Only Between Us (12 page)

He nods. “I noticed the scars, too. She said she hasn’t done it in a while. I think her teen years were pretty tough. She said she was taken from her family and put in foster care. I know she’s got a major trauma history, but she hasn’t really started to talk about it yet. We’re focusing on safety for the moment.” He puts his arm over my shoulders. “Thanks for helping me check on her, Romy.” He kisses my forehead, and I put my arm around his waist.

“No problem. You’ll be repaying the favor tomorrow night during painting class. I could use the moral support.”

“I wouldn’t miss it.”

I huddle at my easel in the back of the room and look at my phone. Eric’s text is still glowing on the screen.
Jude cannot stop barfing. I told him he had to stay home.

Great. My lifeline has a stomach bug, which means I’m on my own. I scoot off the stool and scrounge through my toolbox, looking for nothing in particular. The students are filing in, the elderlies, judging by the faint smell of mothballs, and the wealthy wives, as evidenced by the haze of Chanel. Caleb is nowhere to be seen. Or smelled. I wonder if I’d pick up his scent, turpentine and soap, or if I’d feel him near.

I wonder how today has gone for him, and hope things have been going better than they were over the weekend. Maybe he’ll ask me for my number tonight, or maybe I should ask for his. If things aren’t irreparably weird between us, I think I want to. I’m unreasonably excited about seeing him again. It’s been building inside me all day, this fizzy kind of sensation, like soda feels on my tongue.

“—said his truck broke down on Sunday, so he couldn’t come over,” says one of the wives, the one who had been waiting for Caleb upstairs last week. Claudia, I think he called her. “Then Melvin came home from his trip yesterday, so we’ll have to wait until he leaves again.”

I peek up toward the front. Three women are sitting at the easels in front. Claudia, blond, with blood-red fingernails. A black haired woman with heavy eyeliner and a French manicure, and a brunette with serious curls and opalescent, pearly-pink nails. The latter two are gathered at Claudia’s easel and keep glancing toward the door. “How was it?” murmurs the brunette. “I haven’t heard anything about him. He’s a friend of Daniel’s, right?”

As if they’ve got a mind of their own, my legs push me up from the ground, and then I’m walking to the edge of the room, the side nearest the women, selecting a piece of practice paper for this evening’s class. I pretend to be looking out the window, which allows me to see Claudia’s lips curl in a satisfied way that makes my stomach turn. “He was gorgeous,” Claudia purrs. “Better with his clothes off.”

The black-haired woman rolls her eyes. “Did you spend the whole night looking at him?”

“You know me better than that.” Claudia grins and lowers her voice, but I have no trouble hearing her as she says, “He knows what he’s doing, so it was well worth the time. And he said he hasn’t sold any paintings yet, so he needs the money. Offer him a commission and
his cock
—” She mouths that last part. “—is yours.”

Please don’t be talking about Caleb.
I don’t know why I think that. They could be talking about anyone. But there are so many pieces that fit, and it’s making me sick. I shouldn’t care, but I hate the things they’re saying. How they want to use him. They don’t care about his art. Or his feelings.

Neither did you, not really.

Guilt and shame cascade through my chest. My fingers clench and I crinkle the paper, making all three of the women look toward me like I’m some raccoon that wandered in to dig through the garbage. “I don’t like the texture,” I say to them. I put the crumpled paper down and grab another sheet.

Claudia gives me a raised-eyebrow look that tells me she thinks I’m unhinged. Whatever. I don’t know why I’m all up-in-arms about Caleb anyway. He looked like he was enjoying their attention after our last class. For all I know, he’s having the time of his life, and I’m just another one-off. Maybe he does that to every girl who visits him in his studio. My cheeks are burning with anger and confusion as I whirl around to head back to my easel.

Of course, that’s when Caleb strides in. His hair is pulled back and he’s wearing his usual t-shirt and jeans, both stained with paint. He has a tiny streak of phthalo blue on the ridge of his cheekbone, and it matches the spot in his eye, though I’m not close enough to see it. His gaze sweeps across the room and lands on my empty easel, and he blinks. Then he looks toward the front and sees the wealthy wives, who smile at him and greet him by name. Claudia cuts her gaze toward the brunette, and that’s when I know.

They
were
talking about him.

He’s sleeping with Claudia.

