AllFreeNovel
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I pause in the middle of describing the misty clouds over the moon, painting them into the curve of his shoulder.
“Why—” Emerson takes three breaths before he can continue. “Why put the man in the painting at all?”
I’m so relieved to hear his voice that I drop my head onto his shoulder. My arms feel worn out and useless. My heart, on the other hand, has never been stronger. It can withstand his question, which is as raw as anything I’ve ever heard. Of course, it’s Emerson. Of course, he asks it in our shared language. There’s no other way.
“He’s critical to the piece.”
“It would be easier without him.”
“To exclude him would strip the painting of its meaning.”
It’s like we’re standing in that imagined gallery, looking at the work together. Emerson’s voice is thick when he speaks. “What’s the meaning, little painter?”
“That the man isn’t a burden to the sea.” His hands press in again. A new stillness in his body feels like surprise, not panic. “The ocean is so deep and so wide that a man on his surfboard could never be too much.”
Sometimes you start with half a block.
I wonder if Emerson knows how little Sinclair minded walking next to him.
The next day, Emerson puts on his wetsuit. The day after that, he gets as far as zipping my coat. That night I have a soft tape measure delivered. When Emerson’s checking email in his office, I find a specialty store in the city and order a wetsuit.
It takes three more days to step outside the house.
“You don’t have to do this for me,” I tell Emerson two days after that, when he’s frozen on the sand, three steps beyond the retaining wall.
“It’s not just for you, little painter.” He tries to smile and fails. “If I lose this, I lose everything.”
Every day, we go to the edge of what his mind will allow, and then we go back inside.
I spend a lot of time in the gallery frame. I’m constantly weak in the knees. My hands are constantly tired from painting him. Emerson loves that more than anything—making me sex-drunk and then making me paint the feeling onto his body. In the evenings, I lay with my head in his lap, and he strokes my hair and watches me. The intensity never changes. But then—I wouldn’t want him to change.
We make it to the shore.
Emerson stands at the waves for almost half an hour before he shakes his head. “I can’t.”
“Just stay here for a minute.”
“What? Why?”
“Will you? For me.”
He frowns. “I’m staying out here, and you’re going in?”
“Only a minute,” I promise, and then I kiss him and go.
Emerson hasn’t moved when I come back out of the house. He’s nearly in the water, his board tucked under his arm. Oh—I have to paint this, too. Emerson, against the ocean. He’s so beautiful with the backdrop of the waves. I want to see him naked, with the backdrop of the sheets. I want it so much that I almost call him to come back inside.
I can be patient.
His brow furrows when he sees me, but the corners of his mouth don’t turn down. I run fast across the yard, skipping down the breakwall, and hit the sand. Embarrassment peaks. What’s he going to think of this?
When I reach him again, Emerson’s cheeks are tense, like the beginning of a smile. He looks my wetsuit up and down, the early morning light swimming in the blue and green of his eyes. He reaches out and tests the fabric between his fingers.
“This one is for winter,” he says. My memory sends up an echo of the cave. This one is for summer. There’s no scolding in Emerson’s voice now. Only curiosity. Only hope that he’s trying to hide.
“I got one for summer, too. I’m going with you.”
He arches an eyebrow. “You’re going to learn to surf today?”
