* * *
After four hours of verb conjugation and terminology memorization, we call it a night. My cheeks and stomach ache with a kind of muscle memory that’s different from what I’m used to. Like the slight twinge in my jaw that serves as a reminder of how I almost toppled off my seat when Teeny told me about the time Josh got chased by a chicken when he was six. Or the subtle pang that hits my abdomen when I remember how red Teeny’s face grew laughing over my own mishap with a rogue squirrel.
We’ve pulled up into Teeny’s driveway where the noise on the inside seems to have died down. Teeny puts her car in park and starts gathering her hair, securing it with a hair tie that was fastened to her wrist. I watch her, eyeing the fluid movements of her hands and her slender neck, when I see a smear of bright orange paint behind her ear.
“Do you paint?”
“Hmm?” she asks with a confused tilt of her head.
I reach up to run my finger over the paint stain, feeling for a second how soft her skin is. “You got some paint here.”
Her hand immediately clamps over the spot, and she smiles sheepishly. “I do.”
“Like, for fun? Or do you have a side job painting houses?”
“No.” She laughs. “I paint…stuff.” I stay quiet, silently asking for her to elaborate. Instead of answering, she opens the car door. “Come on, Hayes.”
I exit the car, following her lead to the garage. She opens the door off to the side where it meets the fence dividing our two homes and flicks on the overhead light. Once she takes a few more steps in, she turns on another light, this one much brighter. When I look around, I see an entire makeshift studio. There’s an easel sitting in one corner with a canvas tarp lying under it. A small boombox stereo is plugged in on a desk where paint brushes sit haphazardly in a ceramic vase. Various tubes of acrylic paint in different stages of fullness cover the rest of the space on the desk, and a wooden stool is tucked underneath it.
“This is my studio.” Teeny stands off to the side of the easel where a canvas painting rests. There’s some distorted drawing of shapes and colors that lean toward an image of a shore with sand and a water’s edge. “It’s not finished,” Teeny adds when she watches me take in the drawing. “Far from it, actually. But I’m working on this and a few other pieces for an art show at a really small local gallery.”
I start to pay more attention to the colors she used. Bright fuchsia, lavender, navy, golden yellow. All colors that don’t necessarily blend well together, but when thrown together through brush strokes and thick smears of paint, it creates this glowing sunset with Del Mar Heights as the backdrop.
“You did this?” I finally ask.
She nods, her head moving up and down in a hesitant movement of reserve. “I have a few more, but they’re in my room.”
I peer over at Teeny with my fingers hovering over the painting where there are abstract shapes of squares and lines with a bold “18” stamped on it. “This lifeguard tower…”
Teeny nods. “It’s that beach we went to.”
“And you painted it?”
She takes a slow cautious step closer to me and runs her fingers along the dried bumps and ridges of paint. “To most, it’ll look like any San Diego beach. The water and the sand and even the lifeguard tower look pretty generic. It’s the details that only I notice, and probably you. Like the number on the tower and those darker spots in the sand.” She pauses to point them out, and when I take a closer look, I can see that they’re footprints. “They’re at the water’s edge following a path to dryer sand. Like when we were there.”
I take it in, the details, the secret moments brushed onto the canvas that mean something to us. All of it. And I can feel Teeny watching me. Like she’s waiting for my approval.
“This is amazing,” I finally say.
“Yeah?”
I nod. “Yeah.”
She smiles, a soft smile that’s shy and gentle. “I’m glad you like it.”
I turn, looking away from the painting to face her, and take a slow step toward her. “How come you never told me you paint like this?”
She shrugs. “I guess it never came up.”
I reach my hand to cup her face, and my thumb strokes back and forth from her jaw to her neck where her pulse beats frantically. Her lids flutter at the same time a soft sigh squeezes through her lips, and her body sags into me. Watching her become pliant in my hands, all slack and weak, has me feeling the same. Like I’m putty in her hands and I’d do whatever she wants.
“You want to kiss me again, don’t you?” she asks softly. The warmth of her breath tickles my cheek, and our lips play this little game of tango, moving around each other in a teasing motion.
“Yeah,” I whisper back. “I do.” And before she can say anything else, I grip her face in my hands and kiss her. I kiss her like I’m hungry. She takes a small step backward, and I stumble with her. Her butt perches at the edge of the desk, grounding herself to something more solid than the electricity making both of our hands frantic and shaky, and I take that moment to lean my entire body into her. I notice her hand reach back, planting it on the hard surface for leverage. And the way her body trembles a little, I feel it when I softly grip her knee, and it shakes in my hand. I pull away and look at her. She looks like with every sharp gasp, she’s trying to catch her next breath, only for it to fall short and keep her breathless.
“Are you okay?” I whisper.
She nods. “Things just got a little…intense.” A small smile cracks the nerves that are so apparent on her face, and it feels like she’s trying to give me something other than unease through an appeasing smile. “Sorry.”