He was with her Saturday night after he left me at the theater, and he was supposed to be with her Sunday night, but his truck broke down. Maybe that’s why he was so upset. Because he couldn’t go see her, and now her husband’s back in town, so he’s lost his chance. I gave him the opportunity to burn off some steam, but now he can go back to screwing the wealthy women who come to class just to stare at him. It shouldn’t upset me. If what we had was no-strings-attached, it shouldn’t matter
at all
. But as I think about Caleb with Claudia, as I imagine him touching her the way he touched me … I suddenly feel like throwing something at him.

He’s opening his mouth to greet the class when he catches me standing in his periphery, and his attention snaps to me. “Hey,” he says.

I don’t even try to read his expression. “Hey,” I reply. Then I walk past him without looking at him again and sit down at my easel, even though I’m tempted to walk out the door and never come back.

I won’t let this stupid situation chase me away from painting. And it’s not only that Dr. Greer wanted me to stick to it. I’m
not
letting any man get between me and my easel again. Caleb can sleep with whomever he wants. I’m here to focus on myself.

Chapter Twelve: Caleb

One look at Romy tells me she pretty much hates me. I spend the whole class hoping she’ll look at me. She doesn’t. Not even once. When the class is over, she packs up and leaves without a backward glance.

I should be relieved. Instead, I feel gutted. I’ve spent the last two days trying to puzzle out what I wanted to say to her, and I’d finally decided on:
Can we have coffee sometime? I want to know you.

That was as far as I got, but I figured we’d go from there. I let my dick get way out in front of me on Sunday, but I was hoping I could rewind, because Romy is the first person I’ve met in a long time who actually seemed to care about … me, I guess. For a minute there, at least. If I’d sat down and talked to her instead of kissing and groping her, maybe we’d be on our way to being friends. Maybe even something more.

Another regret to add to the mountainous pile.

I retreat to my studio as soon as class is over. Daisy is painting a new landscape, a beautiful rendering of the lake at sunset. Lyle is doing a portrait of some type. Sasha is at her potter’s wheel, and I have to stop for a second and watch her hands, the loving way she slides them over the wet clay as it spins. It’s hypnotic. She glances up at me and smiles. “I’ll teach you sometime. You could join me here in three-D land.”

“Maybe. I think I need to stick to my two-D world for now.” I wave and head back to my studio. I spent half of yesterday cleaning it up after the mess I made in here on Sunday. My two ruined paintings sit in the corner, faces to the wall. I can’t look at them now. But I’m glad Romy stopped me from destroying more of them. I wanted to thank her for that, but I’m thinking I won’t have the chance.

“Hey, I headed off the cougars downstairs,” says Daniel, appearing in the entrance to my studio.

“Thanks,” I mutter, staring at the smear of paint on the floor, the place where Romy stepped on my tube of titanium white. I scuff at it with my toe. “I’m not in the mood to deal with them tonight.”

“Word is getting out that you gave Claudia a private show.”

I raise my head. “She’s telling people?”

His brow furrows. “Of course she is. She claimed you first. Bragging rights.”

I curse and sink to my haunches, a horrible thought suddenly occurring to me. What if Romy heard the rumors? What if she figured it out? “Why can’t it just be about painting?” I say stupidly.

To his credit, Daniel doesn’t laugh. He joins me on the floor and sits with his arms loosely around his knees. “Because we’re gorgeous young studs who can go all night without tiring?” When I don’t even crack a smile, he throws a broken paintbrush at me and it bounces off my shoulder. “Hey, it won’t always be like this, and they
will
buy some of your paintings. After a few times with Claudia, she bought three off me, remember?”

I nod, but this whole thing is so pathetic. “How do you do it without feeling dirty?”

He snorts. “You’ve always been a sensitive soul, bro. I’m not. They have nice bodies and they smell good and when it’s over, they leave me alone and I’ve got money in my pocket. Nothin’ dirty about that. And if there were, I’d buy some soap and move on.”

“You make it sound so easy.” I stand up and start to add paint to my palette. I have a long night ahead of me.

While I work, Daniel fiddles with the edge of my dropcloth and pulls out my sketchpad. A moment later, he chuckles. “Now, your moody misgivings about getting with Claudia wouldn’t have anything to do with this, would they?” He flips over the pad and holds it up.

Staring back at me is Romy. The sketch I did last week. Her somber green eyes are the only patch of color in the charcoal rendering. The slope of her neck … I remember how it felt between my teeth.

