Page 45 of Go Luck Yourself
Silence drops with a heavy thud, the stone walls aching with the absence of noise.
Loch clears his throat again and messes with an area near the speaker—a sink, a cupboard, supplies stacked precariously along a paint-splattered concrete counter.
He shifts back with a glass of water and gets close enough to shove it at me.
Orange freckles decorate his torso. His arms. Like the droplets of paint sprinkled on the tarp.
“The start of any good whiskey cure,” he tells me.
My nose curls at the paint-smeared glass. “I’m good.”
“Do na go waking up Colm for him to bring you a glass of water. Take it.”
“There has to be a better cure than water.”
“How much have you had? Water?”
I lick my teeth. “Two ibuprofen.”
Loch pushes the glass closer. “Proper nice that’ll be on your stomach.Drink.”
I snatch the glass from Loch and take a gulp. When I swallow, I wave at my face. “Happy? Jesus.”
“My lot in life is fulfilled.”
I smack my lips. “It tastes like paint.”
“It’s acrylic. Ya won’t die.” But he chuckles. “Although, given your proven delicate constitution, you might be keeling over in a wee bit.”
I weigh my options. Then chug the rest of it, dare accepted.
His eyes lower from mine, and I thinkah, yes, I’ve won… something,until I realize he’s watching my throat.
His awareness there is abruptly tactile, making my muscles jump with electric pulses.
I lower the glass.
He flinches and moves away to snatch up his paint palette.
I grimace at him as I cross over and dump the empty glass in the sink. He left streaks of paint on the cup that are now on my fingers, but there isn’t a single paint-free towel to be found, so I settle for scraping my hand on my pants.
When I turn back for the door, the angle of the canvas changes enough that it catches my eyes.
I stop.
“Did ya need something else, then?” Loch bites, his back to me.
“That’s—a face?”
He gets a posture I recognize, the grip of wanting to hide art. I feel that way whenever Coal looks over my shoulder while I’m writing. Like part of your soul is laid out, and you wouldn’t mind sharing it one day, but in that moment, it hasn’t grown a protective shell yet.
But his canvas is the size of a wall, so there’s no hiding it, and Loch relents with a drawn-out sigh. “Yeah. ’Tis.”
My eyes follow the flow of the paint blotches, the rhythm of the red and orange and the contrasting green. It’s a woman looking over her shoulder with a wide, joyful smile, eyes round and glittering.
“Who is she?” I ask.
I can feel Loch’s stare on the side of my face. My attention falls to him.
