by Pratt, Lulu
These were heavy thoughts for a simple park bench. I needed to take a walk. Maybe a run.
Yes, a run. That was it. I’d go to the gym and sweat out all this indecision, hit the treadmill until I was red in the face, doubled over and absolutely unable to pose such daunting questions to myself. I just needed to work more and think less.
I rose to my feet and walked briskly off the property.
CHAPTER 12
Chloe
THE PAINTING, though relatively small, seemed to tower over me like a skyscraper, filling my vision with muted tones of red, blue and green, primaries and secondaries that mixed together into something altogether unexpected.
Over the past few days of slow, methodical restoration, I’d come to love the piece as though it were a friend. Or, rather, the main figure in the piece as a friend. The girl herself, the one who held the wilted flower. Perhaps the paint fumes were driving me mad, but I suspected we had far more in common than either of us cared to admit. Something about the way her eyes looked out onto the courtyard… We would’ve been pals, I thought to myself, letting out a little giggle. I could just imagine us splitting a margarita and dishing on our lives.
Okay, yeah, it was very possible I was losing my mind.
But after hours and hours spent alone in a glass cage in a basement, can you blame me?
Not that I was complaining. It really was the opportunity of a lifetime. Now all I had to do was not fuck it up. Easy enough, right?
Suddenly, there was a knock on the glass.
I jumped so high the wisps of hair atop my head nearly brushed the ceiling, and in the same breath, let out an enormous shriek. Thank God I hadn’t been touching the painting. I may well have put another hole through it, thus destroying both a masterpiece and my career. At least it would’ve been good symbolism. The thought somehow bubbled up in my brain like a triangular side in a Magic 8-Ball, though in this case, the fluid buoying it was sheer terror.
With a hand on my chest to steady my breathing, I slowly turned around.
“Whoa, whoa, I didn’t mean to startle you.”
Xavier was standing outside the cube, looking at me with concern. At my silence, he explained, “When I asked upstairs, they told me you would be down here.”
Finally, I managed to catch my breath — maybe in part because I didn’t want to look like such a scaredy cat in front of Xavier. I reminded myself, it doesn’t matter what he thinks of me. We weren’t going to be lovers, because he had an impending fiancée. And people with our kind of connection couldn’t just be friends. So, in other words, he was now no one to me.
Or that’s what I was telling myself, anyway. There’s nothing so laughable as the complex lies we tell ourselves to avoid simple truths.
“I have the reference photos,” Xavier said, holding up a sheaf of paper. “For the painting.”
He raised an eyebrow, waving the papers back and forth.
Oh, right. I had to speak words back to him. Duh.
“That’s great, thank you,” I managed. “I’ll be out in a sec.”
With my back to Xavier, I closed the lids on my various preservation liquids, trying to keep my hands from shaking.
It was ironic, really. I’d spent most of my life being the Cool Girl — the unflappable one who darted in and out of relationships of every sort in the twinkle of an eye. I partied, I laughed, I danced. I was untouchable. And then came Xavier.
Once the lids were closed, I took a deep breath. One of my professors had often reminded us that it was inadvisable to breathe deeply in such a small space while chemicals were open. There. That was better. That little burst of oxygen had given me some composure.
I turned back to Xavier, nodded with an ease I didn’t feel, and exited the cube.
“Hey there,” I said, then added with a laugh, “you scared me.”
We were in the space between the cube and the rest of the room. The cube was nested within a slightly larger square room, like the hedge shapes in a labyrinth. My back was against the glass, but still — Xavier was too close for comfort. Or rather, it was too comfortable, too familiar. I felt a bead of sweat drip down my shoulder blades, probably fogging up the glass behind me.
“Sorry,” he apologized. “I really didn’t mean to. They said people walked in and out of here all the time.”
“It’s not your fault I’m so jumpy. I think I’m just, I dunno. On edge.”
“You used to love scary movies.” His eyes glazed over, as if drifting involuntarily back to the past. “The old stuff. Candyman, that sort of thing. B horror movies.”
“How do you remember that?” I laughed around the edges of the question, trying to make it a joke, but we both knew it was sincere.
“I remember so much about you, Chloe. All my other memories of that time are kind of jumbled, y’know, with alcohol and stress and sleeplessness. But my time with you… well, that’s as clear as day.”
The bead of sweat had migrated down my spine, flowing down to my ass. The cold shock of the fluid made me start a little. Or maybe I was just reacting to the look on Xavier’s face. One of deep, primal hunger. His brown eyes bore into mine, quietly expectant beneath half-closed lids. Although his free hand was casually tucked in a pocket and his weight was shifted, resting easily on the left leg, I could tell that the posture was just that — a posture. He and I both would rather he was using those hands in, ah, different ways.
“Anyway, here are the photos,” he said, making me realize I’d been silent since he spoke of the horror movies.
He held out the stack of paper, and I fumbled to take them in my hand.
“Right, right, sorry,” I muttered. “Thank you. I was just thinking about something.”
“About what?” he asked. His voice suggested friendly interest, but I thought I detected an edge of thirst beneath the casual front.
