“I’m fine, thanks. So do you want to cut in or roll?”
Neither. But he didn’t want to sound like a lazy shit so he told her, “You pick. I’m fine with either one.”
“Okay. I’ll roll.” She went over to the paint can and pried the lid off.
Brady went back to taping off the window. “Do you want me to turn the music off?”
“No, I love metal.”
Say what? How many ways could this woman surprise him? “For real?”
“Yeah. I’m dying to go see the Big Three—Slayer, Metallica, and Megadeth—but they never come anywhere around here.”
Brady was amused. Piper was his kind of chick.
“Plus, I’m not sure I could talk Cameron into going with me anyway.”
Hold up. “Who is Cameron?”
“My best friend. He lives in Cincinnati now. Other than my family and work friends, he’s really the only one I would want to do something like that with.” Piper poured the paint into the tray.
There was a stabbing pain in his chest that Brady suspected was jealousy. It scared the hell out of him. “Your best friend’s a guy? Did you two ever date?” He meant it to sound casual, but it just sounded annoyed.
“No. I would never date Cam, and he does not want to date me. We’re totally different. But our friendship works well. He moved here in middle school and he’s Jewish, and while this isn’t exactly the Bible Belt, a Jew is a rarity. So we were a couple of misfits who found each other.”
Brady felt better about the whole thing. Not that Piper and Cameron had been outcasts by mean kids’ stupid parameters, but because it didn’t sound like he had competition. “It’s good to have someone in your life who has known you a long time. I didn’t really stay in touch with anyone.” Nor was he sure why. Maybe because as the years had ticked by, Brady hadn’t wanted anyone back home to know he was an art school failure.
Picking up a brush, he dipped it in the paint. It wasn’t the same as painting as an artist. The brush was huge, the paint quantity enormous, but just the smell, the sound of his brush moving on the wall, raised a fair amount of melancholy in him. It was a raw deal to get just enough talent to have a dream, but not enough to be successful at it.
It also sucked that he couldn’t offer to take Piper to see the Big Three. But he’d need to rob a bank to take her on a trip. That was seriously depressing.
“My mom always says she thought Cam and I would end up together, but she just doesn’t get that if there isn’t an attraction, there isn’t an attraction. You can’t create that, and we’ve had enough time now to see it’s not going to just appear like magic.” Piper was rolling away and wasn’t looking at him.
Which was good because Brady suspected he looked like a bratty kid. He was jealous. It was insane. Nothing that she was saying was anything other than what it was—she telling him that her friendship was strictly platonic. Yet all he could think was that he wouldn’t mind if Cameron fell off a bridge.
“Attraction is a funny thing.” He went back for more paint. “Like for example, the fact that I’m attracted to you even though it’s not a good idea. I can’t seem to stop it.” Brady told himself to shut up but he couldn’t stop the flood of words. He wanted—no, needed—to hear that she was just as interested in him as he was in her. “I know I should let you end this because this is your home and I don’t want to cause trouble for you, but damn it, Piper, I can’t.”
Oh, God, what was he doing? Brady dropped his brush in anger. Now he was just being an ass. He was disgusted with himself. She was trying to do the right thing and he was pressuring her.
When Piper turned, her face was stricken. “I know. I can’t really stop it either. I don’t want to disappoint my parents, but I . . .”
The light from the living room window streamed over her face and her eyes were enormous, filled with an emotion he couldn’t quite place. She looked beautiful. The most beautiful woman he’d ever met, her beauty so real and here and now, yet at the same time so otherworldly. Dust motes danced in the sunbeam, her skin fresh and pink, her shadow cast back onto the wall behind her.
He swallowed hard. “You what?” he asked hoarsely.
“I just want to spend every minute I can with you,” she whispered.
Something in his chest swelled. He wasn’t even sure he could speak. His fingers itched, his feelings consuming him. There was something about the way she stood, the play of light, what was passing between them, that made him want to capture the moment. He wanted to preserve her beauty, he wanted to share how he felt, what he saw. How when he looked at her, she was nothing but perfection, the rare person who was beautiful inside and out.
Frantic, he looked around the floor. He needed a pencil. A small brush. Something, anything. There was nothing but the wall paint supplies, and that wasn’t going to work. He spotted Piper’s purse and he went in it, the urgent need to sketch compelling him to do what he normally wouldn’t, like ransack someone’s private space.
“What . . .” she started to speak in confusion.
Brady found a pen at the bottom and a nubby pencil. With both, he’d make it work. “Don’t move.”
“Brady, what are you . . .”
He chose a spot on the wall, between the doorway and the window, just a few feet from her, and he drew his first line, starting with the shape of her face. The sense of relief he felt was catastrophic. He hadn’t realized how much he had missed drawing, and he took a deep, shuddering breath. When he looked over at her, he saw that she understood. Her confusion had been replaced with sympathy, and maybe, some relief of her own.
“Don’t move,” he repeated.
“I’m not going anywhere,” she said quietly.
It was exactly what he needed to hear. His hand moved quickly, capturing the shape of her head, the graceful arch of her neck. As the minutes passed and her image appeared before him, confident and flawless, Brady felt a mix of elation and arousal. Appreciation. And something that he was finally willing to label. He didn’t understand it, didn’t know how it was possible after such a short time, but given that he’d never felt it before, he knew exactly what it was.
There was no denying it.
“Piper.”
“Yes?”
Glancing back between her and his sketch, he tried to emulate the soft flow of her wavy hair, wishing he had acrylics to really capture the subtlety of colors in it. “I’m not going back to Chicago.”