Page 156 of Go Luck Yourself
“We can be late for the treaty signing. Coal would appreciate us making a dramatic entrance.”
“All your brother associates me with is dramatics. I’m aiming to be downrightdullfor the foreseeable future.”
“Being dull is not how you’ll get Coal to like you.”
“If it means proving I can be a steady force for you, I’ll take my chances. Now, hold on. Do na move.”
He steps away and I sigh in feigned exasperation. But I’m grinning too much, I don’t think I’ve stopped since the library.
“He’ll see how happy you make me,” I say to the air in front of me. “He’ll only torture you a little bit. Most of it will likely be payback for how I—oh my god.”
“What?” Loch’s over by the far wall, but I hear him take a worried step closer to me.
An evil smile curls across my face. “The way I’ve bonded with Coal’s boyfriend is by torturing each other. Or, to be fair,hetorturesme,and I figured out a way to get back at him that I spaced on until this moment.”
Something drags across the floor. A tarp falls.
“I’m afraid I’m na following,” Loch says.
“You want my brother to like you.”
“Yeah?”
“Do you think you could paint realistic-looking gore?”
Loch lets out a small, “The fuck?”
“Coal’s boyfriend is, apparently, squeamish. So if you could paint my neck to look like it’s been slashed, he’d hopefully freak out. Help me torment Hex, and Coal will see that that’s the way to get alongwith you too.” Okay, I’m starting to see the holes in my plan. “This is foolproof, I assure you.”
Loch walks closer, the drop cloth crinkling under the dress boots I know he’s wearing, and he lays a kiss on my cheek. “Despite how enticing you’re making this sound, I think I might pass on this plan. But I promise, boyo, the moment I’ve earned back you and your brother’s trust, my painting skills are yours to torture whoever you’d like.” He pauses. “Keep Hex first in line, though. All that rubbish he was going on about, giving credit forIrishHalloween toEngland.FuckingEngland.Bloody dope.”
I squint. It’s lost under the blindfold. “We met because you went to a university in England.”
Loch is quiet for a beat again. “No one’s perfect, boyo.”
He moves behind me, but I grab his arm, tilting my head towards him.
“I do trust you,” I whisper.
It’s hard not seeing him, but easier in some ways too. With one sense dulled, I hear the warble in my voice like a clanging bell, and I wonder if Loch hears it, too.
I think I trust him about as much as I trust myself, both connections tentative and so newborn.
He kisses my cheek again, but leaves his lips there, holding, breathing me in until I lean against him. “It’s all right, Kris,” he murmurs. “You will. Word by word, eh?”
I smile, rubbing the side of my face against his beard. “You’re going to throw my own words back at me a lot, aren’t you?”
He laughs. It sounds… nervous? “You have no idea.”
He pulls off the blindfold.
My eyes blink open, adjusting quickly to the light of his studio.
There’s a canvas leaning against the wall. It’s just over his height, an explosion of red and gold with touches of emerald and neon green.
I take a single step forward, guided to it in an unconscious draw, all the banter going loose in my chest.
It’s us. In that style of his, abstract swaths of color that braidtogether into an optical illusion of cohesion. He’s kissing my neck and my head is thrown back and it isn’t anything overtly sexual, but it rips through me in a typhoon, sensuality hanging in each bent stroke, in every drip of gold.
