing had changed, and she didn’t even want it to, so the disappointed ache in her chest shouldn’t be there at all.
“Right.” With a concise nod of her head, Scarlett swallowed.
“I think Theo’s here,” Colin noted as the door opened at the front.
Looking for anything to do, Scarlett announced boldly that she was going to plug in the heater despite the fact that she felt entirely too hot. Jessie and Colin did their usual hand-off with Theo, which mostly involved Theo bolting to his station and Colin walking Jessie through the next few days so she could enforce the schedule. Scarlett wrestled the heater out of her office, forgetting that that was the last place she had used it, and regretted deciding to turn it on at all when the studio didn’t feel remotely cold. By the time Jessie left, she had managed to wheel it into the spot by her painting with considerable force.
She peeked over her shoulder as she lifted the cord to the outlet, noticing that Theo wasn’t wearing his headphones yet. “Other kids are showing up soon,” she called out. “They’re never quiet, so you both might want to—” A pop followed by a whooshing sound grabbed her attention again, and she turned back to the outlet with alarm. Orange flames were climbing up the plastic cover where she had plugged the heater into the wall. “Shit.” Throwing herself back on her ass and dropping the cord, she did a quick scoot and crab walk backwards. “Fire!” she yelled.
“Fuck,” Colin’s hissed behind her. Theo started wailing.
All hell broke loose.
“I need something to put it out.” Scarlett scrambled to her feet as the orange flames spread higher and smoke started to billow from the spot on the wall. One side of her studio was made of brick, but, of course, the fire had chosen a sheetrock wall as its victim and was consuming everything in its wake. A canvas fell from low on the wall as she started to sprint to the office for the fire extinguisher.
Colin arrested her on the spot and all but threw her in Theo’s direction. “Get him out of here, now!” he yelled before covering his ears. She redirected, running over to Theo and putting him in a bear hug to lift him up off the floor, where he was now huddled in a fetal position. He writhed in her grip, but she held on to him well enough as her adrenaline kicked in. Colin, she realized once she was already near the door, had thrown his long, heavy jacket onto the fire, effectively smothering some of it.
“The fire extinguisher is on the wall in my office!” Scarlett called out. By the time Colin had run back to grab it, she was through the door and pulling Theo to safety. When they were a safe distance away, she sat Theo on the curb and ripped her phone from her pocket.
The mayhem of nine kids showing up for art class while fire trucks sped down the street had taken a moment to die down. The bus driver, bless his heart, had taken Scarlett’s frantic directions to heart and hauled all the kids but Theo back into the bus, driving them back to the middle school, where they could call their parents to pick them up early. Theo, finally settled down after nearly twenty minutes of screaming and flailing, was sitting in the back of an ambulance with his headphones on, eerily quiet in comparison to a moment ago. Unlike the tiny flame art she had done in her class once, this was different. Theo hadn’t just panicked, he had completely shut down, and in his panic, he had triggered Colin’s sensitivity to noise.
“All right.” Braiden, decked out in all his fire protection gear, came to stand beside where Scarlett was sitting on the curb. Out of all the people to be called out to this incident, it seemed par for the course that it would be her ex-boyfriend. “The fire was out completely by the time we got in there, and we turned off your electricity. You’re going to need to?—”
“Where’s Colin?” Scarlett shot up from her seat. “Is he okay? What about my cat?”
“I probably should have led with that. He’s fine. He’s?—”
“Right here,” Colin’s voice said from behind her. Her chest collapsed in relief as she whirled around, ready to throw caution to the wind and throw herself at him again. She stopped dead in her tracks once she saw that he was both not wearing a shirt, holding Pepto in his arms, and suspending one wrist out to the side like he was anticipating her overzealous embrace to hurt him.
“Are you injured?” Scarlett’s eyes bounced across his body, finding first his wrapped wrist, then something that must have been blocked by Pepto’s head when she had first looked at him. Now it was the only thing she could look at.
“He has a second-degree burn on his wrist, but it’s not too bad,” Braiden answered for him. “I assume you’re the Colin, then?” With her brain running a million miles a minute, she almost didn’t catch Braiden’s comment—she was too focused on the black tattoo adorning Colin’s chest.
“I don’t know what that means, but sure,” Colin replied.
“You’re Scarlett’s ex,” Braiden said simply. If he outed the fact that she still had the book Colin had given her back in high school, she was going to scream. Everything was too much all at once, and she could understand why Theo’s body had just given out on him completely.
“Yeah,” Colin confirmed and stuck out his right hand before switching to his unburnt left, shifting Pepto to the opposite arm. The sweater he was previously wearing swayed on the crook of his elbow. “You know Scarlett?”
Braiden wasn’t much of a posturing asshole usually, but apparently meeting the guy who he must have determined was the reason they had broken up had changed that. Not only did he not shake Colin’s hand, he seemed to find great enjoyment from the fact that he knew things that Colin didn’t. Out of anyone standing there, however, Scarlett felt like the one who was not in the know. “I’m also her ex-boyfriend,” Braiden answered wryly.
Colin’s outstretched hand dropped to his side, and he frowned. “Nice to meet you.”
“Can’t say the same, given the fire we had to put out,” Braiden said coldly, gesturing to the fire trucks.
