Page 17 of Art of Love
Jia from last night, who clearly couldn’t remember squat.
I’d drunken myself into a stupor of amnesia before, but not like her. I would have remembered by now, but maybe she was a lightweight and not used to drinking that much liquor.
And drink we did, and play we did. There was a lot of foreplay that I wasn’t likely to forget. Foreplay that mostly involved me tasting her. That sexy mouth and her gorgeous breasts. That was it.
And sex?
No. We didn’t get that far.
So, why didn’t I set her straight and tell her what really happened?
She’d pissed me off with the talk of me taking advantage of her.
And I was pissed off at the situation too. I didn’t see how in the hell she wouldn’t have an unfair advantage I didn’t have because she used to work with Impasso.
I could see she looked thrown off kilter too, and when I first spoke to her, I was trying to make light of the situation, but then she jumped to her own conclusions and assumptions about me.
The truth of what happened was this: She started feeling sick right after I stripped her down and threw her clothes to what I thought was the rack by the window, but the window was open, and they went straight outside.
We’d laughed at the spectacle, started kissing again, and then she ran to the toilet to throw up.
I spent the night in the toilet with her holding her hair back as she vomited, and tried to make sure she didn’t pass out on me.
I’d sort of sobered up by the time she finished throwing up, and by then it was super late. She wanted me to lie next to her and hold her, so I did.
That was what happened last night. Nothing more, even though I wanted more.
I couldn’t describe it. It was a want and desire a man who’d just found his girlfriend cheating shouldn’t be feeling.
I did though, and even as she smart-mouthed me earlier, I’d felt it again, wanting nothing more than to taste that gorgeous mouth of hers and the rest of her body.
But... what a fucked-up situation.
I wasn’t kidding. As far as coincidences went, this was the mother.
I couldn’t remember a conversation about art last night. She’d told me everything except that. Previous work with a notable artist like John was a pretty damn big thing to leave out. What was stranger was that she seemed to be the type of drunk who talked about everything.
Granted, I hadn’t shared anything about art either, so maybe I was just as guilty. My reasons were... well...
I think it was because it meant a lot to me. That was weird, thinking that, but it was like I held my love for it so close to my heart that I didn’t talk about it with any- and everybody, especially when everyone who meant something to me thought I was crazy for leaving my seven-figure-a-year salary as a criminal attorney to take on a job that paid peanuts in my book. An internship.
An internship at my age. Sure, it was basically a glorified internship that would hopefully lead me to where I truly wanted to be, but it was an internship.
I was thirty-two years old and doing what most people thought was going backwards. But I’d made the decision to shake up my life and do what made me happy.
Five months ago, my grandfather died.
He was a big artist in England in the early sixties. I got my talent from him, and everyone in the family knew it. When I was younger, all I did was eat, dream, sleep, think of art. Painting. Sculpting, drawing, anything creative I could get my hands on. But my parents wanted me to do law. Be lawyers like them.
Me being too eager to please, I gave up on the dream I had to be an artist.
The only person who knew just how deeply it hurt me to give up something I truly wanted to do was Grandfather. He made me promise him on his deathbed that I’d do it, that I’d do what made me happy.
This was me doing it. I was years late, but this was me, and I was doing it while I had enough savings to back me up to do what I wanted. This wasn’t like when I was eighteen building up the courage to tell my parents that I didn’t want to do law.
I still caused a fucking storm because they thought I was going to find my way back to England and work at the family practice, but no. No more doing what everyone else wanted me to do.
Speaking of which... there was Collin sitting on the front step leading up to my porch.
