“I see. Well, I’m not surprised. These are fantastic.” She turned around the space slowly again, eyes tracking everywhere. My gaze roamed over her body, lingering on the way her hips and legs filled out her soft pants and how the slope of her neck smoothed gently into her shoulder. I wondered how easy it would be to replicate that shape, how it would feel to run my hand over it, like testing the final sanding of any imperfections. She had none that I could see.
“Thanks,” I grumbled, accepting the compliment that eventually sank in even though it made my skin itchy.
I never felt like I deserved praise for something that worked through me, like thanking a keyboard for an author’s work.
We stood facing each other. Her top two teeth nibbled on that damn bottom lip again. I wished she wouldn’t do that.
I’d been about to not so subtly shoo her away when her gaze flicked over my shoulder. “What’s this one?” She moved quicklytoward it.
I knew without looking that she found the one unfinished piece covered in a sheet. And it probably never would be completed. “Not that one. It’s not?—”
She gasped as she pulled the sheet away. “Wow.” She sucked in a breath.
“That one was hidden for a reason,” I snapped, and she winced. I wanted to cover it back up, but if I snatched the sheet from her fingers now, I would scare her. Growing unease coiled my muscles, tightening my shoulders and neck. This was too close to the thing we didn’t talk or think about.
“Sorry. I can be a little bit?—”
“Nosy.”
“Inquisitive.” She sniffed. “It’s one of my many charms.”
“That right? Who told you that?” My fists balled to keep from reaching for the sheet.
She made a soft sound ofnever mind.“Why is this covered?”
I took a sharp inhale in and out, anger growing. I shouldn’t have let her in here. I kept my back to them both. I didn’t need to see the work to remember the pain that it represented. I closed my eyes. I saw her in my mind’s eyes, the agony, the sadness, the disbelief of a life ending too soon.
“It didn’t come out right. It’s trash,” I lied.
“It’s breathtaking,” she said quietly. “It’s so different from the other ones.”
I ground my jaw. She needed to leave. This was too much.
Her feet shuffled on the dirty floor as she presumably took itin at different angles. “It’s making me feel … lonely.” She made a soft noise of thinking. I fought to keep from watching her watching my art. “But in a sort of universal, connected way. This is the sadness that we all feel. Like how the same patterns repeat in nature. Like the swirl of the inside of a shell will sometimes mirror the swirl of an entire solar system. We are all creatures that grieve and hurt. Nothing is special about our pain, but also in that sadness, we’re all connected and made of the same things.”
My heart hammered against my chest. She was poetic for a journalist. It was what I could never convey in trying to explain my work. This stranger understood things about myself that I was still not close to processing.
“It’s a universal loss but still feels so personal,” she finished reverently. “This is exactly what I want to do in my articles, but it never—” She stepped closer, but whatever she’d been about to say, she stopped herself.
I clenched my jaw. Having her here was a mistake. I wasn’t thinking clearly. I needed her to leave, but I was the numbnuts who had invited her.
“You could absolutely sell this,” she said. “God, if I were loaded, I would buy it, but I couldn’t afford what this is worth. It’s worth a lot is what I’m saying.”
“It’s not for sale,” I said sharply, ending the discussion.
“I know you said you don’t think it’s done, but I think that’s what makes it so honest?—”
“Can you just drop it, Claire?” My words slashed through the air, cutting any connection we’d been sharing.
The beat of silence that followed rang like a gong in my head.
“Hey,” she said, placing a hand on my shoulder. I flinched, and she lowered it. “I’m sorry. I had no right. I do this … I go too far …” Her shoes shuffled on the dusty floor.
“You didn’t know.”
“I never seem to,” she mumbled. “I’m going to go.” She lightened her tone, and if I wasn’t still glaring at the pile of sawdust on the floor, I would probably find her wide smile locked in place. “I appreciate you showing me around.”
I grunted something of a goodbye and flicked the air compressor to life so I could blow off the dirt. The machine was loud enough that I couldn’t hear her leave.
