“Cheerios or Lucky Charms?”
“Eww…you eat Lucky Charms?”
With a booming laugh I’ve never heard from him, he sets the box of Cheerios on the table. “Occasionally I like a sugar rush.”
“Who are you, even?” I laugh.
“You have a few months to find out.”
I suck at painting.
My tree looks like a green glob of alien snot, and the water is unnaturally blue. The older woman next to me frowns when she glances over.
“You should ask Colt for help. He can tell you how to fix it.”
Right now, Colt is assisting an older gentleman with arthritis issues. Colt’s voice is soft as he speaks to the man about how he could tie the paintbrush to something bigger to help with his grip, and he’d be happy to help him.
When Colt left the house with a massive duffel bag, I assumed it was paint supplies. It was, but not paints, brushes, and canvas. Right now, he’s searching for something that the man feels at ease gripping, and they settle on a hairbrush. I watch with rapt attention as Colt chatters with the man and secures a paintbrush to a hairbrush handle for him.The man smiles and booms his approval while returning to his painting.
Colt moves to a young child next, who is despondent over her creation. Colt offers her a bag of googly eyes to make the rock into a face. She laughs and says it’s a space creation and not a shoreline.
I’m utterly fascinated with Colt and how he moves with ease from young to old, problem to problem. He is immensely good at this, and my chest bursts with pride.
When we arrived, I thought the painting class would be in a tiny room like the knitting ladies, but I was wrong. Colt filled the basement gathering area, and there are easily twenty people in here. Some paint on their own, and others simply wait for Colt because they want to.
“You’re new here,” the woman to my left says, and I nod.
“I am.”
“Are you seeing anyone?”
“Uh…”
“My granddaughter is single if you need to get out.”
Ah. Can’t say I was expecting a grandmother to arrange a date for me on a paint day. Chance is full of new experiences, though. I also didn’t think I’d be dating the teacher of the class, either.
“Oh, thank you, but I’m gay.”
A collective gasp sounds, and now a couple in front of me turns around. “You’re gay? So is Colt,” the man says.
“He’s single, too,” the woman whisper-shouts, and Colt’s head turns our way.
Dear god, this is embarrassing. “Oh, thank you for letting me know.” I guess small towns don’t always have a rumor mill if nobody saw us out together and talked about it.
There’s a distinct note of playfulness in Colt’s gaze when our eyes meet as he walks toward my suddenly very chattygroup. “Oh, he’s coming over. Ask him to help with your blob, dear.”
“You need some help, Ethan?”
While the audience has gone silent, I know they’re watching and listening as Colt drops his bag next to my chair and examines my poor excuse for a painting.
“Well, the uh, tree looks like a blob and the water isn’t right.”
He rummages in his bag and pulls out a pencil. “May I?” he asks as he brings it toward my paper.
“Yeah, knock yourself out.”
“If you take a dark green and make some lines here like this…” He makes light marks on my tree blob, “that will give it some shape to look more like a tree. As for the water, all you need to do is use a wet brush to take off some of the color like this.” He brushes a damp brush over my bright blue, and it fades to something more like water and less like an overripe blueberry.
