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“Go out.”
Emerson’s jaw tenses, and my heart speeds up. The pull I have toward him gets stronger. Like it’s been grasped with two fists. Like gravity has gotten stronger, but in his direction.
“The same way I passed the time in the closet. I made it into art.”
“In your head?”
“It was dark most of the time, so it was all imagined.” He’s wary about this, too. Emerson must think it’s too strange or unacceptable to mention out loud. “It’s almost constant now. Automatic.”
“You mean…in your head, you imagine—”
“I don’t have to imagine. Most of the time, I can see how the world would look if it were a painting. Pieces that hang on the wall.” He winces, the expression so quick and suppressed it’s barely there. “They’re contained. They can be viewed at a distance.”
“You see the whole world like that?”
“If I’m at home it happens less. Outside, almost always.”
There’s something he’s not saying. “But what?”
Emerson clears his throat. “At first, I saw you that way, little painter. But now I see you as you are.”
“What do I look like?”
He takes a moment, looking into my face with a flash of awe. “Stunning.”
I put my arms around his neck and lean into him. Kiss his cheek. Breathe him in. He thinks this is embarrassing. Something to be hidden. There’s a reason people pay so much for art they love. They wish they could see things like that all the time.
“It’s not true.” I lift my head again. There’s something about his eyes.
“I never lied.”
“You were wrong. You’re so much better.” He doesn’t argue, but he doesn’t agree, either. “Are you sad?”
He blinks. “About what?”
“Sad that you have to be home most of the time? Sad that it’s hard to go out?”
Do you wish everything was different? Because if it had all been different, I might not have met you.
“No, little painter.” Emerson cracks a smile like a sunrise. “I’m not sad. You’re here, too.”
