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We rounded the corner, and my eye was immediately drawn to Georges Seurat's famous park scene, the one where a Parisian couple are casually walking a monkey. It was a painting I'd loved ever since I saw it in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, one of the few movies Maeve and James and I could always agree on.
I stood right in front of it, my eyes scrambling from all the different colored dots. Then I took slow steps back until the clustered colors deepened and became shapes. On my last step, I backed right into Quinn, whose hard chest felt like a wall behind me.
"You like this one," he said, laying a hand on my shoulder.
"Ever since I was little." I glanced over my shoulder at him before looking back at the painting. "It reminds me of my life."
"You're going to have to explain that one," he said, stepping beside me.
"Well, if you study it up close, it looks like a big mess. But when you step back and look at the whole thing, it works somehow."
His eyes crinkled at the edges before he directed them towards the painting.
"See what I mean?"
He shook his head. "No, but your life probably seems more chaotic to you than it does to other people."
"So when you look at me, you don't see a mess?" I asked, squinting at him.
"Nope. I see the whole picture. The color, the beauty. The monkey."
I swatted his chest and continued into the next room, noticing immediately that one of the paintings was familiar. "Isn't that the same haystack painting that's in my room?"
He nodded as we walked up to admire it.
"Another of your mom's favorites?" I asked, hungry to know more about her.
“No. This one’s mine, actually."
I studied the golden flecks in the haystacks and marveled at the subtle purples Monet had swirled through the French sky. "Why do you like it so much?"
"I'm not sure. I suppose I like when people find beauty in the mundane."
“Huh.”
"Seems like the kind of thing only a happy person would notice,” he added. “And I've always been fascinated by happy people."
My brows drew close. "You don't consider yourself a happy person?"
"I don't think happy is my default setting, no."
"What about now?" I asked, dipping my head to steal his attention away from the painting. "Are you happy now?"
His expression was so serious that, for a moment, I feared his answer. But when he met my eyes, they bent into crescents. "Happier than I've ever been."
My heart swelled at the sincerity in his voice until I, too, felt better than ever
