Page 80 of The Other Side of Paradise

“Please, god, no,” she laughed. “I’ve had enough coffee.”

“A snack? I have, um… I have bagels.”

She didn’t let go. “All I want is to hang out with you right now. Something to take my mind off it all…”

I fritzed out a little. I pulled myself back together. “Do you, uh—do you want to paint?”

She pulled back from the hug, her eyes sparkling, slipping her hands to my arms, and I died a little. “Could I? That would be the absolute best thing ever.”

“Oh, god, I mean, you can do anything you want. If you want to paint, you could take all my paints, take my whole art station, take my house, take, uh, take whatever you want really. What? Hi.”

“Hi,” she laughed. “I guess I’d forgotten you’re a workshop facilitator in your spare time. You’ve got a lot of talents,” she said, her voice playful—flirtatious, even—as she tugged on the shoulder of my white painter’s overalls. I died a little.

“I mean… that’s, uh, that’s why all the girls want me.”

“Oh, so true. That and your cute little dimples.”

Right. My cute little dimples. Yeah. Uh-huh.

I managed to lead her inside without choking to death on my foot in my mouth, and I realized too late what the problem was—the sketch I’d left on the easel, over by the big bay window that led out towards the water, with gesture drawings that all looked an awful lot like Stella. It was just a warmup exercise, drawing figures from imagination, and the figure who came into my imagination a lot these days was, well—

I took the sketchpad off the easel, cutting in front of her and tugging it away, and I made a show of turning it to another page, rambling off with, “Well, let’s just—let’s go ahead and get you set up and you can take a seat, and, er—”

She took the sketchpad from me, and I fumbled trying to grab it back with a desperate noise. She ignored it, flipping it back to the page before, and I watched her eyes drift slowly over the page, taking it in. I felt myself wither and die.

“Um—those are just warmup drawings. Gesture drawings. Loosening up my hand, you know. Reinforcing my intuitive understanding of the human figure, human anatomy, the human body…”

“You’re so good,” she said, setting the sketchpad back on the easel, open to the pictures that were all definitely her. I hadn’t needed to draw the glasses onto each one of them. I’d drawn the glasses onto each one of them. The same glasses shape every time. Fuck me, she knew exactly what I’d been doing.

“Um… I-I like sketching people I know.”

She smiled sweetly at me. “I don’t mind being a figure study.”

“Oh, okay. Thank god. Jesus, I guess I should have asked, it just—”

“If you want to use my figure to help you understand the human body…”

“Oh, god—Stella,” I blurted, burying my face in my hands. “That isn’t what I meant it like. It’s not… that’s not what I was saying. I mean…”

She gave me a wide-eyed innocent look, batting her eyelashes. “You don’t want to study my body?”

“I didn’t say that, Stella Valerie Bell. I specifically did not say that. Okay! Let’s get to painting! Sketching! Art! The beauty of… of creation!” I threw open a new page on the sketchbook, turning away so she couldn’t see how red my face was, as if she didn’t already know. “Behold! The blank canvas, the… the heart of invention. The beginning of everything.”

“Allison?”

“St-Stella?”

“Can we study each other?”

“Uh.” That probably wasn’t what it sounded like. My brain could not output any other possibility. It liked that one. “What?”

“I’d like to try drawing you, too. And you can keep drawing me.”

“Oh.” Yeah, that one made sense. “Right. Yeah. Okay. Actually, yeah, that sounds… that sounds fun.”

She smiled sweetly at me. “Do you want me to pose nude for it?”

“Ah, god—I mean—maybe that can be later in the process.”