Page 81 of Tilly in Technicolor
oh my gawd is she? The scandal. I love it
Micah
TELL. US. EVERYTHING.
Marcus
you look really happy
I grin at my phone, then shake my head.
happiness doesn’t come close to doing it justice
I send them a few more pictures of me and Tilly together from the past few weeks then turn my phone off, pocketing it and turning to Tilly.
“What are you smiling about?” she asks, narrowing her eyes at me.
There isn’t an adequate way to explain that I’ve never felt so wholly connected to another person. Like I can show her every piece of myself and she’ll give me that wonderful smile. It’s borderline ridiculous how much I want to brag about her, announce to the world that this peculiar and wonderful personlikesme. Wants to be around me. It’s not something I ever expected I’d have in life.
“I told my best friend, Marcus, and his partner, Micah, about you.”
Tilly’s eyes go wide like a cartoon character. “Oh. Okay. Wow. I am very okay with that and not desperate to know what you said and not internally freaking out at all and wondering what they’ll think of me and everything is extremely chill and calm and totally fine.”
I laugh, reaching out and pulling her to my side. She nuzzles closer.
“I told them the truth,” I say, placing a kiss on the top of her head.
“Which is…?”
“That I’m unbelievably glad to be here with you,” I say, moving my arm from around her shoulders to twine my fingers with hers. Tilly stares at our clasped hands then looks up to my face.
I’m not usually good at reading facial expressions, but her smile speaks volumes.
“No time to waste,” I say after a moment, tugging her toward the entrance. “We’ve got a world of Technicolor to explore.”
We spend hours wandering through the colorful explosionsof the exhibit. Tilly listens closely as I go on and on about the various topics showcased, even asking me questions. I explain metamerism. Chroma. How saturation differs from value.
We go on a visual journey through the history of red—the endless and often futile pursuits of ancient artists and dyers trying to re-create its vibrancy, using deadly minerals just to capture the color’s power, and how the pigment is, quite literally, steeped in blood. We both walk out a bit woozy from that one.
Tilly lets me linger for nearly an hour at a section dedicated to Picasso. One wall showcases his famous Blue Period. Cool and moody paintings of blues and blue-greens pulling you in on a chilly gust, daunting and haunting as you fall into them. They have a few of his original pieces on loan while a slideshow of the other works is projected onto a blank spot of wall.
It’s contrasted with examples of his Rose Period on the opposite side of the room—vibrant pinks and earthy oranges warming you when you cross an invisible line in the space.
“Isn’t it incredible?” I say to Tilly, moving back and forth across the room. “You can actuallyfeelthe temperature change. Right here,” I say, rubbing my chest. “And even the subjects of the paintings. They aren’t painted certain colors, theyarethe colors. Absolutely remarkable.”
Tilly beams at me, following my aimless, happy wander. “Socool,” she says, pointing at a particularly frigid blue painting and wiggling her eyebrows. “Buh-dum-cha.”
I laugh, pulling her toward me and placing a kiss on the back of her hand. “Good one.”
“What color am I?” Tilly asks, twining her fingers through mine as we stop to admire the rich reds and warm browns cast from the Rose Period projector.
I look at Tilly, my eyes scouring her raven hair. Those thundercloud eyes. The bright yellow of her dress and the touch of pink in her cheeks.
But she’s more than those. She’s the sweetness of cotton candy blue, the effervescence of gold, and the complexity of copper. She’s deep like emerald and light like lilac.
“Tilly, you’re the entire rainbow.”
When we eventually leave the museum, I check my phone and have close to fifty new texts from Micah and Marcus and half a dozen missed FaceTime calls.