“‘She’s got a story,’” he recites, mimicking my words to him. “‘Leave her alone.’”

“I tried,” I mutter.

“I notice your use of past tense.” He gets to his feet and speaks in a low voice. “Did something happen?”

“You haven’t talked to Markus, have you?”

“He told me you had a female in here on Sunday, but I figured that was Claudia.”

I stare down at the sketch and shake my head. “It happened really fast.” I close the sketchpad and set it on the table. “Do me a favor and don’t spread it around, okay? She doesn’t need that kind of crap.”

Actually, I don’t know what she does or doesn’t need. We never got that far. I grit my teeth and pick up my palette knife.

“It’s in the vault, man. Are you okay with it, though?”

Whether I am or not, I can’t talk about it now. “Fine. It was nothing.”

He’s quiet for a moment, then says, “Whatever you say. She likes you, though. Have you really tried to talk to her?”

“I would have tried tonight, but she bolted.” The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced she overheard Claudia.
Fuck
.

“She’s missing out, if she gives up that easy.” Daniel brushes his hair back from his face. He looks like such a surfer, like he spends his days on the beach or something, but he’s a hard worker and a fantastic artist. He’s had a lot more success than I have, and I don’t think it’s because he’s an easier lay. He’s the best friend I’ve ever had. And I wish that made it easier to believe what he’s saying now.

“Thanks, man. We’ll see.”

I wipe my forehead with the back of my sleeve, then push the wheelbarrow full of dirt-crusted tools toward the street. My hands are sweating inside my utility gloves, and the back of my neck is sunburned. The rest of Derrick’s crew is finishing up, gathering their stuff and making their way back to the front. Derrick’s already here to look over things and hand out the cash, our under-the-table pay after a day of fall clean up at this lakeside mansion.

Derrick, thick in the shoulders from his days as a college athlete and thick in the belly from his decade eating Amy’s cooking, grunts at me as I load the tools into the back of one of his shiny Dykstra Landscaping trucks. He’s doing me a favor, letting me join the crew once or twice a week when my schedule allows. I rearranged a few of my private students to make this possible.

It was better than crawling back to Claudia.

As if I hadn’t been feeling shitty enough about it already, remembering how Romy looked at me two weeks ago pretty much sealed the deal. Claudia’s husband is leaving for another trip this weekend, and she’s been texting me, telling me she wants to finalize our agreement on the commission. Translation:
I want you to screw me senseless and then maybe I’ll give you more cash.

And I … can’t. I just can’t. One would think that, at this point, I’d have stopped caring that Romy won’t look at me. That she comes to class, sits at the back with her friend, Jude, and leaves as soon as it’s over. I have more pressing worries on my mind, after all. But I still can’t get what happened between us out of my head. I can’t help what I feel when I look at her, longing and sadness and craving and frustration, all rolled up in one.

Derrick gives me a ride home. This is the last time, too, because I’m picking up the truck tomorrow, and the thought of having that piece of shit back puts me in a better mood. Derrick and I talk about the weather, how it’s supposed to rain tonight, how muddy the flower beds will be tomorrow as his crews get to work again. He pulls up in front of the apartment complex and hands me an envelope with a hundred bucks in it. “I put a little extra in there,” he says. “I know you need it.”

I do some quick mental math and nearly laugh. He put exactly twelve dollars extra in there. What a generous guy. Katie’s copays at the psychiatrist are forty freaking bucks a pop. “Thanks, man. I really appreciate it,” I mutter.

“You coming back on Sunday? You could work a twelve hour shift. I’m short on guys.”

I nod. “Count me in.”

He pats my shoulder. “Hey, do you think Katie would want to babysit for us some night? Amy said she didn’t think it was a good idea, but Katie seems to like the boys.”

“I’ll ask her. She’s been better lately, happier.” I think the Seroquel might be working. “She might enjoy that.”

Derrick tells me to show up at six in the morning on Sunday and drives away, back to his nice life. I look up at our second floor apartment windows as I head into our building. Katie’s left her window open again, and she’s not due home from work for another hour. I trudge up the stairs and let myself in, tossing my keys onto the counter, then stroll over and check Katie’s pill organizer—I left so early this morning that I wasn’t here to make sure she took them. To my relief, the Tuesday AM compartment is empty. I flip it closed and head down the hall, looking forward to a hot shower before I have to get to the co-op to teach the after-school classes.