1
BRIELLE
There’san art to people watching.
You can’t be obvious, yet if you don’t look hard enough, you miss all of the best parts. The crinkles at the corners of a pair of dark, frustrated eyes as they scan a laptop screen, or the smirk on the lips of a man who’s mildly intrigued by the barista who couldn’t be making it any more obvious that she’s not interested. The businessman will huff as he pulls his phone out to make a gruff call, and the barista will roll her eyes when her flirty customer leans over the counter and makes a show of reading her name tag when she denies telling it to him outright. I don’t have to watch them to know what happens next, but knowing your hunch was right is the best part.
I’ve never been too nervous or intimidated to stare at someone in public. There’s a line between watching someone like you’re running through a mental list of all the ways you could murder them and simply being curious, but it’s not as fine as you’d think.
If you’re like me and find sitting in a busy café on a Tuesday afternoon to be relaxing, then you don’t have anything to worry about. This is my happy place, I guess. Me, my table for two—or rather one—and the sun beaming on my cheeks from the tall window that looks out to downtown Vancouver.
The hiss of steam and the grind of coffee beans behind the counter, mixed with the sound of low, casual conversation, has become the soundtrack to my life over the last year. I’ve got no damn clue why, either. Every time I inhale, the coffee smell burns my nostrils, and while my purse never moves from the chair across from mine, not everyone seems to know the universal meaning of that specific gesture.
Turning my head, I peer outside to the street. It’s just past lunchtime, which means the crosswalks are cluttered, and the pace of passing strangers is fast. With every blink, a new cluster of people rushes by. From teenagers dressed in their private high school uniforms to the hoity-toity business folk in heels and thick-soled loafers, it’s hard to keep up. It’s overwhelming, actually.
I tuck my fading cherry-red hair behind my ears and drop my eyes to the sketchbook open in front of me. The pages are still blank despite the last two lively hours I’ve been sitting here. I’m embarrassed to admit that I haven’t managed to design anything new in weeks, let alone hours.
My phone buzzes on the table beside my partially untouched, melted Frappuccino, and I risk a glance at it. My brother’s name flashes over a photo of us at Summit Field last spring, the home of the Vancouver Havoc MLB team. I wince when I let it go to voicemail and pick up my discarded hot pink pencil. Tapping it to the corner of my paper, I read the wordsPussy Powerthat Aubrey had stamped up the side of the wood and gifted to me for my birthday.
Admittedly, I don’t feel all that powerful right now, which is pretty unusual.
Folding one bare leg over the other beneath the table, I lean closer to my sketchbook. The lines I force myself to draw aresimple and take no effort. The curved shapes of the woman’s thighs and hips come first, and then her calves appear. My thoughts grow quiet as I work. I fill out her waist and bust before messing around with her arms and fingers. They’re terrible, but luckily, that doesn’t matter.
Once I’ve got a body made, I stare blankly at it, not able to go any further.
My phone buzzes again, and instead of ignoring it again, I drag my finger across the screen and pick it up.
“What do you want?”
“Who pissed in your chia seed overnight oats?” Wes laughs into my ear.
“Now really isn’t the time to poke at me.”
His laugh dies instantly, replaced with a seriousness that he likes to pretend doesn’t exist beneath all of his loud jokes and laid-back demeanour. “Why?”
I want to tell him the truth but quickly decide against it. Not when he’s the one who fronted the money for me to start my clothing brand, Soft Body, and who I know has been waiting for something to actually become of it.
Admitting that he may have wasted money on a dream that may never come to fruition feels like an incredibly bad idea.
“Just busy. You know how I get when I haven’t had breakfast.”
“So nobody pissed in your overnight oats, then.”
I crack a small smile. “No, and I had thoseonetime. You can let it go.”
“Let what go?”
That’s better. “Why did you actually call?”
“I need you to tell Dad to stop trying to talk to me before I block his number.”
“How long are you going to keep this up, Wes?”
“As long as it takes to get my point across.”
I shut my eyes and abandon my pencil, done with sketching for now. “You know he just . . . worries.”
Right, because that’s a good enough explanation as to why our father hates Wes’ job and doesn’t know how to keep his mouth shut about it. At first, it was fun to join in on the poking that he did when we were teenagers and Wes was still playing high school ball. That changed for me the moment there started being major league scouts in the stands of his games and college interest from here to Florida. Now, he’s a top three catcher in the MLB, and our father still turns his nose up at him.
