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“Are you into painting?” I asked.
“Not in the slightest,” Leo confessed, tying his own apron on. “You?”
“I’ve dabbled,” I said. “When I was in high school. It’s been a while, though.”
“All right. I’ve got some beverages, and we’ve got our handy, dandy aprons on. Who’s ready to get painting?” Julia yelled in a sing-song voice. Leo raised his hand, and I laughed.
The beach scene painting commenced, and I found myself once again escaping from worry and doubt as, with Leo interspersing jokes in between instruction, we painted away the afternoon.
***
“I THINK YOU’VE DONE a little more than dabbling,” Leo said, examining my final beach scene with a second glass of wine in hand.
“Come on. It’s not that good,” I said.
Leo gestured toward his. The seaweed looked like tentacles coming out of the ground, and the sand looked more like a muddy swamp than an oceanic getaway. “Have you seen this?”
“Every piece of art is valuable,” Julia interjected, patting Leo on the shoulder. “Now with just a little more practice, you’ll be a superstar!” she exclaimed in her overly positive attitude.
“Too late,” I murmured, and Leo shook his head.
“I’ll leave you two to finish your drinks and chat. If you need anything, I’ll be in the back room cleaning brushes, okay?” she asked.
“Thank you,” we both said.
“You two are the cutest couple I’ve ever had the pleasure to teach.” And before either of us could correct her, she scurried away. I tucked a piece of hair behind my ear that had escaped from my ponytail—and then realized my hand had paint on it. I sighed.
Leo smiled, shaking his head. “You’ve got a little paint happening.” He walked over to me as I held my blue-covered hand out. He took his hand, which was somehow devoid of paint, and wiped at the paint in my hair.
“You’re going to have paint on you now,” I said.
He pulled back showing me the blue on his hand. “It’s just paint. Who cares? But I’ll confess...I made the paint in your hair worse. You’re rocking a bit of a blue streak now. But it does look lovely.”
I smiled at that, shaking my head. My blue hand was still out. He took his now paint-covered hand and gave me a high five. I smile at the gesture. We stood, hands touching for a moment as he gripped mine. I froze, my heart stopping. He turned then and went back to his station, wiping his hand on the towel. I attempted to clean mine as well.
“That was fun,” I said. “Thank you so much for planning it.”
“It really was,” Leo replied, sipping his glass of wine. We sat in silence for a moment, literally watching paint dry. Somehow, though, with him beside me, it was anything but boring.
“I wish I could do more of this kind of thing,” Leo said wistfully.
I turned to him. “So why don’t you? If you can’t do what you want, dictate your life, how is there hope for any of us?” I asked.
“Because I have money, you think?” he asked, not angrily, but seriously.
“I know it’s not everything. But it does give you freedom, doesn’t it?”
He shook his head. “Not as much as you would think The thing is, as I’ve learned, the more you make, the more you have to make.”
“What do you mean?”
“The pressure of taking care of everyone. It’s a lot. Early on, I had no idea how to handle that much money, and my manager wasn’t the best. And then the bigger this thing got, the more people I found myself taking care of. So may people depend on me that it gets to be a lot. There’s this pressure to just keep making more, to keep going while I’m popular because there’s always the unspoken fear that it could all dry up. And it was getting to the point that I had to take a break or I wasn’t going to make it much longer. The constant tours, appearances, watching my brand. I just needed this. Peace.” He took a big gulp of wine, finishing off his glass.
“So why didn’t you tell them that? Don’t you set your schedule?”
“Not at all,” he said, looking off into the distance. “I have to keep going while the going is hot, they say. I have people to tell me how to handle every aspect of my life, from what I wear to what I say. Everything.”
“Sounds like this is exactly where you should be then,” I said.
