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  “Did you see that you’re in that photo? In the corner?”

  “Yeah, I did. Pretty crazy, huh?” I said. I turned to her blushing face. Pretty crazy that you let me make you beg last night? That you wanted it? Wanted me?

  “I’m ready if you are,” she said, changing the subject. Avoiding the awkward conversation I knew was coming. The one where she told me I was too young and maybe we shouldn’t do this. You’re my best friend’s brother. I had spent all day thinking about how she would act when we saw each other again.

  “After you, Miss,” I said, motioning for her back door. I watched her hips sway as she walked in front of me and smiled.

  Once outside, she locked the door and then slipped her key into the waistband of her athletic pants then walked to the steps. I followed again. At the bottom of the steps, I reached my arms behind my neck and started stretching, letting Kat walk ahead of me. When she noticed that I wasn’t following she stopped and turned around. I winked at her and she shook her head.

  She came back to me and started stretching, too, mirroring my movements. I smirked at her as she moved, letting my eyes rove over every inch of her, not hiding it, enjoying every eye roll I was rewarded with. I made her smile, this was a fact. I liked to make her smile, this was another fact.

  Finally, she stopped stretching and crossed her arms at me.

  “What?” I laughed.

  “Quit stretching.”

  “I just wanted to see how long you would let me stretch it out before you gave me that look.”

  She rolled her eyes again and turned on her heel, walking toward the road.

  I jogged after her and tapped her on the shoulder. “But do you get it? Stretch it out. Get it?”

  “Yes, Andrew, I got your joke,” she said.

  “Just checking.” I said, moving past her to take the lead. Once I was ahead of her by a few body lengths, I turned around and started walking backward. “What did you do today?”

  She groaned loudly, her voice echoing back and forth between the buildings lining the street. “I’m still recovering from last night. I haven’t drank like that in, I don’t know, years? I’m not a kid anymore. I can’t bounce back the way I could when I was your age.”

  Okay, first mention of my age. Pretty casual. Points for that one, Kat. I kept to my backward walking. “I felt fine this morning. The key is to drink two glasses of water before bed and down three Ibuprofen. You’ll wake up to birds chirping outside your window, no matter where you are, and a spring in your step.”

  “That was your morning? Must have been nice.”

  “Yep. You would know that if you hadn’t shot out of my sister’s house like a frightened doe.”

  “I so did not. I can’t sleep when I’m not in my own bed. So I just left as soon as I woke up.”

  “And you were trying to get away without a goodbye.” I clutched my chest. “Hurt me right here, Kat. I felt used. Good thing I caught you.”

  She blushed the most beautiful shade of rose I had ever seen and wouldn’t look me in the eye. “Oh, shut up.”

  I turned around in response and slowed my steps until I was walking right next to her down the sidewalk. A comfortable silence spread around us for a block before she spoke again.

  “That was so not me last night.” Her tone wasn’t embarrassed, sad, or regretful. It was matter-of-fact.

  I didn’t say anything in response, letting her take a moment. When she said nothing else, I turned my face to her.

  “Do you regret it?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “Not the answer I was expecting. Okay.”

  “You have a reputation, Andrew. It’s a small town. I may be older, I may not run with your crowd, but I hear stories. You come and go. You get into arguments at bars, you break hearts, you have a new job every few months when you do work.”

  It fucking sucked hearing my truth coming from her mouth. I tensed up, waiting for her to go on. Waiting for the rejection. I had been going over these points a lot recently. Ever since she came into my life, when I didn’t know it was her, ever since I had ruined her marriage. Ever since I had been home from my mother’s and my father had started in again about getting my shit together. Ever since, I had to face my sister’s eyes daily. I hated letting her down.

  The street was deserted on Sundays. The only cars were owned by shop owners, maybe here to catch up on work, to prepare for the new week. When we reached the end, we crossed at the crosswalk and started back in the direction we came on the opposite side. After a few blocks, she spoke again.

