Page 16 of Quiet
Was it a girl duck? It probably didn’t matter—pretty wasn’t exclusive to women. The boy in front of him was proof enough of that.
Isa was a perfect Venus—far better than anyone else they’d considered. And he’d practically fallen into Briar’s lap.
Pretty wasn’t the right word to describe the boy, though.
Briar found himself mapping Isa’s face again. He hadn’t gotten it right yet. He’d drawn the boy dozens of times this evening, but he still didn’t feel like he grasped the essence of whatever it was that kept drawing his attention back to him.
Briar kneeled down and took the boy’s face in one hand, turning it slowly from side to side. To his fascination, Isa’s cheeks turned a lovely shade of pink.
“Do I have something on my face?” Isa tried to pull away, but Briar wasn’t ready yet, so he put his other hand on the boy’s shoulder to hold him in place. The pink intensified, spreading across Isa’s entire face. His cheeks were a deeper shade of pink—more of a French rose—than the carnation spreading down his neck. The bridge of his nose was somewhere in between, and it hosted a soft dusting of freckles.
He hadn’t noticed those earlier.
“You want to keep drawing me, don’t you?” Isa asked, saving Briar from the need to verbalize. He was getting eerily good at guessing what Briar was thinking.
“Yes.” It was much easier to talk to him today. Giving his thoughts a voice required much less force than he was used to. Sometimes, they even seemed to want to come out on their own.
The French rose of Isa’s cheeks deepened to cerise. “Haaa . . . okay then. I have paper in my desk over there.”
Briar shook his head and straightened. He reached into the deep pockets of his cargo pants and pulled out a sketchpad and a charcoal pencil. He checked the hardness of the pencil. 4B. Perfect.
Then he sat cross-legged on the floor and lost himself to the curves of Isa’s face. Earlier, Briar had focused on the smooth lines of his body. Now that he was closer, he might be able to understand the essence of the boy better.
By the time Briar finished the first sketch, the pink had faded from Isa’s face. It was a shame he didn’t have pastels with him. He would have loved to capture all of those colors. The contrast between shadow and flawless porcelain skin was also entrancing to explore, so Briar wasn’t upset.
At first, Isa watched Briar as he drew, but after a while, his eyelids began to drift closed, and his head fell back against his bed.
Briar took the opportunity to do an in-depth drawing of the dusky lashes fanning out over Isa’s cheeks. Then he had no more pages to draw on.
He couldn’t remember the last time that had happened. He was far more in the habit of buying new sketchpads than he was in finishing them.
He stood up and reached over to pull back the covers on Isa’s bed. He bent low and lifted the boy off the floor. He was as light and floppy as a ragdoll.
Isa didn’t stir as he tucked him into bed. Something about that irritated Briar. It was true that he’d strong-armed his way into the boy’s room because he couldn’t bring himself to part from him, but Briar was still annoyed.
Would Isa have let anyone come up to his room so late? Would he fall asleep alone in a room with anyone? Any random stranger?
Why was that idea so appalling?
He watched the peacefully sleeping boy but got no answers. Briar rubbed the side of his head trying to get relief from the itchy thoughts swarming in his head.
He should return to his room and get some sleep. Maybe tomorrow, unlike today, he would find more answers than questions.
* * *
Sleep . . . didn’t happen.
Every time Briar closed his eyes, a new aspect, or a new angle of Isa popped into his head, and he would be forced out of bed to get it onto paper.
It never came out right though.
In the past twelve hours, he’d done over a hundred sketches of Isa, and none of them were right. There was something he was missing, some element he didn’t understand yet.
By the time the sun came up, Briar was lying on the floor with a notepad on his face, listening to birds greeting each other. Cheerful little bastards.
With a sigh, he tore the book away and threw it onto his bed. Today he would be the one to bring Alex breakfast.
Briar stood behind an Asian guy with a high ponytail as he waited for his turn to order from the coffee cart. The coffee wasn’t for Briar—it tasted good, but it made everything inside his head about a hundred times louder.
