Everything You Need (2 page)

Chapter 2

The tip of a charcoal stick slid across the drawing paper, its lines and curves forming a face. Her face. Ashton pushed aside a hair that forced its way into his eyes. With a few additional lines the picture was finished, and he pushed it aside to sketch a new one. This time showing her in profile.

A knock on the door, before a female voice called out, “Ashton, open up.”

He didn’t answer it, too absorbed in what he was doing.

“Ashton, I know you’re there. Claudia told me. Open up.” The door handle moved up and down. “Open, already. Please.”

He recognized the voice, it was Mary, his schoolmate from elementary school; his drinking buddy and his occasional bed partner. Knowing her, he was aware that she wouldn’t stop until he got his ass over there and opened the door to her. “Just a moment,” he said. Only when he had completed the picture, he set the charcoal down, wiped his black fingers against his blue cotton shirt and stood. Careful not to step on the papers littering the ground of his light, spacious studio, he strode to the door, unlocked it and opened it.

“Finally.” Mary pushed her way inside the room.

He turned his back on her and started to pick up the sketches off the floor.

“Let me help you.” Mary lifted a paper and looked at the drawing. “It’s Kate!” She moved to others. “It’s all Kate.”

Actually, no, it was all Kris, the way he imagined she looked under her accessories, but he hadn’t shared that information with Mary. Finding Kris was something he planned to keep for himself. It was going to be his little secret. “A little bit of reminiscence.”

She gestured to the sketches scattered over the wooden flooring and the counters that ran alongside the two walls in an L-shape, their line broken only twice, by two desks. A few drawings also lay over the sofa that stood between the doors, one of which led into a small kitchen and the other into a bathroom. “A little bit?”

“Maybe a little more than a little bit.” He gathered the rest of the papers and laid them on the desk.

“It has been ten years, Ashton. Ten years.” She put the drawings in her hand on the desk and moved the others aside to place the paper bag she held in her hand down on the counter.

Yes, it had been ten years since leukaemia dimmed his childhood sweetheart’s sparkling spirit and took her from him. He had been there, right beside her, for the year that she fought for her life, watching how at the end, the infections too strong for her weak immune system ate the flesh from her bones and devoured her until nothing else remained; just bones and skin, and Kate’s resignation to her destiny. “So?”

“I thought you were finally moving on, and now this.” She pointed at the sketches.

“I’m not going to apologize for them.”

She sighed. “You’re making me worry.”

“Don’t.” He leaned over the desk and started to clear away the charcoals, tossing them into a tin box.

“Oh, Ashton.” She strode to him and wrapped her arms around his waist. “I don’t want to worry, but... I remember how you used to be and all the stupid things that you’ve done. You ended up in the hospital so many times.”

“I’ve learned my lesson.”

“You’re still fighting.”

“Only occasionally.” His fingers curled around her wrists. He unlocked her embrace, turned around and leaned back on the desk. “If you only came to nag me, you can leave.”

“I came because Kalen asked me to keep an eye on you, now that he’s on vacation.”

Kalen was his best friend and flat-mate, who was on holiday with his fiancée, Rose. Whenever he was in one of his creative moods and forgot on the world around him, Kalen usually forced him to eat something. “He shouldn’t have, Claudia has that covered.”

“Have you even eaten today?” She glanced at the paper bag. “I brought you a sandwich.”

His stomach growled.

“I guess that’s a no.” She took the two steps that separated her from the paper bag. She pulled out a pack of beer and a sandwich. She tossed the sandwich to him.

He caught it. “Thanks.” He peeled off the plastic wrapper and took a big bite.

Mary smiled and, rocking her hips, strolled toward him. “Then later, I have a little something planned for you.”

“Yeah?” He took another bite of the sandwich.

“Yeah.” She leaned on him and her hand slid over his chest to his abdomen, then lower still, until she touched his groin. “Actually, I could get to it right away.” She rubbed him.

With his free hand he covered hers, stilling her movement. “Aren’t you dating somebody?”

“No. We just broke up.”

“Ah.” He withdrew his hand, leaned more heavily on the desk behind him and thrust his hips upwards.

“He turned out to be a total jerk.” She slid down on her knees, then pushed down the waistband of his cotton pants and his boxers, freeing him.

He sunk his teeth into the bread and tore off a piece of it, while he shifted his feet wider apart and buried his fingers in Mary’s brown hair.

Her fingers glided over the length of his flesh before she took him into her mouth.

A soft gasp escaped him and his eyelids lowered as he released himself to the pleasure of Mary’s skilful mouth, while the image of another girl with green irises flashed before his eyes.

#

“I told you to wake me up.” Ashton buttoned his jeans while his eyes searched for his sweater. And where was his jacket?

“But I did,” Claudia said. She worked in the gallery as an assistant manager.

He found the jacket and sweater tossed over the back of the sofa that, unfolded, served as a bed. Lately, he had been unfolding it more nights than not. “Not in time.” It was already half past seven and he hadn’t even brushed his teeth. He rushed into the small bathroom.

“It’s not my fault that you refuse to wake up. You were begging ‘give me five, just give me five.’”

“Yeah, yeah.” Ashton took the toothbrush and toothpaste and used them to quickly scrub his teeth. A splash of water on his face and then he was out of the bathroom, pulling on his sweater and tossing on his jacket. He combed his hair with his fingers then strode to the door, picking his gloves, cap and scarf from the desk on his way. His feet thundered down the stairs as he rushed to the ground floor, shoving his cap on his head then wrapping the scarf around his neck. He crossed the gallery, greeting the two girls there with a wave of his hand, then he was out on the street, turning around, as he searched for Kris.