“Remember that time we watched Killer Klowns From Outer Space?”
Xavier let out a loud chuckle. “Of course. All that candy—”
“We laughed for two hours straight—”
“—Until the RA finally had to tell us to keep it down,” Xavier finished.
Xavier and I chortled at the memory. “Those were good times.”
He nodded. “The best. Do you still watch those crappy movies?”
“Eh, not really. They’re not fun when you don’t have the right person to watch them with.”
“Well,” Xavier replied in a low voice, his chest rising and falling, “maybe we could see one together again.”
I raised my chin to meet his eyes. “Really?”
“Yeah, why not?” He leaned ever so slightly forward, his body towering above me. “I mean, friends see movies together, right?”
“Right. Friends.”
For ‘friends,’ our bodies were awfully close. In fact, one little movement forward and our lips would be touching. My every muscle tensed with anticipation. So what, he had a would-be fiancée? So what, he’d made it clear this wouldn’t happen? That had all been a civilized front. This was the wild, complicated truth. That we needed to fuck, and we needed to do it now.
Xavier’s voice grew ragged. “So, is it a date?”
I ignored his words. They were just a carrier for his voice, which were electric with energy. Our mouths were moving closer and closer together, as if pulled by an invisible string. We were going to throw all earthly cares to the wind, say ‘fuck it’ and, well, fuck.
And right about then the door banged open.
We jumped so far apart that Xavier and I ended in nearly opposite corners of the tiny room.
At the door was Mx. Tok, implacable as ever. Could she not see the red in both our cheeks, smell the scent of pheromones in the air?
Apparently not. Or perhaps she’d worked in the art world for so long that she was no longer bothered by people in heat.
“Hello, sir,” she said to Xavier with a nod of the head. Her eyes darted my way. “Chloe.”
I bobbed a greeting, a half-curt
sy I still couldn’t shake when I was around her. “Hi, Mx. Tok. Is there anything I can help you with?”
She puckered her lips, eyes running over my face. Yes, she could see what she’d interrupted. Her mouth curled into a small smile which was gone as soon as it had appeared.
“Apologies for interrupting your… work,” she said. “You must be busy down here.”
“I was just bringing Chloe the reference photos,” Xavier added hastily, perhaps trying to protect me from any punishment.
“Naturally,” Mx. Tok agreed. “Anyhow, Chloe. I’ve come to let you know that Alexandra is officially on leave.”
Oh, that was a surprise. While Alexandra had declared her intention for early pregnancy leave a couple weeks back, she’d stayed on to help with my transition, as well as the acquisition of the Gentileschi pieces. If she was finally on leave, then…
“You’re in charge of the Gentileschi donation. You’ll be the main point person for the estate.” She inclined her head to Xavier and added, “If your family approves of her, of course. We want you to feel that your contribution is in the best of hands.”
“We approve,” Xavier said in a low voice, his eyes glued to mine. “We approve whole-heartedly.”
Were we still talking about the art?
“Very well,” Mx. Tok continued. “Then it’s settled. You two will be seeing an awful lot of each other.”
She let out the smallest of laughs, in what had to be the first expression of real amusement I had seen from her otherwise stony façade. Well, at least someone was getting a good laugh out of Xavier’s and my predicament.
“Ta,” she said, and breezed out of the room.
The door shut behind her, and Xavier and I were once again alone, staring at each other with confusion, and yeah, lust.
Great. What now?
CHAPTER 13
Xavier
I RAN MY fingers through my hair.
Well, this had all gotten just a little more complicated.
Chloe was standing before me, looking as cute as ever — and more than a bit distressed — wearing slouchy jeans, a cream-colored turtleneck and a simple gold chain around her neck. She was the picture of an artist at work. I wanted to whisk her off to Paris, kiss her in front of the Eiffel Tower, eat baguettes and drink wine on the Seine.
Instead, I said softly, “So.”
“So,” she replied.
I mustered up a courage I didn’t feel, just enough to say, “Chloe, if we’re going to be working together this much…”
“Yeah?”
“We should be friends,” I finished, coming up with the best solution I could. “I don’t want any… history between us to impact your work. This is a big opportunity for you.”
She nodded her head. Neither of us were convinced by my words, but hey, we had to start somewhere.
“Friends,” she agreed with a smile that put dimples in her rosy cheeks. “Sounds good to me. What do friends do?”
You mean, as opposed to almost fucking in a museum? I thought wryly.
“Well, maybe you could show me that new exhibit upstairs,” I suggested. “I saw it on the way in.”
“Oh, yeah, it’s an acquisition of avant-garde female artists from the mid twentieth century. It’s great, actually. Of course I’d be happy to show you around.”
“Cool.”
I stepped to the door and twisted the handle, holding it open for Chloe.
“Lead the way.”
In no time, we were upstairs, rounding corner after corner. If I hadn’t known Comino as a child, I doubted I’d ever be able to navigate around it without getting lost. Its walls seemed to be in a constant state of flux, never quite pinned to the ground. I learned in my teens that this wasn’t just a Harry Potter-like impression — Comino Gallery did, in fact, have moving walls that they adjusted based on the flow of an exhibit.
