Page 97 of Forever Never
It had been a long, shitty day.
She spent the morning in her parents’ basement when Darlene and Gilbert forced their daughters to prime and seal the cinderblock walls. Apparently adult children could indeed be punished by their parents.
Kimber had barely spoken a word to her for four straight hours.
After that, Remi had gone straight to the island’s medical center, where Dr. Sarah Ferrin had asked about how many vegetables she’d eaten that week and then cut off her cast. It should have been a celebration, the end of healing, the return to normal. But normal still eluded her.
She’d gone straight to Brick’s house, and the brush she’d held in her good hand had pulled a Brick Callan and done not a damn thing.
It was depressing. Her past had caught up to her. Her present was a dismal tightrope routine with nowhere to go but down. And at this point, her future was non-existent.
It was as if she’d just walked into a giant pit of quicksand and then let it swallow her whole. She was creatively, physically, mentally stuck. And she hated it.
Sweaty and dejected, she turned off Radiohead’s “No Surprises” and switched over to a relaxing instrumental playlist. She forced herself to put brush to paper, finally managing to swirl a few oils around in what looked more like brush technique exercises than any real exercise of creativity.
“This is bullshit,” she bitched at the canvas.
“Know what else is bullshit?”
“Mary J. Blige! Spence, what the fuck are you doing here besides giving me a heart attack?” Spencer Callan was sitting on one of her work tables, eating ice cream out of the carton.
“It’s March 1.”
“You’re kidding. Right?”
He shook his head and shoveled in another mouthful of ice cream. “It’s March 1, and we’re both here.”
“No. I’m not good company right now,” she warned him.
“Good company or not. You’re coming with me.”
“I’m not speaking to your brother.”
“He’s gonna be so busy he won’t even notice you’re there,” Spencer said, sliding off the table. He peeked at her canvas and frowned. “What the hell is that?”
“It’s garbage just like the rest of my life,” she grumbled, swiping the painting off the easel like a bad-tempered cat.
“Self-pity is a new look on you,” he observed. “Want to see something that will cheer you up?”
He pulled out his phone.
“Unless it’s that pit bull in the bathtub wearing a shower cap, no.”
“Here’s Brick when I hand-delivered his new machine today.” Spence swiped through his photos. “That’s his surprised face. I only point that out because it looks a lot like his pissed-off face.”
Remi’s lips quirked. It was very, very difficult to stay self-pitying and mad around Spencer.
He swiped again. “This is when he realized the giant bow on it meant it was for him. And then here’s his face when I told him you bought it for him.”
Remi snorted. In the picture, Brick looked as if he was about to punch a hole through Spencer’s phone.
“You chipped in,” she reminded him.
“Yeah, but it was funnier to tell him this way.”
She had to agree. “What was his reaction?”
“Claimed he wasn’t going to accept it. I called bullshit and moved it into the yard, and I caught him doing this right before he left for his shift.” He showed her the last picture of Brick sitting astride the shiny red and white snowmobile, hands gripping the handlebars, a fierce frown on his handsome face.
