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Me:Hazelnut, obviously.
Ryan:Oooh, wrong answer. The reply we were looking for was Italian Sweet Cream. The judges have decided you will now sleep in the shed.
I laugh out loud in the middle of the lobby, and my laughter echoes around the cavernous, empty room as I keep walking. My footsteps are a little lighter, and a little more stress leaves me at his mention of a shed. I know damn well my brother wouldn’t even think about asking a potential roommate if they had a place I could use as a studio.
Just like my parents, he pretends my art is a bad fever dream he’ll wake up from soon. It’s never mentioned out loud unless I’m being made fun of or being put down for it. I didn’t want to be pushy with this guy and ask him for yet another room to use at his place when I’d already be borrowing a bedroom, but I’m about to start climbing the walls if I can’t get what’s in my head out onto a canvas soon. A shed sounds like the perfect place to be alone, blast my music, and lose myself in my work, without worrying about a little paint getting on anything or waking anyone up in the middle of the night when inspiration strikes.
My body suddenly slams into a wall, and my phone and all of my canvases go tumbling to the floor.
“Oh my God, I am so sorry!”
Okay, not a wall but another person.
The fifty-something-year-old woman I just crashed into quickly squats down with me to help me pick up what I dropped.
“It was my fault,” I tell her, grabbing my phone as she starts stacking the five canvases. “I was looking at a text and not paying attention to where I was going.”
“Wow… these areamazing!”
I feel a blush heat my cheeks, and I dip my head, mumbling out a quiet “thanks” as we both stand back up, while she continues to hold all my paintings in her hands, staring down at the one on top. I’ve been drawing and painting for as long as I can remember. Hiding it from everyone after the first time my parents turned their noses up at something I created that I was so proud of and couldn’t wait to show them. Now that I’ve started selling my art and sharing it with everyone, it’s scary as hell. I still don’t take compliments very well, and I don’t know if I ever will. I am my own worst critic after a lifetime of being told that my art is a waste of time and embarrassing and will never get me anywhere in life.
“I’m serious. They’re so colorful, and eye-catching, and imaginative! My goodness, the amount of creativity you have is just amazing. Are any of these for sale? Ihaveto have one to hang in our living room. How much? Do you take cash or card? Oooh, do you like ice cream? I can even throw in a few pints to entice you into saying yes and letting me buy one.”
The woman’s excitement is infectious, making some of my shyness over her compliments disappear. And the speed in which she talks makes me chuckle, and I can barely keep up.
“My name’s Laura Bennett, by the way.”
“Tins—I mean, Danica Brewster,” I introduce myself, holding out my hand.
“Oh, I’m a hugger, Tins-Danica Brewster.” Laura laughs softly with a big, warm smile, setting the canvases down on the sofa table next to us.
Then she swats my hand out of the way and yanks me into a hug. My arms remain down at my sides, wondering why in the hell I’m letting a stranger hug me. I don’t do hugs. I barely do handshakes. I’ll stick my tongue down someone’s throat for free pizza, but I draw the line at a warm embrace. This woman is kind, and friendly, and her hug feels really nice though. I imagine this is what it’s like to get a hug from a mother who actually loves and cares about you.
I quickly pull out of her hug before I do something stupid, like get emotional.
“Tinsley is actually my real first name,” I explain the slip-up. “But I hate it. I go by my middle name now. You can just call me Danny. All my friends call me Danny.”
I have no idea why I said that. I don’t have any friends. Not anymore. And they sure as hell would have never called me Danny, even if I asked them to. It would have been too basic and boyish for them.
“Well then, Danny it is.” Laura smiles at me. I wonder if this woman is evernotsmiling. “So, how much for this one? Ihaveto have it.”
She grabs the top canvas from the sofa table, and my heart races, watching her look down at it in admiration. It’s one of my favorites, with a silhouette of the back of two little girls sitting together on a swing. Splashes of color surround them, with the wordsLove is all we needwritten like graffiti above them. Showing your art to someone is what I imagine it feels like when you show someone your new baby for the first time. You want them to love it and appreciate it as much as you do, but that doesn’t always happen. Sometimes, some people will just think you have an ugly baby.
“Um, I don’t know… maybe… like… fifty dollars?”
I still haven’t gotten the hang of what I should price my paintings. I change my mind almost every day, along with the prices on my website. Too small of an amount, and I won’t break even on the supplies I had to buy and the cost of shipping it to a customer. Too large of an amount, and people will laugh in my face, and I’ll never make another sale again.
Laura just raises one eyebrow at my suggestion, so I quickly give her another one.
“Forty?”
She clicks her tongue at me and shakes her head, setting the painting back down to dig her hand into her purse hanging off one shoulder. If I go any lower, that won’t even cover the cost of two tubes of paint. And on this canvas alone, I used ten different colors, plus two cans of spray paint, not to mention the amount of time it took to create.
“You know, whatever you think is fair,” I quickly tell her with a shrug, fiddling with the bangle bracelets on my arm. An uncomfortable laugh comes out of me as I try to make a joke to fill the silence. “My parents always said no one would pay good money for something that looks like a toddler painted it.”
Oh my God, you suck at this! Now she’ll just want it for free.
Laura pulls a wad of cash out of her purse, grabs my hand hanging down by my side, flips it over, and sets the money in my palm. My eyes widen as I look down at all the twenty-dollar bills and try to quickly calculate in my head just how much she’s given me. It’s easily over $200.
