Chapter 11
Sloane
“This one is my favorite,” Elliot says, brushing his hand across the muddled colors on my canvas.
“Oh,” I huff, part laugh, part sarcasm. “Thanks.”
“Don’t you want to know why?” He turns toward me, the smile on his lips meeting his eyes.
I pull in a breath. “Sure,” I tell him, smiling tight.
He does this: pretends he’s into something when he isn’t.
He enjoys bringing students to the edge of glory, only to take it away.
At first, we all thought he was just an asshole, but he has imparted some artistic wisdom to us.
I’m bracing myself because I’m ninety percent sure he’s going to say the dark image before us, a stark deviation from what I’ve been doing all summer, is convoluted trash.
But he said “paint what we feel” rather than giving us a prompt.
So I painted the complicated feelings around my mother.
“I’m drawn to this,” he says, lowering his voice so only I can hear as he faces the piece, “because it’s like a wound.
See the way you’re not afraid to let the colors blend?
There’s no definition.” He traces a barely there line on the canvas.
“You almost try to control it, try to box it in, but then it just…falls apart.”
My breath feels shallow, and each one feels like a feeble attempt at trying to catch oxygen.
“You don’t see it?” he asks, tilting his head as he searches my eyes. I purse my lips and cross my arms like it’ll ward against whatever vulnerability rays he’s shooting me with.
“I’m just surprised you did,” I say, and he narrows his eyes in confusion. “I was expecting somethin’ flippant. Not profound.”
“Well. You surprised me, Sloane,” he smirks, and it’s this dazzling smile that erases the lines between professor and student. Novice and legend. “Take the compliment.”
My alarm shatters the vignette. I was sleeping restlessly anyway after the art show and then from picking up Gen, who was a mess, from the janitor’s closet she’d been hiding in with my brother at the charity gala last night.
Worse than a mess if her multiple attempts to empty her guts over the side of Delilah were any indication.
In my sleepless delirium, I keep having these vivid dreams that are just memories of Elliot.
I sit up, sipping from the glass of now lukewarm water beside me, the condensation from the melted ice now a puddle on the dresser.
Water colors are everywhere, their slim palettes littering every table top available to me and I know if Grant came in he’d have a cow.
I sigh, beginning to put them in small stacks the way I stored them back at school.
My thumb brushes a thick tube of blue oil paint, one I brought home from the theatre to experiment with technique.
Now seems as good a time as any considering any actual inspiration feels like a distant memory.
I sit cross legged at a large canvas propped against the far wall of the bedroom and squeeze the tub out on one of the paper plates I ate pizza off of a few nights ago.
I bite the inside of my cheek trying to remember everything Evie told me about oils, how finicky they are, how permanent.
You can always make it into something new, texture is your friend, it tells the story of what you were and how you became what you are.
I sigh, letting the small scalpel like tool I also swiped from backstage at the ballet and slathering thick layers of the blue onto the canvas.
I’m doing this wrong. Why the fuck did I tell them I could do oil.
I grab for my phone on the mattress, hoping to find a good youtube on oil technique.
I could call Evie but I’ve learned the hard way that if you crack the door even slightly she’ll try to kick it wide open.
I unlock the screen just as a text appears.
Jean
Open up whore.
I smile, trotting into the living room, I couldn’t have asked for a more perfect time for a distraction.
I swing open the door and there’s Jean, arms wrapped around breakfast sandwiches and iced coffees, a cropped band tee that just barely hits the waist band of his wide leg slouchy jeans.
His wavy hair is perfectly messy, and a cigarette dangles from his lips.
I snag it taking a puff before flicking it out the door and letting him in.
He immediately drops the goods on the counter, looking around my brother’s place.
“Where is he?” he says in a hushed tone.
“The gym probably,” I tell him, rolling my eyes at the satisfied huff that leaves his throat. “Alright—do not make a sound like that about my brother ever again.”
He sighs, feigning defeat. “I guess that’s fair,” he smirks, snagging the iced drink that seems more milk than coffee from the counter as he eyes me. “You look tired, babe.”
“Hmph,” is all I say, grabbing what I assume is mine and taking a long sip.
“What’s going on?” His voice turns solemn, more solemn than I’ve heard it in the short history of our friendship, and it’s a comfort I didn’t realize I even wanted.
I purse my lips, taking a deep breath. “I didn’t sleep.”
“Obviously,” he smiles gently, tilting his head. “Who is he, and how do I find him?”
I scoff, turning my head and he narrows his eyes.
“Somethings bothering you, you're usually much more…spritely?”
“Spritely?” I chuckle and roll my eyes. I know he’s right, there is something, a slow pull at the base of my stomach that never really goes away but seems a little stronger lately.
I could pretend I don’t know why, usually I do.
But why not tell Jean? Maybe it’ll help unwind whatever's furled up inside me, to let one person in. I let out a long breath, perching myself on the bar stool at the counter. His eyes shine with mirth and expectation but something in my face changes him because all of a sudden he’s serious.
A look I haven’t really seen on him before but somehow makes him even more handsome.
“My internship at that gallery, that I was tellin’ you about? ” He nods. “My…professor got me that.”
He says nothing, just barely narrows his eyes in concentration.
“But at that point, he wasn’t just my professor,” I admit, and just the telling of it makes me feel a little lighter. I realize I haven’t said this to anyone.
Jean tries to fight the surprise on his face, but fails. “Okay. That’s…problematic?” He studies me and I feel my walls start to rise, defensive of a choice I know was the wrong one. His face starts to fall, “Fuck, Sloane. Did he—”
“No! No,” I reiterate, desperate not to make this something it wasn’t.
To minimize. It was two consenting adults falling in love, or maybe one- for the falling in love part.