  “I like you, Andrew.”

  I laughed in response. “Even though I’m a fuck up?”

  “You’re not a fuck up. You’re twenty-two years old.”

  “Tons of people have their shit together at this age.”

  “Here’s something I learned this year. Comparison is suicide. Do you think I like the fact that I am going through a divorce at thirty years old? I absolutely do not. I don’t want to be starting over, living in a one-bedroom apartment like I’m…”

  “Like you’re my age?” I interrupted.

  “Yeah,” she said, smiling. “Like I’m your age. But that’s where I am, and this is where you are.”

  “I can think of a million other places I’d rather be.”

  She stopped walking and turned to me. “Ouch.”

  I stopped with her and took her hand, “No, in life. I love being here now, walking with you, talking to you.”

  She started walking again and called over her shoulder, “Me, too. Hurry up.”

  Time spent with Andrew was like a long rinse in my youth. I forgot everything this year and the last had brought me and just focused on the now. I hadn’t heard anything from my mystery guy all day. He normally texted me every day, and I found myself reluctant to reach for the phone.

  Last night was the only thing on my mind, everything I had felt and everything I had done under my best friend’s younger brother’s touch. It didn’t feel as weird as I thought it would.

  By midday, I was rummaging around in one of the boxes in my apartment. It was full to the top with items from my old nightstand. One of those photo boxes was at the bottom of the cardboard moving box. In it, I found a picture of Sera and I at graduation. In the corner, a small child-sized Andrew stood at the fringes. He wasn’t that little boy anymore.

  He was tall, tan, and tattooed. He had ice blue eyes and braces had straightened out his teeth. His arms were solid, and he had one of those haircuts you saw all over Instagram. Long at the top and buzzed on the sides. He liked to reach up and run his hands through it, pulling it from his eyes, setting young girls’ hearts on fire. Not just young girls, girls my age, too.

  Not long after I found the picture, my phone dinged with a Facebook message from him. I remembered him saying he didn’t have his phone last night. I wondered if he lost it. I didn’t ask. I just said yes to his request to go for a walk.

  Now here I was, strolling Commercial Street at dusk with him by my side, and I just told him I liked him. I might as well have slipped him a note with “check yes or no” on it.

  We were quickly getting closer and closer to my shop and apartment, which was causing panic to crawl all over my skin. What was I going to do? Invite him back in? Kiss him at the door? Neither option felt right. No, both did. I wanted to kiss him so badly.

  I let him get me off on the back porch then ran inside like a scared little girl. I had no idea what his lips would feel like on my mouth. I never gave him the chance to try. I retreated to the couch in the living room and pulled the covers over my head.

  Now he was next to me, and I was sober. I wasn’t going to make that mistake again.

  I heard him humming a song next to me as we walked around the side of my building. When we reached my back steps, he followed me up. When I reached my door, I pulled the waistband of my pants out and slipped my finger inside, searching for my key tucked into the tiny interior pocket. Andrew felt so close to me. “Are you hu
ngry?” I asked.

  “Very,” he said, and I wasn’t sure what he was hungry for.

  When we were inside, I hung my key on the ring by the door and made my way to the kitchen with Andrew on my heels. I pointed to the window in the dining area. “Can you go out there and start the grill?”

  The building next door, a law office, was only one story. The owner didn’t mind that I used his roof as a patio. My back deck was small and of little use. Out on the roof next door I had one of those large outdoor rugs, a small charcoal grill, and a few plastic chairs. It wasn’t much, but it was nice to sit outside in the cool spring weather this time of year.

  I watched Andrew open the window and pull his large body through the hole. I yelled his name and watched him stick his head back into the hole at me. I reached for the lighter on the counter and tossed it to him. He grabbed it and disappeared outside.

  I turned back to the fridge and started rooting around for something to go with the steaks I had pulled from the freezer that morning. I grabbed the mayo, mustard, and some eggs, placing them on the counter. My mother’s homemade pasta salad would hit the spot nicely.

