Page 100 of Dirty Like Dylan

I already knew love made you weak, vulnerable, and in some cases just plain stupid. Like me with Johnny O. I did not want to go falling for Dylan or Ashley—or worse yet, both of them—just because they’d opened the door and I’d tripped, camera-first and unintentionally, into their world.

I did not want to get hurt.

Doing what I was doing, right now, was just plain dangerous. When I took a step back and looked at it, why I would even want to take the risk of falling in love with either of these men made no sense to me at all.

I could not understand why I’d want to risk my heart like this.

So I tried to just forget about both of them and their adoring fans, and absorb myself in what I was here to do. Photography. The art show. These I could handle, even with all the famous people, the wealthy people, the beautiful people drifting through the room with champagne in hand, buying up Katie’s twenty-thousand-dollar paintings like they were picking out a new shade of lipstick.

And Katie herself, with her sweet, unassuming smile, her little champagne-colored dress, and no airs about herself whatsoever? Katie, I could totally handle. I could probably even stumble through a conversation with her husband. If he was married to her, he had to be cool, right? Despite his million-megawatt smile and perfect hair, his chiseled-handsome face and leather pants, there had to be a regular dude in there somewhere.

But the rest of it?

I should probably run screaming from the rest of it. If I had any sense at all.

* * *

“So what’s your big dream?” Katie asked me. “Like, if there were no limits and no fears involved, what would you do with your photography?”

It was late, maybe two a.m., and there were maybe a dozen people left in her studio. She and I had been sitting by the little kitchen area drinking wine for the last half hour, talking about everything under the sun.

Everything except my weird-ass three-way… whatever-it-was.

“Honestly,” I told her, “I’d do shows like this. Put together exhibits of my work and do gallery tours and see if I could get a book published.”

“That sounds amazing.”

“That would be a start. I actually think I want to teach, in the future. I had this amazing lecturer in university. She taught the history of photography and it was all kinds of interesting. I think it’s an important subject for young artists, especially in the age of iPhone cameras. To look back and see where photography came from and why. It’s such a new art form in the scope of art history. And I think with all my experiences traveling, I’d make a kickass professor. I’d have to go back for another degree and work my way up there, but I wouldn’t mind. I actually love education. Next to traveling, academics is my happy place.”

“Then you should do it.”

“Yeah. I probably should. It’s expensive though, and right now I’m too restless to settle into that routine. I needed a break from it for a while, you know? See the world. Photograph the people of the world. Find myself and all that crap.”

She grinned. “Any luck finding yourself yet?”

“Nope. Pretty sure Amber Paige Malone is still drifting around out there somewhere, lost as fuck.”

Katie eyed me knowingly, which was impressive since she was kinda drunk. “She’s probably a lot closer than you think.”

I sipped my wine and rolled my eyes. “Please. Don’t get all wise on me now. I saw you doing all those shots with your husband after the place cleared out, and I’ve got the photos to prove it. You may look like you have it all together, Katie Mayes, but I know you were nervous tonight, and I’m really trying to hold onto this opinion I have of you that you’re just a normal girl underneath it all, like me.”

“Oh, I’m normal as shit,” she said ultra-seriously.

That made me giggle. I liked Katie. I wanted us to be friends. And I realized: maybe this was what had me so torn in two tonight. So nervous and so compelled. I was drawn to this world—Katie’s world. It had little to do with Dylan and Ashley. I just wanted a taste of what Katie had—such success with her art, on her own terms. Her own studio. Her work selling.

And I was uncomfortably aware that to have these things, she had to stay still, at least some of the time.

“It’s amazing, what you’re doing here, you know,” I told her. “You’re so young, and you’re selling your work for so much money.”

“Oh, I don’t kid myself that it’s about my talent,” she said easily. “It’s got at least as much to do with the famous people in the paintings as it does my ability to paint them. I don’t even try to ask for as much money for the ones of the non-famous people.”

“Okay. But trust me. Just because someone scribbles out a painting of your husband doesn’t mean it’s worth anything, Katie. Your work is breathtaking-gorgeous. More than that, it evokes emotion. That painting of Seth’s face almost made me cry. There’s just something in his eyes that you rendered with paint, that had me… I don’t know, heartbroken. The one of Dylan is just… damn, I don’t even have words. Like, I know he’s beautiful and an underwear god and all, but you made him otherworldly and somehow intensely real, flesh and blood, all at once. And all the ones of Jesse… anyone could tell you’re head-over-heels in love with the man, the way you paint him.”

“Thank you.” I watched the blush on her already rosy cheeks deepen.

“You two make a great team,” I mused.

“Yeah. He provides the beautiful face, I provide the paint.” She grinned like a fool in love. “Seriously, I couldn’t do this without him.”

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