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EMERSON
It takes several hours to convince my brother that no one is on the verge of death or a breakdown. When I walk him to the door, he stands in the threshold, somehow managing to communicate his irritating concern using only his eyes.
“It’ll be fine,” I tell him, and push him out.
“If you don’t call me—”
“Don’t be so needy.”
I can hear him cursing on the other side of the door as I lock it.
My pulse ratchets up, just like it did when we entered that cave. Except I’m not in a fucking cave anymore. I’m in my house. Daphne is with me, but it feels charged and tenuous. I don’t know what happens now. I had no choice but to leave her with Sin while I pulled the threads of my sanity together again.
God knows what he said.
When I turn back to her, she’s standing in a shaft of light from the dining room. Sunlight settled on her hair. It glitters and shines, warming the air. My hallway has never been more beautiful and more meaningless at the same time. It’s only a backdrop for her. There is no such thing as distant pain, looking at Daphne. It’s all through my ribcage. It’s everywhere.
I can’t hold it at arm’s length. My mind overlays brush strokes over her, but it can’t quite maintain the illusion. She’s too real for all that.
Catchlights in her eyes. Rosy cheeks. Pink lips. Daphne wears a white sweater and navy leggings. She cradles a mug of tea in her hands. I note these things the way I do all the details about her, but I am arrested by her face.
I cannot name the emotion in my little painter’s eyes.
Daphne’s lips part. “I want to talk to you.”
“Then talk, little painter.”
She shakes her head. “Where’s the best place? Your favorite, I mean.”
“Anywhere.” Daphne pinches her lips shut. This is a learned gesture, I think. From someone else. She doesn’t usually do stony silences. I spent time making the rooms in my house comfortable, since I’m always here. We could go any number of places. But right now… “The bedroom.”
“Yours or mine?”
“Mine.”
She follows me up the stairs.
I am wretchedly, foolishly uncomfortable.
Daphne doesn’t comment when I close the bedroom door and lock it, then do the same for the studio doors. She just waits. There’s no impatience in the air around her.
“Okay,” she says, when I’m finished with all the doors. “Where do you want to sit?”
“Are we having an interview?”
“We’re having a conversation, Emerson. Also, I’m tired.”
She slept most of the night, but it can’t have been restful. It was cold as fuck in that cave. A gallery in my mind fills with the things I want. With her, not from her. In this moment it’s not so simple as hiding them in innuendo or games. We’re both too stripped down for that. Every breath I take is edged with a strange, glancing pain. My house is where I have the most control, and it feels worthless. That damned board slips from my hands again.
All I have is her, and I’m not even certain I have that.
I’m frozen in the face of this possibility. This uncertainty. Light spills in from the window and casts shadows across Daphne’s face. The depths of her dark eyes grow deeper. More mysterious. They invite a search. And I try. I fucking try. But I can’t extrapolate the future from her expression now.
It doesn’t feel silent. There’s something between us, or else I’ve fully broken with reality. A current in the air.
A canvas.
A brush.
