Page 57 of Dravin

At least I’ve been able to paint while I’ve half been losing my mind. The four finished canvases have doubled.

There are noweightin just a few weeks when I couldn’t paint anything but red bullshit for over twelve months.

Currently, I have paints strewn across the living room—canvases propped up on the couch again, others positioned against the coffee table and chairs, all in various states of creation. Some have backgrounds painted, some just a face, or a set of hands, some are mere sketches on top of the red.

I’m one of those odd people who prefer to paint on a flat surface rather than an easel. I’ve been at it for a few hours, lost in the art, in my head, in the creation, and crafting.

I set my brush down and shake out my hand. I always know it’s time to quit when my fingers, wrists, and arms start cramping. Now that the pain hits, it rolls in like fog, sitting heavy on my shoulders and neck.

I blink into the bright light in the kitchen. I started painting at seven, right after I got up. I meant to make a cup of coffee, but my supplies were already laid out on the table from last night, and the half-finished canvas called to me.

It’s probably two or three in the afternoon now. My empty mug is still sitting on the counter next to the bag of grounds I was about to scoop into the maker.

After being focused on the canvas for so long, my eyes are grainy. My stomach is past the point of growling. It’s somewhere near fire and churning by now. My lips are dry and my throat is pretty much paste.

After washing up, I make a cup of green tea, cut up an apple and put a bagel into the toaster. I eat, staring out the back window at nothing at all, just the peace and sunny beauty of the backyard. The hollyhocks are still blooming all along theback fence, even prettier than they were when I thought Dravin was going to mow them down. They wouldn’t have had a chance to become this beautiful if he had.

If we hadn’t had that conversation, would I ever have had a chance to find his true beauty either?

After eating, I feel more human and less like I’m going to fall over. My eyes aren’t so sore, but I could still use some eyedrops. I had a shower first thing this morning, so at least I accomplished one small thing.

Staring at the flowers in the backyard immediately reminds me that I was going to water the plants on the porch first thing this morning, before it got too hot.

They’re probably half fried by now.

I left the little watering can out there.

All I can think about as I race to the front door, is that I better not have killed those hanging baskets. It would be the ultimate insult to my friends. And yes, I do think of Ella, Hayley, Lynette, Willa, Tarynn, and Lark as that. They’re not just acquaintances anymore.

As soon as I step outside onto the porch, I freeze.

The man on the sidewalk does too.

Dravin.

My heart immediately picks up, thundering so hard that I can hear the beat in my ears. It’s been less than two weeks, not an eternity, since I saw him last, but he’s even more beautiful than I remember. I swear he looks thinner, like he hasn’t eaten enough, but his shoulders are just as broad and powerful, his body as commanding and muscular. He draws my eyes like hehas a magnetic field around him. I rake them over the striated veins in his corded forearms, up to the massive biceps and across his chest, down to his lean waist, until I can eat up the way those jeans sit on his hips like they were made for temptation and sin.

I nearly fall back against the house I’m so stunned to see him here.

My mouth works to call out his name, but he turns, his heavy black boots taking him striding down the sidewalk, away from the house.

He walks past the large tree looming over the road and I lose him in its shadows and the hedges that start at the neighbor’s property.

If my heart wasn’t hammering so brutally, I would have thought that I stood here and hallucinated this whole thing. Conjured him or something. It’s almost creepy.

“What the fuck?” I mumble under my breath, the fact that he turned and justleftso damn strange that it warrants talking to myself.

I get it. I think.

He was here and he didn’t want me to see him. He’s bailing. His presence still makes the hair on the backs of my arms stand on end. I grab the watering can, talking myself down out the urge to race after him. If he wanted to talk to me, he would have come to the house.

Had he been standing there for a while? Or did I just pick the exact right time to step outside in some crazy random act of synchronicity?

Instead of slipping back into the house, I stand there clutching the watering can, watching the sidewalk. If I conjured him once, maybe I can bring him back.

As his form ghosts around the hedge, bleeding out of the shadows, lush and powerful, dark and decadent, I nearly leap out of my skin.

Whoa.

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