“He just,” I start to say, my voice small, “he’d done the same kind of thing before.
I was dumb and took it more seriously than him. ”
His shoulders fall and he put his coffee on the counter before taking my hands. “I need you to hear me, Sloane. You are not dumb. Some asshole exploiting your naiveté doesn’t say anything about you.”
Tears press at the backs of my eyes, and I blink hard against them. “No I know,” I say, not believing it. I let myself trust the things Elliot said to me; I let myself believe he would be there for me no matter what.
“But…?” Jean presses, and I purse my lips. “I know there’s something else. Usually, you can’t shut up.”
I swat at his arm, missing him when he leans back, laughing.
“Do you…miss him?”
“A lot.” I train my gaze just past him, the admission feels like I crashed head on into something I’ve been avoiding.
“When we were together, I felt all this passion. Like I couldn’t stop creating.
I was his muse but he was also mine. We were lost in each other’s artistry.
It was intense and… I was so lost in it that when it ended, I think something broke in me.
” I almost want to tell him the rest, but I can’t.
“Sloane you’re not broken, you’re perfect.” he says, his voice small and gentle like he’s afraid to contribute to the fracture.
“No I’m broken Jean, I can’t paint. Like for myself—I can’t do it. I had never needed anyone to help me paint. It feels like all that passion, that sureness was wrung out of me and I don’t know how to get it back and now with this reporter…”
“Reporter?” Jean’s voice moves to curiosity as he examines me, his eyes softer than I’ve ever seen them.
“I’m being harassed by a reporter doing a story about all his victims.” I shake my head, quoting the word hollowly because maybe that is what I am, it’s certainly how people have painted me.
“Maybe you should talk to her—”
“No!” I cut him off, a sharp silence wedging between us and I use my fingers crusted with blue paint to squeeze the bridge of my nose.
“I’m sorry I just—I can’t, not with everything going on.
My parents don’t even know I left California, if they found this out…
” I shake my head and Jean appears beside me squeezing my shoulder.
“You don’t ever have to explain yourself to me.
” He rubs my back and my heart warms with the realization of how lucky I am to have found this boy in the mess of my life.
“What was his name again?” Jean says, some levity enters his voice as his voice shudders with mock violence, shoulders squared, he pulls his phone out.
“Maybe torching his shit will bring your inspiration back.”
“Stop,” I chuckle, sniffing back the little bit of emotion that bled over. “It’s not his fault.”
“I’m sorry,” he says, brows furrowing. “Sloane Fielder? Are you in there?”
A laugh pulls from deep within me. “Entirely. It’s not his fault entirely. I should’ve known better than to let a man be anythin’ at all.”
“Well, he’s officially on my shit list. Where do these old ass men get off abusing their power like that? Trying, but failing, to derail a woman like you?” He rolls his eyes, taking another sip of coffee.
I snap my head towards him. “I’m not derailed.”
“Failing,” he says pointedly and his lips quirk in a knowing grin.
“Speaking of men—” I sigh, tilting my head. A natural point to resteer the conversation away from myself.
“What?” he moans, knowing what's coming as he sets his iced coffee back on the counter.
“Do you want to tell me about Ian bein’ at your house this mornin’?” I raise my eyebrows pressing my lips together.
He pulls in a deep breath. “You know, it’s not even that I don’t love him. Cause I do.”
“Sure,” I tell him, tilting my head. “But?”
“He’s my person, like, ninety percent of the time.
But what he does with the paper is just…
we always fight about it. And then that turns into fights about other things but its values, right?
That’s what any fight’s about?” He flicks his gaze up from where it’s been resting on the counter, and I wish I could tell him that wasn’t true.
That some confrontations were superficial, could easily be solved by a quick concession.
But I knew, more than most, that fault lines run deep.
“Yeah,” I concede, my lips shrugging, and I grab his hands.
“But I also think sometimes we’re arguin’ the same thing.
That our principles are really the same, but principles in practice can be more complicated.
” I say it for myself as much as him, because it reminds me that Grant’s the same, that his heart is in the right place when it comes to the whole Connie thing, just in a different place than mine.
Every time I’ve brought it up, he balks, and I just shelve it for later.
If he can love our adoptive parents enough to join the family company, to give up his basketball dreams, then he can muster the strength to go see his birth mother.
I know he can; know that in principle making amends with Connie would be important to him.
But he’s scared. And instead of saying that, he’s just an asshole but maybe I am too.
Jean nods, checking the time on his phone. “So—what are we doing about our third troubled soul?”
“Well,” I start, thankful for the pivot. “First, I need to call in a favor. You have Andrew’s number?” I fan out my palm, only for him to contort his face in disbelief.
“Why does Spellman owe you a favor?”
“That’s between him and I,” I say, keeping my expression steady, implicitly knowing that his sister and her worn backpack are not common knowledge. “But I need him to bring Grant out tonight.”
“Cause they’re thick as thieves,” he shakes his head, huffing a laugh.
“Well Will’s out of commission and apparently, so is Ben. And I don’t know anyone else on that team.”
“You just keep bringing him up. You danced with him at that art show.” I roll my eyes, but I know my cheeks are a powdery pink giveaway.
“Sloane,” he chides, like we’re kids on the playground spying my crush on the monkey bars.
“He’s gorgeous. You could do worse. And maybe…
you need to get under someone new.” His eyes twinkle, his trademark mischievousness on full display.
Rolling my eyes, I turn my back toward him, eager not to have to strain myself into a mask of ambivalence.
“The last thing either of us needs is another man to tangle our lives,” I say, but he’s not wrong.
I could do much worse. Grant’s well on his way to a quiet happiness with Gen, courtesy of me, and I think that, maybe, someone new and unserious is exactly what the doctor ordered.