Page 29 of The Assistant
I feel bile rise in my throat, and I rub the palms of my hands over my eyes to try to distract myself from the thought of it. Why do I still let him get to me like this? It’s been years, and I should have moved on by now. It makes me feel weak and vulnerable just thinking about him. I don’t want him to have this kind of a hold on me anymore.
A knock on my door catches my attention, making me jump in my seat. Before I can say anything, the door opens, and Dawson peeks his head through.
“Hi,” I say nervously, slamming my sketch pad shut. It’s an instinct I’ve had all my life that I still can’t control to this day. I love art, and I dedicate a lot of time to it, but the idea of someone seeing my drawings and judging them makes me nervous. For some reason, the idea of Dawson doing it makes it all the more terrifying.
“How are you doing?” Dawson asks, carefully maneuvering into the room and leaving the door open behind him.
I smile and nod, feeling how the ice in my chest seems to warm at how much he cares about what happened. “I’m doing a lot better now. I think I just needed some time to calm down.”
Dawson smiles at me and takes a tentative step forward. “Well, now that you’ve had time to calm down, I think it’s time you ate something.”
I’ve been so preoccupied with what happened in the living room and trying to channel that emotion into my art that I didn’t even realize it was as late as it is. It’s almost 9:00 p.m., and I haven’t eaten anything since this morning. At the mere mention of food, my stomach growls, agreeing with Dawson.
“I guess I lost track of time,” I say, standing up and setting my pencils down.
Dawson points at the desk behind me, clearly interested in my closed sketch pad. He walks around the room to stand beside me as he picks it up. I almost want to yank it out of his hand and throw it in the trash because I’m that nervous about what he might have to say. Instead, I bite my lip and watch his face nervously as he opens the cover and takes in my work.
“Did you draw all of these freehand?” Dawson asks. His eyebrows are wrinkled as he analyzes each drawing, and I can’ttell if it’s because he’s trying to think of something nice to say or if he is just admiring the work.
“Mostly, yes. I have some studies in there that I traced initially, but I feel like that’s cheating, so I tend to freehand it.” I wrap my arms around myself to try to soothe the panic starting to rise in my chest again.
Nobody sees my art. The last time I showed someone art was when I was a child, and I made a painting for my mom that she promised to put on the fridge. It was on the fridge for about two days, then she had a man come over, and she threw it away. He didn’t know that she had a kid, so she was hoping she could trap him long enough to fall in love with her before she told him about me. That drawing was discarded easily enough that I never even considered making her another drawing again.
But watching how Dawson looks at my work, I can’t help but wonder if I haven’t shown it to anyone because I haven’t wanted to or because nobody else cared. Maybe if my mom had asked to see what I was working on, I might have shown her. None of her boyfriends or husbands had any interest in getting to know me, so they didn’t care. It’s not like I have any friends either.
Dawson is the first person in years to have taken any kind of interest in my art. Somehow, that’s the most surprising thing about it. He’s made it clear from the moment we met that he doesn’t exactly like me. Sure, he wants to fuck me, but he said it himself. He doesn’t have to like me to want to fuck me.
“This is really impressive,” Dawson says, turning the sketch pad around to reveal a creature I drew. It’s inspired by Appalachian folklore and the kinds of monsters that Native Americans warn their families about. “I can see why you want to go to art school so badly. Do you mostly draw monsters?”
I’m almost caught off guard by his compliment and his desire to know more. It feels like it jumps out of nowhere, but after a moment, I force myself to answer the question and have a normal conversation with him about it.
“I’ve always been fascinated with monsters and folkloric creatures like that one,” I say, shrugging. “Most of them are just metaphors for men, and I think there’s something beautiful about taking our fears and creating these creatures. It’s beautiful and terrifying all the same.”
Dawson nods in agreement before flipping through the last pages of the sketch pad and setting it back down. When he’s done, he gestures to my door, and I follow him out and head to the kitchen. There’s a pot of food on the stove with savory scents that almost slap me in the face as soon as I walk out of my room. How did I not smell this cooking while I was in there?
Two plates are set up on the table, and Dawson gestures for me to take a seat as he brings them both to the kitchen to fill them.
“Once a week I have Maggie make me a pot roast before she goes to visit her grandkids for the weekend,” Dawson says from the kitchen. “I think I look forward to this more than anything else during the week.”
After a moment, he brings two heaping portions of pot roast with warm, buttery rolls to the table and sets one down in front of me. I raise my eyebrows at him with a gentle laugh as I pick up my spoon and sink it into the bowl.
My mom would have a conniption if she saw me eating this. It might actually send her into cardiac arrest.
“Oh my god,” I say after I swallow my first bite. I lean back in the chair slightly and close my eyes, letting the flavors linger on mytongue. “If you haven’t already given Maggie a raise for this, you need to.”
Dawson laughs and nods. “Trust me, she’s very well compensated for this pot roast.”
We eat in silence for a few minutes, and both savor the delicious home-cooked meal Maggie made for us. My mind immediately drifts to my childhood and all the calorie-light meals my mom made for me, how I never really had the opportunity to know flavors like this.
“Is this what I’ve been missing in my life for so long?” I joke, dipping the roll in the sauce and savoring how perfect of a combination it is.
“You really like this, huh?” Dawson smiles at me, resting his elbows casually on the table, clearly forgoing every etiquette rule he was probably taught growing up. “It was actually my mom’s recipe. I found it in one of her cookbooks after she died, and I hung on to it. I’ve tried to get kitchen staff to recreate it, and none of them have been able to come close. With the exception of Maggie, of course.”
He glossed over his mother passing away so quickly that I feel like I should move on from it. But something about the longing and sadness in his eyes makes me want to know more. Henry hasn’t told me much about Dawson, so I had no idea he wasn’t just a child of divorce like everyone else in this town.
“I think it’s sweet that you’ve held onto it like that. It must be nice to still have something that reminds you so much of her,” I say, offering him a warm smile. “Do you mind if I ask you how old you were when she passed?”
Dawson looks down at his spoon, drops the stew that was sitting on top, and takes a deep breath. I feel like I’ve overstepped. It’s very clearly a touchy subject for him, and I didn’t want him to feel like he had to share something he wasn’t ready to. Both of us are entitled to our own stories. He didn’t force me to tell him about what happened to me. I don’t want him to feel like he needs to tell me about this.