Every morning he had been stealing minutes of her time, gifting her with coffee and keeping her company for part of her way to work. He hadn’t repeated his request to have her as a model yet; he was waiting for her to become more comfortable in his company, hoping that she might bring up the subject herself. If there was something he had learned in his twenty-eight years of life, it was that you couldn’t force people to do your bidding, and if you tried, it always ended with resentment. Besides, no matter how much he wanted to touch her, to trail his fingers over the outline of her face, over the curves of her eyebrows, nose, mouth and chin, he wanted that touch to be welcomed.

“Ashton.”

He whirled around and, at the sight of Kris, the corners of his mouth turned up. “Hi. I was afraid that I’d missed you.”

“No, you haven’t.” She passed him.

He fell into step with her. “I don’t have coffee, I’m sorry. I overslept.” He looked down at her, at the face visible under her hat. Sometimes he hated her hat, and her thick woollen scarf, because they obstructed his view of her face, and he wanted -- needed -- to see her whole face, not just part of it.

“It’s not like you are obligated to supply me with coffee.”

“Hey, how about I make it up to you this afternoon? I’ll buy you coffee and we can drink it properly, sitting down. Do you have time after work?”

She glanced up at him, her eyebrows slightly furrowed.

“You can say no, if you don’t want to. I won’t hold it against you if you do.” But he would be saddened by her rejection. He wasn’t used to rejection; how could he be when his advances and invitations for drinks, meals and even to bed were always welcomed? But this was her, Kris, the girl who looked like the twin of his childhood sweetheart. Her saying no to him would be like somebody had just crushed one of his sculptures or torn up one of his paintings: heart-wrenching.

“Okay.”

He swallowed the sigh of relief. “When do you get off work? Around three, four?”

“Around three.”

“Can you pick me up at the gallery?”

She nodded.

Great.
“I’ll wait for you there, then,” he said to her. The rest of their walk passed in silence, with him observing her while she, with her hands deep in the pockets of her red coat, stared straight ahead. At the intersection they said goodbye and he watched her back until it disappeared around the corner. Only then did he allow himself to grin widely. Today, he wasn’t only going to see her unobstructed face, but also the colour of her hair. He could hardly wait, but the hours until three dragged out, and in his anticipation he couldn’t get lost in his work, not even in drawing her, so he more than once found himself pacing across the gallery.

It was already half past three and he was behind the gallery’s second wall, hanging the new pictures that had arrived that morning, when the bell above the gallery’s entrance door rang and he heard Ally, the manager, calling his name. “You have a visitor.”

It was Kris, standing by the door, timidly glancing around.

“Hey.” He rushed to her, relieved to see her. “I thought you changed your mind.”

“I didn’t.” She gave him a shy smile. “So this is where you work?”

“Yeah. Do you want a tour?”

Her eyes glided over the pictures and sculptures against the white wall. “Is your work here too?”

“A few pieces.”

“Can I see them?”

He wiped his dusty hands on his jeans. “Of course.”

She loosened her scarf, unfastened her coat and pulled off her cap. Hair the colour of gold framed her heart-shaped face.

His fingers itched to wrap around a pencil and draw a thousand images of her; of her smiling, frowning, glaring, he wanted to catch her every mood, imprisoning them on the whiteness of the paper. He wanted to drag her up into his studio, to see if the gold of her hair would glow under the light pouring through the large windows.

She glanced up at him, frowning. “Is something the matter?”

He was staring at her. He gave her a small smile and slightly shook his head. “No.” He offered her his arm.

She stuffed her hat into her handbag and looped her arm with his.

He led her toward the nearest picture. He hadn’t intended to show her only his pictures and sculptures, but also the art of up-and-coming artists, the ones in which Ally saw the most potential. They were almost at the end of their tour, they stood before the picture of the grey fog with a single red curl twirling around black butterfly with torn wings. It was caught in a spider web, the shadow of a spider outlined in the fog. He was explaining the brush technique that he had used when she interrupted him. “It’s quite dark, this picture.” She shifted closer to the canvas, so close that she almost touched it with her nose. “It’s sort of haunting.”

He turned to the picture and scrutinised it. Haunting, yes, that was the perfect word to describe it. “I guess it is.”

“Are you going to draw me like that, too?”

“Does that mean that you are thinking about my proposal?”

She faced him. “It seems so.”

“That’s great.” He would have reached for her, but he feared that if he did that, she would run away. “I have no intention of drawing you -- not beyond making sketches. I want to make a statue.”

“Ah.”

“Why don’t we start right now?” At the crease that appeared between her eyebrows, he quickly added, “I just want to make a few sketches. I can make them while we are in the coffee shop. Or here, since the light is better.” He took hold of her hand, intentionally making his grip loose, and led her to the far end of the gallery. He stopped at the end of the display window and released her. “Wait here, please,” he said to her, before he rushed to the small area just by the entrance door where the reception desk was. Beside it was a lounge area with a sofa, two armchairs and a coffee table. He grabbed the armchair and he half-carried it, half-dragged it across the polished-concrete floor. He set the armchair before the window, shifting it back and forth before he was satisfied with the way the light from the outside and the lamps fell on it. He stepped backwards. “Could you sit down, please?”

She lowered herself into the armchair.

The weak light of the winter afternoon cast a greyish glow over her from the side, making her skin and hair paler. “Perfect.” He nodded, then asking for another minute, he ran to his studio and grabbed a pencil and a thick sketchbook, even though he would have preferred a slightly rougher and larger drawing paper. He hauled a stool from under the desk and hurried downstairs with it and the drawing accessories. On his way to the far end of the gallery, he stopped by Claudia and begged her to pop to the coffee shop and bring them coffee.