Page 75 of None Of Your Business

He picks up the entire can.

“Hudson—”

WHOOSH. SPLAT.

An explosion of yellow hits the canvas, drenching the drop cloth and spraying across the grass.

My jaw drops. “Holy shit.”

“You told me to throw it!” he shouts.

There’s an energy in his voice I’ve never heard before.

“I meant with a brush!” I scream, already laughing. “You absolute lunatic!”

I’ve created a monster.

Worse, I’ve created a monster with excellent upper-body strength and access to twenty gallons of paint.

He grabs a wide brush, dunks it into the blue, and slashes it across the canvas.

I scoop white into a plastic cup and throw it over his yellow. “Get it out! Come on!”

Hudson doesn’t hold back. He dips, slashes, throws, and splatters, each movement bigger than the last. Blue cuts through yellow. Pink lands across white. Paint hits his shirt, his arms, the grass. Every strike against the canvas feels like a physical exorcism. It’s grief and professional control being shredded to pieces right in front of me.

I’m laughing so hard my stomach hurts as I add another color.

At some point, Hudson reaches for another can and his shoe slides on the paint-slick drop cloth beneath us.

His arm shoots out.

Unfortunately, I’m what he grabs.

“Oh, shit—”

My feet go out from under me.

Hudson catches my arm and twists just before we hit, taking the ground on his back and pulling me against his chest.

We land in the grass in a tangle of limbs and wet paint.

For three seconds, neither of us moves.

Then I lift my head.

I’m a mess, but Hudson is so much worse.

His black T-shirt is ruined. Blue streaks one side of his arm. Bright yellow runs through his hair and down the side of his nose.

I stare at the yellow on his face. He stares at the pink smeared across my neck.

A sound rumbles out of him. At first, I think he’s groaning, but then it grows.

And Hudson is… laughing.

It’s the loudest, most unrestrained sound I’ve ever heard him make.

I start laughing too. Within seconds, my shoulders are shaking, and I roll off him onto the grass, staring up at the sky while we both lose whatever dignity we had left.