Page 84 of Infatuated as They Come
I let her rest, quickly grabbing the five hundred bags Holly had packed and hauling them inside. By the time I was done, Holly was fast asleep, still in that same spot on the couch.
My head tilted at her, making sure to stay quiet, taking all of her in. At the way her dark hair sprawled out against the couch, not a strand out of place even when she was asleep, and I still had no idea how she did that. I took in her dark lashes and pouty lips and the red on her cheeks and the way her white dress contrasted against her sun kissed skin.
My eyes landed on the art stuff Holly had brought along with us. Would it be weird to paint her? When she posed for me—and there had been a lot of times where she had done that—I always had her permission, and she’d get all shy and quiet, like she couldn’t handle me staring at her for so long.
But she just looked so damn pretty and peaceful lying on that couch…
I got everything set up: the canvas pad and the brushes and the paint, and then I got to work before she could wake up. I started with her long hair and her perfect face, taking extra time with her closed eyes and her lashes before I got to her lips. It was too easy to get lost in every single one of her features.
An hour had passed by before I knew it, and then I was tilting my head at my newest creation. Holly always had a way of getting me to paint my most beautiful stuff.
My eyes fell to the real thing. I didn’t have it in me to wake her up. Instead, I moved into one of the million and one bathrooms the house had, washing off the paint that had coated my hands.
There was noise behind me. I heard a yawn and then a gasp, my hands still under the water as Holly called out a loud, “Stop painting me!”
I laughed. “You’re my favorite thing to paint!”
“You’re supposed to paint trees and skies and the moon! Pretty stuff!”
“You’re prettier than all of that!”
“I’m right here,” she said.
Turning the tap off, my eyes flickered up to the mirror to see her face. “Oh.”
“You have an awful, awful habit,” she said, shaking her head.
“Yeah?” I turned to face her. “What’s that?”
She buried her face in my chest. “You can’t stop painting me.”
“It’s kinda hard when you’re so pretty.” I circled my arms around her. “You don’t like it?”
“I didn’t say that… But you don’t wanna spend this whole time here just painting me, right?”
I stroked my fingers against her hair. “I could do that for the rest of my life and be perfectly happy, actually.”
“You’d get bored of staring at me.”
“I told you: not possible.”
She smiled and stared up at me. “So, what do you want to do? We’ll do whatever you want since it’s your birthday. Fake, pretend birthday.”
“We don’t have to do anything special.”
“Yes, we do. Do you want to go for a walk? We can go on a little tour.”
“As long as you don’t buy me anything else.”
She raised an eyebrow up at me. “Hm, I don’t agree to that rule.”
She grabbed my hand, and then we were back in the truck as we drove to the main part of town, where the streets were lined with old oak trees covered in deep orange leaves. Holly pointed out all the places she used to go to as a kid and the ones she especially loved, like the museums and the gardens. I liked hearing about all that stuff, and maybe if we hadn’t spent so many years fighting every time we made eye contact, I would have learned that all long, long ago. I wished I had.
We parked and walked around town with our hands stuck together, taking in all the old, expensive looking buildings and the fancy ass cafes and the gift stores that already had all their Christmas decorations up. Then it dawned on me that me and Holly would be spending it together, and then I wondered what the hell I’d even get her. How was I gonna top a car?
We ended up in a bakery and Holly tried to buy a cake for me, but my eyes widened when I saw how much some of them cost. After a lot of back and forth, she finally settled on buying me a cupcake that we’d just share.
The air was quickly getting colder, so we picked up some stuff for dinner and made our way back to the truck. But a thrift store on the corner of the street caught Holly’s eye.
