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She pushed him, flat hands slapping his chest. He caught them, bound them with his and watched her try not to laugh. “I was fucking gone on you the first time I kissed you. Outside your apartment in the middle of the street. Thought it was the night, the explosion, the fire, and later the hangover, or the blood loss, but I’m still hung up over you.” She looked at him with wild eyes. “You know this because I’ve told you in all the ways I know how to make it mean something. If you want to do the same, bring it the hell on. But you need words, so listen up. I want you. I need you. I put my life back in order because you were there with me. You’ll have to eat cold chicken now and I love you so fucking much I don’t care if you get your dream job, or if you never work again. You’re it for me. I’m done.”
It probably wasn’t the thought of cold chicken that made her cry.
26: Expectation
It had nothing going for it. Inert, scantly claiming three dimensions, colourless, bland, but that blank canvas could mock her like no boardroom full of hostiles ever had.
It sat on the easel in the bright summer light and mocked her. If it could sing it’d be Kelly Clarkson’s Since You’ve Been Gone.
Because Jacinta was having trouble breathing, trouble moving on. She couldn’t do this. She couldn’t function without a job and she couldn’t pick up a paintbrush without feeling panicked.
There was still nothing she could do about a job, unless she wanted to give up on her career aspirations and take any old thing, or start her own business. And she wasn’t ready for those options yet. What she should’ve been ready for was to stand at an easel and create something.
It wasn’t that hard. It used to be fun. She was sketching again and getting her skills back, but the blank page was an old friend reacquainted where the canvas was the lover she’d scorned and it was time she was an adult and they were civil to each other.
She went to the kitchen and made coffee in Mace’s French press. She was chasing a bonus in avoidance, not that it mattered if she spent the day doing absolutely nothing. No one was better off because she got out of bed this morning.
Christ. She might as well sit in the bath and slash her wrists now.
She took the coffee back to the room she thought of as the chamber of horrors. Mace called it the studio. Apart from moving her gear in two months ago, she’d avoided it altogether. It was more battlefield than workshop, where the loser was the one who couldn’t get comfortable amongst inanimate objects.
In contrast, she enjoyed the art classes. It was like being back at school. No one was expected to have mastered anything, and her classmates were an interesting collection of people, from Ingrid the bored retiree, to Alfie the pub circuit rock star.
They knew her as Cinta Worth, the name she’d signed up with, the name she’d scrawled tiny on the two etchings she’d had in the gallery window. Her hip, cool and anonymous artist’s name. Her shame given its own identity and signature. Because that’s what it was. Mace had called it when he’d stumbled into the room that first time. He’d meant it was a shame she’d given it up, but it was embarrassment and insecurity that made her give it up.
It wasn’t like Ingrid or Alfie or any of the teachers would’ve known her in her banking life, or cared if they did either. But it mattered to her. She’d gone from CEO designate to art student and it burned.
There was no reason to feel like she was game over, but she did. It was short-sighted and ridiculous, but there it was in the manipulation of her first name and the obscuring of her last. A lack of contact from headhunters, no emails or phone calls about jobs, reinforced it. She’d known to expect that, but somewhere deep inside she’d hoped it might be different for her and she’d be one of the lucky ones who went from one high profile job to another with next to no gap in her career timeline.
The hardcore reality that she was clay-footed; ordinary was like a disease. It ate at her, weakened her. She was nowhere near as strong a person, as resilient, as she’d thought, and far more arrogant than she liked.
Right now there was very little she liked about herself and only the time she spent in Mace’s arms didn’t drag on her with a weight of unrealised expectations. She only had to look into his eyes to know he loved her for all her failings, real and perceived.
Truly she needed to wake the hell up and kick those negative feelings out of this bed she’d made for herself. It was Malcolm in her ear, it was his values, the ones he’d foisted onto her mother she was internalising and they were dank, foul and rotten. Until she could face a canvas she was denying the part of her that was artistic, that was like her mother, and it was time for that to end.
It’s why she didn’t simply close the door and walk away from the chamber of horrors. It’s why she let the canvas terrorise her. But she was going to beat this, make herself a whole person again, if it meant she died of turps fumes in the process.
She picked up one of the new brushes Mace had arrived home with weeks ago and quietly installed in a blue glass vase on her workbench. She held the bristles and pointed the wooden handle at the canvas.
“You are an inanimate object. You have no power.” She closed her eyes. She felt like a right idiot. “You suck, canvas.” She stabbed the brush towards its pale face. “You are not the boss of me.” That felt sillier, but better.
She changed her stance; put her hand on her hip. “You think you’re so tough, sitting up there, on your pedestal. You want me to fail. You want me to come at you like I’m scared and screw things up again. You think I’ll give up, blow my cool and take a blade to you.” She touched the point of the brush handle to the canvas surface and lowered her voice. “You. Wish.”
She laughed. She was quite possibly losing her mind and when Mace got home from work he’d find her curled into a ball, rocking and chanting nonsense. She laughed again. The funny thing about that was he’d cope. That’s what he did. He coped with all the crap she put him through. He was the kid who’d coped with his mother walking in front of a bus, he was made of far tougher stuff than she was.
Two nights ago he’d come home to find her swearing at a pot of rice she’d upended on the floor. She’d managed to ruin three evening meals that week—three, when she’d had all day to get something edible together. Mace ignored her ranting, picked her up, threw her over his shoulder and took her to bed, without saying a single word, until he was deep buried inside her and then he told her how little he cared about dinner and how much he cared about her. And if that didn’t make him her heart, he cleaned up while she slept and woke her for takeaway Thai feast.
He was working split shifts, he was huddling with Dillon on Ipseity trying to resurrect it, and he was the only thing in her life that made sense. He kept their little home running with groceries and housework, competently, constantly without expectation of thanks or comment, and he slept every night with his arms around her, his hand at her hip or his knee tucked to the back of hers. The only disagreement they’d had was over the air-conditioning in the bedroom. He liked it cold so there was no excuse not to snuggle and every reason to warm each other up.
“I am all over you, canvas. I will take you down.”
She’d do it because it was a strike at Malcolm. She’d do it because Mace had faith and he never asked anything of her, and she’d do it to prove to herself she was more than a corporate animal.
And if it worked, if she could paint that canvas into submission, she might find her soul.
She turned the brush around and riffled its bristles with a fingernail and the next thing she was aware of was Mace’s lips pressed to the back of her neck.
She put her hand up to his head. “What time is it?” It was still light, but he was home so it had to be after five.