“I’m the one who put the fire out,” Colin corrected matter-of-factly. Scarlett didn’t know whether to laugh out loud or cry. With Braiden desperately trying to make some kind of a statement and Colin clearly missing the entire fight to nuance while he stood in all his shirtless, cat-wielding glory, she wanted to crawl into a hole and never come out. She wanted to say something to end this ridiculous display, but she couldn’t take her eyes off Colin’s chest, where the sketch she had given him when they had met on this exact day all those years ago was inked onto his left pec.
“Right.” Braiden clicked his tongue obnoxiously. “You put it out with all your clothes.”
“Not all of them. Just my jacket and a fire extinguisher,” Colin again corrected. “The paramedic told me to take my shirt off because they wanted to put ointment on my wrist. The material is really scratchy where it’s burned now, so I wouldn’t be able to wear it anyway.”
“You can’t handle a tiny little burn on a shirt?” Braiden asked, the undertone making it clear that he had decided the most unmanly thing Colin could do was not wear a crispy shirt. Scarlett was over it. Over Braiden’s attitude and over staring at the fucking cum face tattoo she had drawn in high school.
“He’s autistic, so no, he’s not going to wear the fucking shirt that’s going to irritate him,” Scarlett snapped at Braiden.
Braiden winced. “Oh, I didn’t?—”
“I don’t think he even noticed that you were trying to puff out your chest and do some sort of dick-measuring contest anyway, so you might as well quit while you’re behind.”
“For the record, I did know what he was doing, because he didn’t shake my hand. I just thought it was stupid, so I didn’t participate.” Colin shrugged and scanned Braiden from head to foot. “I have no clue who you are because she’s never mentioned you, so you can’t be that important. You clearly know who I am, though, so I’m still important.”
Braiden’s mouth dropped open. For all of Colin’s declarations that he wasn’t playing Braiden’s game, he was in fact playing it perfectly. It only made Scarlett more pissed. “Okay, at least I didn’t dump her and come crawling back.”
“Both of you need to shut up,” Scarlett scolded. “Braiden, I didn’t break up with you because of Colin.” It wasn’t entirely the truth, but it was at least partially true, and if it hurt Braiden’s fragile feelings less to lie, then she simply didn’t care if it was morally wrong. “Colin, what the hell is this?” Her pointer finger jabbed into his chest, connecting with the forehead of the half-floral-faced woman.
“A tattoo.” Sweet. Succinct. To the point. Not at all what she was asking.
“No shit!” She should keep her voice down so that Theo couldn’t hear, but she was hoping his headphones were on the noise-canceling setting. “Why on earth would you get my art tattooed on your body?”
“Because I like it,” Colin said, voice unwavering.
“I—” Scarlett raised her hands to her head, breathing deeply. “I can’t deal with this right now. I just want to go home.”
“Unfortunately,” Braiden cringed, “that was what I was going to tell you when you interrupted to check on the well-being of your friend.”
“We aren’t friends,” Colin stated evenly.
“Someone sedate me,” Scarlett grumbled.
“Anyway,” Braiden drew out the word. “We turned your electricity off. To prevent any future fires, we suggest leaving it off until repairs and an inspection are done. You need to find somewhere else to stay.”
There were only a few options, but given that Harper was frequently in the throes of trying to make a baby, Scarlett decided her uncle’s house was the best option. Because, after all of this, what she really needed was to sleep in her childhood bedroom where she had repeatedly hooked up with Colin.
“I’ll go stay with my mom and uncle,” Scarlett sighed, admitting defeat.
“I still can’t find an apartment, or I’d let you stay with me,” Colin said.
“I would offer, but… that’s weird.” Braiden smiled awkwardly.
“Oh, it’s probably weird for me to offer that, too, then, huh?” Colin backtracked.
Braiden bobbed his head. “It’s also weird to get a tattoo of your ex-girlfriend’s artwork, man.”
Colin’s shoulders lifted, unbothered. “I don’t regret it.”
“Between that and the book she keeps in her nightstand, I’d say all of this is weird,” Braiden said. And there it was. A new wrench thrown into this strange meeting, because she couldn’t just get by with having any secrets. They needed to come to light on her birthday in a strange pissing match between her ex-boyfriends. Before Colin could wrap his head around the idea of her also keeping something of his, Scarlett turned on her heel and made her way over to Theo. Avoidance was a bad coping mechanism, but she felt like she had been bled and wrung out to dry, so Theo would be her best company right now. Once she sat down beside him in the ambulance, she took a few deep breaths to recenter herself and peered over at her ex-boyfriends, unsure if she should have left them to their own devices. For the most part, the penis-measuring seemed to be over, and they were casually chatting. Again she couldn’t tell if that was good or bad.
“I’m sorry,” Theo’s small voice said beside her. Her head whipped in his direction to see his eyes closed and face in anguish.
“Oh, Theo,” Scarlett said sadly. “You don’t have to apologize. You did nothing wrong. You were just scared.”
“Colin helped?” Theo asked.
Scarlett nodded. “He did.”
Theo clicked the button he must have turned off to listen to her response, which in turn meant he wasn’t expecting any further communication. Before he moved on, he got in one last sucker punch. “I like Colin.”
“Me, too, bud.” Scarlett sighed. “Me, too.”