Page 4 of Quiet
“Do you have any extra? That looks close to the shade I need,” Isa said hopefully, pointing to the paint on his silent companion’s face.
The man frowned and looked down the hallway but didn’t say anything.
So, maybe Isa wasn’t great at being charming. He could make himself small and nonthreatening with very little effort—in fact, he excelled at it. But he didn’t think that was going to work here.
Though his savior was giving offI’d very much like to run away nowvibes, so maybe it wasn’t the worst idea.
On second thought, maybe he should just leave the poor guy alone and find someone else to wheedle art supplies from.
Isa conjured up his friendliest smile, and the man blinked like Isa had shone a flashlight in his face. “I’m probably keeping you from a project, right? I can ask someone else.” Isa turned to go but stopped when the young man grabbed his sleeve and jerked his chin toward the end of the hallway.
“You want me to come with you?”
The man let go of his sleeve and walked away. Curious, Isa followed him down the hall and through a set of double doors into a large studio.
“Heads up!” a voice called from overhead, and Isa looked up in time to see a wrench falling straight toward his head.
He winced and closed his eyes, but other than a loud clang, nothing happened.
“Shit, Briar, are you okay?”
Isa opened his eyes to see a large bicep sheltering him. There was a livid red mark on it and the wrench was on the floor.
Isa looked at the wrench in shock. “Why did you do that? That must have hurt!”
The man shrugged but allowed Isa to look at his arm.
The voice from above belonged to a short, slim, black woman with a paint-streaked scarf over her hair and an equally paint-stained set of overalls. She shimmied down a ladder and joined Isa in examining his savior’s arm.
“It looks like you’re going to get a nasty bruise, but at least the skin didn’t break.” Isa touched the skin next to the rapidly forming bruise. It was going to be a nasty one. Isa turned to the woman. “Do you have any ice?”
She nodded. “I’ll be right back.”
A lanky boy with a bandana came up to them from across the room. “Briar, you’re a brick wall, man. I’d be crying right now if I were you, but I suppose it’s better than this guy taking it to the face. We’d be going to the hospital right now if you hadn’t.” Bandana guy got a sheepish look on his face. “I’m sorry about that, by the way. I shouldn’t have been lazy and thrown the wrench to Bea. It’s totally my fault. I’m Alex, by the way.”
“It’s okay,” Isa assured him hastily and turned to his silent companion. “Your name is Briar? I’m Isa—um, thanks again, I guess. I promise I’m not always in need of rescue.”
Briar fixed his eyes on Isa, once again subjecting him to a laser-like focus that made Isa’s head feel swimmy. Then he turned to his friend and held out a flat hand then put a fist with its thumb sticking out on top. Then he pointed at Isa.
He’d just signed the word for ‘help’. Isa’s family’s church had done volunteer work at a school for the deaf and blind, so he’d learned ASL. When they’d moved on to another charity project, Isa had stayed. The people he’d met there were wonderful, so he’d had ample opportunity to use it. When his director Anna had found out, she made him the interpreter for the play in addition to a glorified gofer.
Was Briar deaf?
No, he’d heard the warning in time to stop Isa from getting his head caved in, so that ruled out complete hearing loss. Maybe he was hard of hearing?
Alex looked at Isa. “You need help?”
“Yes, actually. I’ve come to bargain.”
Isa did his best to look cute and determined as he told Alex what he needed. He was at the tail end of his explanation when Bea, the girl who had gone for ice, returned. Isa took it without thinking and pressed it against Briar’s arm.
“So, if you have purple and black to spare, you’d be saving my friend Ryan from extreme humiliation. You can name your price—as long as your price isn’t money because we are all broke.”
Alex and Bea exchanged a look before Bea broke into a smile and asked, “It’s not just me, right? He’s perfect.”
Isa froze. Perfect? Isa? No one had ever called him that before. Usually, it was the opposite.
“No, it’s not just you, Briar sees it too. Look at him, he’s just itching to get to his sketchbook.”