  I grabbed my phone from the charger on the counter and pulled up a playlist. I skipped over the one full of all the songs my mystery guy had sent me. It felt wrong, but maybe that was my style and I just needed to come to terms with it. Kat-the-crook, juggling multiple men.

  I chose a playlist filled with some of my favorite indie songs and clicked on my Bluetooth button, sending the music to the little speaker I had across the room next to the TV.

  I glanced out the window and saw Andrew leaning over the edge of the building staring at the street below.

  I turned away from the window and squatted down to pull a pot from the cupboard. I filled it with water and turned the stove on, then walked over to the small pantry to find the elbow macaroni. After the water began to boil, Andrew finally crawled back through my window as I was pouring the pasta in.

  “Can anyone make it work these days?” he mused, fixing me with his blue eyes.

  “What do you mean?” I asked, having no clue where his question was stemming from.

  He aimed his thumb behind him to the open window. “Some couple was arguing down in the street. She threw her keys at him; he threw a dozen apologies at her. She threw half a dozen other girls’ names at him, he threw her a dirty look for giving his shitty behavior specific names.” He bobbed his head back and forth as he acted out the street drama.

  “I’m really not the best person to ask, am I?” I turned back to the stove. “I really wanted my marriage to work. Clichés are clichés for a reason. They are well known, they are true. ‘Everything happens for a reason’ is absolutely the last thing you want to hear when everything is falling apart. But it doesn’t mean it isn’t true. It doesn’t mean you won’t see the honesty in those plain words. I’m sure someone is saying them to a heartbroken friend right this moment, and that friend is rolling their eyes. But they’re going to get it, after some time.”

  “Who said them to you?” he asked, leaning against the counter next to me.

  I laughed. Who hadn’t said them to me? “My dad, my coworkers, random Facebook friends who had heard the news, never your sister. She doesn’t have room in her brain for words like that. She wrote a poem for me and sent it to me after I called her.”

  “She doesn’t say much but when she does she says the right thing. I don’t think she knows she has that talent though.”

  “Do any of us look at ourselves with the same lens everyone else is using?”

  “I’d wager a guess you don’t see yourself the way I see you right now.”

  I blushed and focused back on the spoon in my hand, stirring slowly. “And how’s that?” I challenged. I wanted him to show me exactly how he was seeing me right in this moment.

  In my peripheral vision, I saw him push off the counter and come toward me. He wrapped his fingers around my wrist and stilled my stirring. He used his other hand to grab the handle of the pot and pulled it from the red-hot range. I shook my head and rolled my eyes when he reached over and turned the stove off.

  “How are you going to enjoy my delicious pasta salad now?” I crossed my arms and pretended to be annoyed.

  “Oh, Kat, I’m sure it would have been great, but I’d rather enjoy something else you have to offer, honestly.” He reached for my wrists and dismantled my closed off stance.

  “And that would be?” I asked, letting him run his right hand up my arm.

  “Your lips,” he said, using his thumb to brush against the corner of my mouth. “The ones up here. I think we both know I’m very acquainted with the ones down there.” He used his other hand to press into my hips.

  I reached up to slap him playfully on the arm. “You’re the worst,” I lied.

  And they were the only words I could get out before he reached both hands to my hips and lifted me onto the counter. My legs instinctively wrapped around his waist but my upper body went a different route. I pushed back against his chest with my two open palms. He didn’t push forward against my resistance.

  There were moments that seized me suddenly. When a stranger would get too close behind me in the checkout line, when someone would brush by me in the store, when anyone got too close. I could see them coming or it could happen quickly with no warning. There was no rhyme or reason to it.

  I had never been an anxious person. I knew that for some, it was chemical. Something they were born with. And for some, it was an affliction brought on by a dramatic event. Some dark day or endless days had stained them. I was the latter. I was forever altered by one night.

