Page 40 of The Other Side of Paradise (Story of Paradise #2)

Allison

When someone knocked at my front door, I kind of assumed it was Brooklyn.

I was the type who couldn’t ever finish a container of food, always like oh, I don’t want to take the last one, so I had a pantry full of containers with one use left in them, so Brooklyn had made a habit of popping over to my place if she needed a bit of something for a recipe, knowing she’d be freeing me from the debate of emptying a container anyway, so it didn’t even prompt a reaction.

I just dropped the pencil into the easel tray and turned back to the door, and I didn’t even get changed out of my ugly-ass splattered and dirty painter’s clothes before I opened the door, my snarky commentary dying in my throat at the sight.

“Did your girlfriend throw you out, or—” I started, stopping when I came face-to-face with Stella Valerie Bell in a beautiful white sundress, long hair sweeping around her back in the salty ocean breeze, and I think I actually had a heart attack.

And a stroke. At the same time. Spontaneous human combustion was also on the table. She gave me a sad smile.

“Nah, just my family. I was actually hoping the cute girl I was flirting with would take me in when they did.”

Oh, shit. She’d had a bad interaction with her family. She also talked about me as the cute girl she was flirting with in the context of when I accidentally asked her about a girlfriend, and I now had to somehow ignore that. “What happened?” I said, opening the door wider for her. “Are you okay?”

She took a long, shaky breath, and she nodded. “I could just use a hug, is all,” she said, her voice thin, and I stopped to pat myself down.

“I hadn’t started using paints yet, so we’re all good. These are all dry paint stains.”

“I’d hug you anyway.”

“That dress is so pretty, I’d never forgive myself for ruining it—” I checked my hands.

No paint stains. We were good. I stepped over the threshold, and I pulled her into a hug, wrapping her up in my arms and pressing her against me, and she murmured something, resting her face against my shoulder, squeezing me tight.

I felt a little dizzy, like I wasn’t sure how to think straight when Stella was this close, holding me, when she’d come to me after things had gone badly, when…

“You smell like paint,” she murmured.

“Oh, yeah. That’s, uh, that’d be the paint. Sorry, I’d have gotten changed if I knew you were—”

“No, no,” she laughed, not letting go. “It’s nice. It reminds me of being a kid playing in art class… it feels safe.”

Oh, god, I was holding Stella. After we’d, uh…

I mean, after everything that happened. This wasn’t like that, though.

I’d turned her down and made things awkward, and she was just here because she needed a safe place.

A place with someone who would be normal with her.

Tall order. “Do you want to come in?” I said softly. “I could make you some coffee?”

“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.”

“The process,” she laughed. “We can call it that.”

“Are you—I thought you were unwell right now. Hurt and sad.”

“We all process things differently, Allison.”

So we did. “Does that mean I should be flirting back?” I said, trying to make it sound like a joke, not looking at her.

“I have gotten very attached to it.”

Yeah, so had I. I couldn’t believe she was going to leave in just a couple days. I was going to cry. “Well, then I’ll… I’ll make sure to study your f-form really… nicely. Shit, that was awful.”

She laughed. “You’re cute when you’re embarrassed.”

“I’m always embarrassed.”

“You’re always cute. Let’s get to it.”

“How—” I turned towards the bedroom and stopped, giving her a look. “Wait, how did you even find my house?”

“Brooklyn told me to show up here and harass you.”

“Ugh. They’re both evil, her and your sister.” But it wasn’t like I minded. Did it mean something that she’d been talking to Brooklyn about it? That Brooklyn had told her to come see me? Emphatically enough that she gave Stella my address? What had she been talking to Brooklyn about?

A mature, responsible woman would ask. So I didn’t.

I got a second easel from my bedroom, and I brought it back to the living room, setting it up across from the other one, rolling the floor tarp out to lie underneath both, and I laid a sketchbook on mine too.

I had a whole pile of canvas-sized ones, since I was indecisive and always had about six projects on the go at once.

We could say I was just preparing in advance for the most beautiful and sexy woman I’d ever seen to come around and ask if we could study each other’s bodies.

Because I was prepared for that. Sure.

“Have you done figure studies before?” I said once we were set up, and she shook her head, holding the pencil up in the air, looking at me with her eyes narrowed, studying.

“Never in person. Just from pictures.”

“It’s more different than you’d think, doing it from an actual 3D scene. Try to isolate the volumes and see them on an invisible perspective space.”

She nodded, and I felt myself blush at the intensity of her focus, eyes locked on me, studying, as she started scratching out shapes on the canvas.

I forced myself to look at her as a figure to sketch and not as the woman I had a devastatingly huge crush on, and I took my time, letting my eyes flow over the lines and curves of her body.

I did a quick sketch of her at the easel, and I took my time refining it, focusing in on the finer details, blocking in the basic shading with my pencil, and I was so in the zone reverently studying her that I jolted in surprise when she set her pencil down and stepped back.

