Page 43 of It's a Love Story

“I don’t want to ruin your favorite thing. I was just thinking about it, because I’m coming around to the ice cream and the bikes and the country-road montage.”

We pedal around a bend, and there’s a big red barn with three smaller buildings around it in the distance. He motions with his head toward the property. “That’s actually my favorite thing.”

*

I AM SOthirsty by the time we’re inside the barn. Like dust bowl thirsty. Dan hugs a woman named Elana, and her husband, Claude, comes out with a big pitcher of ice water. I gulp down an entire glass before I am ready for polite conversation.

“Jane and I are in town for the music festival.”

“You could have stayed here,” Elana says. “We have your old room.”

“Thank you,” he says. “But we’re staying with my parents.”

She reaches out and takes his hand. “Well, wander around all you want. We have a tour starting in ten minutes, but you know where everything is.” She gives his hand a squeeze, and they leave us alone. Dan’s face is so relaxed in this quiet place, talking to these quiet people.

I pour a third glass of water and look around. The barn is full of large-scale paintings, oils and watercolors. All unframed.

“Your old room?” I ask.

“It’s an outdoor museum—well, the rest of it is outdoors. I worked here and taught kids for a while during high school, and sometimes I’d just stay. They gave me a room over the barn, and I would sleep there if I was working on something late. They have a darkroom in the little building out there. After high school, for the two years before I moved to the city for college, I moved in. That was the first stage of my big rebellion.”

“What did your parents think?”

“I’m not sure.” We’re walking around the barn, looking at the paintings. “I like this one,” he says. It’s a painting of a woman stretching. You can see the shadows between the discs of her spine.

“Your parents said nothing?”

“Yeah, so my dad just thought I was being lazy, putting off my life. My mom thought it was about a girl.”

“Sounds consistent,” I say, and he laughs.

“This is a place where it’s okay to be quiet. I could spend a whole day, a week, painting something. And I had no idea what I was going to do, but I finally started to feel like I knew what I wanted.” He shrugs, like what he said was a small thing.

“What was the next stage of your rebellion?”

“Studying photography. Then moving to LA. They did not approve.”

We stop at a large watercolor painting of a forest. Dan takes my arm and pulls me away from it so that we can see the whole thing. “There’s no limit to how many greens you can find in nature,” he says.

I must make a face because he says, “Before you crack a man-bun joke, I just mean I like this one because it feels like a real forest, every single possible shade of green. Water- color’s just about how much water you add—it’s simple and unruly, kind of like the forest.” He reads my face again. “Okay, maybe too much? Is my gramophone showing?”

“No,” I say. We’re facing each other, shoulders squared, and I wonder if he can read my thoughts. I want him to say more things about the forest. Or about paint and the color green. I just like the way his face goes serious when he’s talking about something that matters to him. Something that matters so much to him that he wants to teach it to a bunch of little kids at the pier. Dan’s not chasing anything; he’s inviting the rest of us to a secret place. Dan is that dangerous kind of person who can make you believe in anything.

“Want to try?” he asks.

I don’t have a chance to answer before he’s walking into a storage closet to retrieve a stack of watercolor paper and paints. “Come.”

I follow him outside and up a grassy hill behind the barn. I regret my choice of the slippery-bottomed flip-flops that were adorable for our biking montage but are terrible for hiking. Yellow wildflowers welcome us to the top of the hill where a pond appears in the distance, a pale blue oval like an aquamarine. It’s surrounded by tall beach grasses the color of wheat.

“Give it a try,” he says. There’s a breeze up here, and I like the way it’s hitting the back of my neck and giving me a little relief from the heat. I close my eyes and turn my face to the sun, and I can still see the pond in my mind. The breeze makes tiny ripples in the water before it bends the grasses. I open my eyes and Dan’s watching me, and it occurs to me that I don’t know what time it is. It occurs to me that Dan doesn’t care what time it is; he just knows what he knows. I look back up to the sun and guess that it’s around four. “You seem exactly ready for watercolors,” he says.

So I sit on the ground with the little paper flat between my legs. Dan has a thermos of water for paintbrush dipping, but he gives me a sip first. I take too big of a sip and a little bit spills out of my mouth and he laughs. I wipe my smile away with the back of my hand.

“You’re a mess,” he says. My shorts and tank top are dry but filthy. Dan doesn’t seem to mind the mess. He’s eyeing the loose curl he tucked away earlier, and I silently will him to do it again.

“Want to hear something crazy?” I ask.

“Everything you say is a little crazy, Jane. Doesn’t bother me a bit anymore.” He smiles with his eyes, and I wish he met one of my criteria for a partner, though I can’t think of what any of those are right now. My only thought is that I want to climb on top of him and pull covers over our heads and stay there. I want to taste his bottom lip. I want to know what his hands would feel like on my skin, and I want to, just for a bit, feel what it would be to have his focus all over me. The force of this want has a pulse, and it terrifies me. These are thoughts that belong to someone like my mother. These are the thoughts of a woman who’s about to get crushed.

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