  “Can you give me a moment?” I attempted to utter.

  I wasn’t sure I had said it, but I must have, because Andrew nodded and replied “You can have them all,” and I think my heart seized.

  What are the ingredients for a perfect kiss? I couldn’t remember any of mine. Sure, I remembered the circumstances; where I was, who he was, the season, my age. But the men from my past, did I remember the exact moments their lips touched mine? I couldn’t pull any of them from the corners of my mind. I couldn’t even remember the details of the first time I kissed the man I married. When those moments happen, you’re convinced you will never lose the feeling, the rush, the truth in the details.

  I didn’t know if Andrew saying I could have all the moments was romantic or cheesy or if he even knew what he said. But it pushed away the choking suffocation that had snaked its way up my skin, over my shoulders, around my throat. I laughed, but it was half a laugh, more like a surrender. I bent my elbows and let him into my space. I ran my hands up and settled them on his neck. He was suddenly serious, and it struck me then that I wasn’t sure I had ever seen him serious. I took advantage of his silence and intent attention on my mouth.

  “Do you ever leave the girls with anything but a broken heart, Andrew?”

  “No comment.” He chuckled, pulled from his trance.

  “I thought as much.”

  “I’ll leave you however you want me to leave you. You’re in control.”

  I kissed him then. My lips were pressed to his one moment and then the next he was opening up to me, taking my bottom lip between his teeth, pulling me forward on the counter, wrapping his hands tightly around my back. I didn’t think I could be closer to him than I was but he was trying.

  I felt myself unravelling a little and it scared me, so I pulled on Andrew’s hair, breaking our kiss. He opened his eyes, concern caught at the corners, so I soothed him, bringing my lips to his neck, and relished the moan it brought forth. I kept up the pace, my hand still in his hair, not letting him pull forward to kiss me again. When I heard a small laugh in his throat, I stopped. “What?” I breathed.

  “Nothing, Kat,” he murmured, “You’re in control.”

  During my time away, in search of myself, I had fallen in love. It was wild, messy, and vibrant, and I was forever altered by it. My love was color and canvas, any place I could splash c
olor. It was easy to fall into it all again.

  In high school, I dabbled with paint and brush, but I left it behind when I graduated and no longer had a class pushing me to explore my abilities. When I found myself back under my mother’s roof, with no friends, band practice, or music to occupy me, I searched for something new to keep me busy and fulfill my creative needs.

  There was always the possibility of finding local dudes to play with, but I was punishing myself for letting my passion turn me into a worthless slacker. So I avoided it, careful not to get sucked in to late night practices and weekend shows.

  I could have found a balance between it all, I knew that deep down, but that wasn’t what I needed at that time. I needed a clean break from everything that made me feel. From Kat, from my guitar, from the songs I knew I had inside of me but couldn’t bring myself to pen.

  I had a tendency to throw myself into situations with full force. I never half-assed my hobbies, my art. Once something crawled into my mind and latched on, I was a mad man.

  It happened with no warning. I was in bed browsing Instagram after a long day of work and schoolwork—winding down, streaming music to a small speaker on my desk—when I saw it. Some dude filmed a time-lapse of a bomb ass 20x24 mixed media piece he had killed that day. It was a combination of acrylic, watercolor, and spray paint. The colors halted my mindless scroll through the thousands of squares on the search page of the app.

  It only took about five minutes of scrolling his page to light a fire in me. This was something I could do. I needed it. So I jumped off my bed and pulled my clothes back on. I grabbed my keys and sped to the nearest Wal-Mart for some basic shit to get me through the night, with a trip to a local art supply store already scheduled in my mind for the next day.

  It was about midnight when I finally found myself face to face with a white canvas in my mother’s garage. I didn’t have an easel yet so I had propped up a tower of boxes and threw an old sheet over them. I just couldn’t bring myself to wait for the next day to begin. I had to see what the inside of my mind looked like on the canvas.