“It’s not too bad,” she said. “I kind of like it. Life studies. Guess it helps to have a good subject.”

“Yeah, no kidding,” I said. “You should be charging me for the inspiration.”

She laughed, stepping back for me as I walked over to her easel. “Smooth,” she said as I stepped up in front of it, and I got a keen pang in my chest seeing it—a sketch of me, simple but lively, and I swear Stella was magic, because something about what she did with it made me look so… pretty.

She was a good artist—better than I’d expected, honestly, and I’d already been assuming anything and everything Stella did would be incredible—but it wasn’t just the technical skill, the way her lines carved out solid, believable 3D figures on the page.

There was something about the fine detail on every aspect of my face, rendered like it…

like it meant a lot to her. The shape language of my expression and pose that made me feel so vibrant, alive, like I was a different person when I was drawing, like the artist was captivated with the way the subject was doing what they were doing.

“I didn’t capture the splotchy paint mess all over you,” she said, her voice playful, and I huffed, folding my arms.

“Sneaking that in before I can give you a compliment. Maybe I shouldn’t be so quick to compliment you anyway.”

“You’re going to. You’re a softie,” she said, and I was , even before she stepped up close to me from behind and I felt like my stomach fell out at the touch of her hands on my hips, pressing up against my back.

“You’re a beautiful… artist,” I said breathlessly. “I mean, your art is beautiful, as in, like… you have a lot of technical skill. Very skilled, technically. That was the same thing said two different ways.”

“Barely even two different ways at all, you just switched the word order.”

“Yeah, I know, I know—just—it’s beautiful. Wow. Um, wow. Do you want to see mine? It’s nothing special—”

She put a finger to my lips. From behind me, reaching around to my front. I got cold sweats. “Shh. I would love to.”

“Okay,” I said, my voice strangled and too high trying to sound cheerful. Yikes.

She followed me to my easel, and I saw her expression soften as a smile spilled out over those lips that were so agonizingly pretty, and she laughed softly. “Oh, god, you’re so annoying,” she said. “You’re way better than I am. Over here gushing about how skilled I am…”

“I-I wouldn’t go that far,” I managed awkwardly.

“It looks so alive. Like it could jump right off the page.”

“It can’t, as it turns out.” I needed to stop talking. She laughed.

“Shame. I’m sure you’d love to be sandwiched between two of me.”

Uh… huh? I mean, that sounded hot, but. “Guess we have to settle for an open-faced sandwich.”

She laughed. “Are you asking to get on top of me?”

I had so much confidence, and then she said something like that, and poof, all gone. I flushed furiously. “I’m asking… to… if you… want to… uh, do you want to paint? On these sketches? Or just paint in general? Or do more sketches? Or, um… do you want food? I can… I can get food.”

“I think I’d love to try painting. That sounds fun.”

“O-okay. Oh, god, I need to get you an apron or something or we’ll ruin your nice dress.”

She winked. “Or I could just take the dress off.”

“Or—I mean, I guess you could,” I said with a very nervous, very fake laugh. “But in lieu of that, I should—”

She took her dress off. I made a very unsexy noise that probably sounded more like I was in pain, looking with wide eyes frozen mid-pose as she tugged it up over her head, slipped it off and folded it up quickly before she put it on the shelf behind her.

“There,” she said, turning back to me, wearing a delicate white bra and matching pair of underwear, and that was, well, that was all. “No paint stains to worry about.”

“Uh. Wow. I mean, um… right. Paint stains. Yeah.”

She winked. “And now you get to study the human figure more closely.”

“Ha. Right. Yes. Wow. Jesus Christ, you’re so hot. I didn’t mean to say that out loud.” I scratched my head, forcing a fake laugh. “Should I, uh, take mine off, too? You know, let you study—”

“Yes.”

“Oh. Yes?”

“Take it off, please.”

“Oh… okay. Um. Are you joking right now?”

She tugged on the front of my overalls. “Do you want me to take it off you?”

Yes. “I can, uh, I can do it.” What the fuck was happening?

I had no clue. I didn’t care. I fumbled with my heart in my mouth, face burning, as I unbuttoned my overalls, dropping them down to my baggy white painter’s shirt and underwear, and I couldn’t quite look her in the eye as I fussed with the hem of my shirt before, steeling myself and doing it all in one motion, I tugged it up over my head, standing there holding the shirt and the overalls awkwardly like it was my first time holding something.

Stella took them from me, and my chest ached.

My lower body ached, too, being half-naked in my home together with Stella.

“You’re so pretty.” She set the clothes down on the shelf next to her dress, and she turned back to me, tracing her fingertips down my arm, and my heart was beating so hard, so fast, I felt like I’d pass out. “Can we paint now?”

“Yes… of course. Yeah.”

Painting Stella half-naked. While half-naked. Right. Yes. I could do that. I would be perfectly normal and casual about it.