Page 17 of Apparently, I’m A B!tch

I narrowed my glance at him. “Really?”

The last time I told him what I thought of his art, it made him miserable.

He curled his lips into a teasing smile and my heart shot back up again. “Yes. Please?”

I nodded and slid out of the booth, taking my coffee with me, trying not to embarrass myself by doing something stupid like tripping over my heels and landing face-down on the wooden floor. It was bad enough that I bawled my eyes out in front of him.

We walked to the right of the small coffee shop, and I took in his newest piece before we reached it.

It was different, unlike anything else hanging on his walls. There was something about it, something about this painting that made me want to reach out and touch it; like the woman he painted was holding so much weight behind those eyes, so much pain. I never knew an image could hold so much beyond the colors it was made with. My heart squeezed painfully as I recognized who I was staring at.

“Your mother?” I asked, not sure of what else to say.

The closer I was to it, the more detail I could see. Trees, buildings, streets. All these details overlapping and combining within her face. All of it, destroyed. Twisted, cluttered, muted. These images of a foreign, torn landscape somehow converged to form his mother, her face telling me she wanted to be there, that she grieved being away from all the things that made her who she was.

“What do you think?” His voice was soft as he leaned closer, his breath brushing against my ear, causing a shiver that made me want to rub my skin.

I looked up at him, thinking I’d see some kind of cocky confidence, believing that surely he knew how beautiful this was. Instead, his eyes searched my face as he bit his lip. Was he waiting for my approval? Did my opinion mean that much to him? But why would it? I was just a criminal defense lawyer, not some appreciative art enthusiast. Sure, we were old friends, but what did he think he could get out of me that would be worthwhile?

I took a breath and spoke slowly, not wanting to say the wrong thing. “It… it makes me feel… horrible.” At the sight of his face falling, I rushed out my next words. “Not like that, Tristan! I mean, I meant… when I see her, and all the parts of this place that made her this way, I feel like I want to grieve with her.” I reached out, hovering my fingers over the pastel trees, the grayed-out rubble that once formed buildings, the trash-strewn streets. “All the broken pieces of this place, they make me think something terrible happened there, and even though she knows that, she still looks at it with a… a sad and terrifying amount of longing, like she’d gladly go back there if it meant she could be home. It makes me wish I could ask her what it was about this place that she couldn’t let go of.” I shrugged, still looking at the union of colors and lines in front of me. “She would’ve loved this, Tristan. She’d be so proud if she could see this.”

Beside me, Tristan let out a breath. “Thank you, Nikki. I appreciate that. I really do.”

I turned to his quiet voice, finding him staring down at me with an intensity that made me shuffle half a step to the side. “So, what are you going to do with this painting?”

He blinked, my question breaking his concentration. “I’m not really sure.”

I looked back at the image and asked, “What made you paint her like this? Why not paint her as your mother instead of as an immigrant from Lebanon?”

He cleared his throat and turned back to his work, speaking to it rather than to me. “I wanted to understand how she felt about leaving home, I guess. She… they left Lebanon during the South War… People were forced to immigrate, and my parents were the first of our family to come here. My father was sure they had to do it, that they had to leave everything behind for a chance of happiness. He couldn’t keep living like that; struggling to find things to eat, things to wear, always hoping that when they got back home, it’d still be in one piece. He didn’t want that for them. So, they came here.”

I nodded, having known about his family history for years now. “I remember how difficult your mom said it was to leave.”

“It was. More for my mother than for my father. You know he loved it here. He would’ve preferred to stay in New York and live in the city where he made a life with my mother than to have gone back to a country where all he remembers is suffering.”

His throat worked as he lowered his gaze, not looking at the painting or at me. “If she didn’t die from leukemia… she might be there with him now.” He shook his head and lifted a shoulder. “Almost every day, she’d pull out these old photos, all in gray, some of them blurry, and she’d stare at them. The way she looked at these pictures, Nikki… she had tears in her eyes. I knew she wanted to be back there so badly. No matter how hard it must’ve been for her to live there, it was part of what made her who she was. She gave that up for us, and I knew she never resented us for it, but I would’ve loved to have known that she got to go back there just once before she died. She deserved that.”

His voice broke on the last word and he cleared his throat, took a breath and stepped back, maybe trying to cover that slight crack of emotion he’d shown me. I fought the urge to throw my arms around him as he steadied himself.

“I’m glad you could see how she felt about her home. It means a lot that you could see that. It took a couple of years to save the money, but it’s the reason my father is there now, spreading her ashes where he knew she always wanted to be.” He forced a hollow brightness to his face as he attempted to change the subject. “So, Harvey was being an asshole again? Was that what happened?”

I tried to cover my surprise with a laugh. “Yes, but I shouldn’t have acted the way I did. He just takes advantage of Kelly, and I guess, I don’t know why, but I couldn’t handle it today.”

Tristan tilted his chin and crossed his arms on his chest, making his muscles bunch and tense. It was difficult to keep my eyes on his face as he asked, “You care about Kelly?”

I shrugged, taking a sip of my forgotten, lukewarm coffee. “I don’t like the way he uses her.”

He paused, looking down at his crossed arms. “Is that why you didn’t say anything about Kelly telling me about your case?”

Oh. Oh right. I could’ve gotten her into trouble if I wanted to. That kind of thing would’ve resulted in a stern warning from one of the partners at the very least.

“Well, Kelly shouldn’t have said anything about my case. It was confidential and she’s smart enough to know better.”

He shifted on his feet. Was he nervous?

“You’re not going to say anything are you? I wouldn’t have opened my mouth if I knew it could’ve caused her trouble.”

That’s what he was worried about. Wow. Did he really think I was that awful now? Maybe I was. Maybe he was right not to try and fix things between us. Life was probably better for him without me in it the way I used to be.