Chloe strode ahead of me, long blonde ponytail bobbing against the neck of her sweater. I remembered wrapping that ponytail around my hand while I’d taken her from behind—
Enough, I cut myself off viciously. No more of that.
We were going to be friends. That had been my suggestion, so now it was my responsibility. We’d keep it casual, simple. If I thought about things like wild fucking and hair-pulling, the friendship would be unsustainable.
“Here we are,” Chloe said, just as I was beginning to doubt my resolution.
She’d come to a stop in front of a jarringly green piece of work, one whose shades made me recoil but then, upon closer inspection, lean in.
Chloe began to explain the work with excitement so palpable that it made me excited, too. She was clearly interested in art from this era, and I couldn’t blame her. While the painting made me uncomfortable, I was excited by the sheer fact that it had provoked such an immediate reaction in me. Not all art is capable of making you feel anything.
“It’s beautiful,” I murmured.
“No. It’s… jarring.” Chloe smiled and bit her lip. “Which is even better.”
“Yes, that’s exactly what I meant to say.”
She could read my mind better than I could.
I felt that familiar tingle of heat spread up the back of my neck, and I viciously wished it away. This was a nice, normal interaction for friends. I couldn’t let my rampant desire for Chloe mess that up. We were going to spend months working together for this exhibition. If we gave into our dark desires, then that relationship would be impossible.
So… what do friends talk about?
“Tell me more about Italy,” I said as Chloe strode from one painting to the next. “What was it like?”
“Oh, you know. Marvelous. A corner café beneath my little apartment where I got an espresso every morning, hidden palazzos where instrumental trios would play traditional Italian folk tunes, the best gelato you’ve ever tasted.” She sighed and added, “As much as I missed New York, I loved traveling. It was so, so…”
“Romantic?”
Her green eyes caught mine and sparkled with subtext. “Yeah. That.”
“And did you find any there? Romance, that is?”
Shit. The question was out of my mouth before I could stop it. But I was just so damn curious! Had there been another man, and if so, was he still in the picture? In fairness, friends ask each other these types of questions.
Or at least, that was the story I’d decided to tell myself, and it was a very appealing one, seeing as it let me off the hook entirely.
Chloe put a ring-covered hand over her mouth, the faux emeralds reflecting off her cheeks and making those eyes seem all the greener. Was she hiding a smile? Or disappointment?
“No, I didn’t,” she answered finally as we stopped in front of a vast abstract landscape that was almost twice my height. “I think I was so busy falling in love with the city that I didn’t bother to fall in love with another person. Anyway, it turned out that celibacy did me good. Kind of cleared my head.”
Celibacy. Didn’t bother to fall in love with another person.
Her words ran through my mind like ticker tape, repeating over and over until the edges frayed.
So there wasn’t another man in the picture. Hm. Interesting. Ahem. Not that I was in a position to act on this information. It was just… good to know.
“How about you?” Chloe said, ripping my mental ticker tape asunder. “I’ve told you so much about me recently, but I don’t know anything about your post-college life. Tell me everything.”
I looked around for a seat, and found a bench a few feet behind me. Galleries were excellent at knowing exactly where in an exhibit patrons would get tired.
“Let’s sit,” I told Chloe, leading the way to the bench.
She followed faithfully, easing down onto the simple wooden plank and tucking one foot beneath a thigh. Chloe was always curled, or nestled, crossing legs and cradling herself. It was like she made her body into a piece of art that suited whatever pedestal it was deposited upon.
“After college, I
stayed in New York,” I began. “I moved into a dingy apartment with a few friends and almost no furniture.”
She snorted loudly, the sound echoing off the high walls. “I somehow find that hard to imagine.”
“It’s the truth. I was obstinate about not taking financial support from my family. I knew my father would never respect me if I was just some kind of leech, sucking up our funds without showing any real progress to making a name for myself. So, I went to work at Eureka, starting in the mail room the summer after we broke up.”
“The mail room?” Chloe questioned, skeptical. “No way.”
“Yup. My dad wanted me to learn the business, but he says — and I agree — that to understand a company, you have to sniff it out from the ground up. I thought about working somewhere else at first, like a coffee shop, somewhere simple where I could prove my total independence, but I knew that I couldn’t waste time learning another trade when I was already planning on taking over the family business sometime in the future.”
“That makes sense.”
“Still, I didn’t feel great about taking my father’s money, even if it was in a roundabout kind of way. Anyhow, I don’t mean to complain. So I worked my way up from the mailroom to my job now, where I’m sort of shadowing my dad’s daily tasks and planning for the eventual transition.”
Chloe whistled through her teeth. “Damn. That’s a lot of responsibility.”
“Maybe,” I shrugged, lost in thought. “But it’s been twenty-something years in the making for me. My whole life has, really. I knew that I’d go to college, graduate, follow in my father’s footsteps, get engaged to Rebecca and—”
I broke off, realizing what I’d just said. Chloe’s face had darkened dramatically, as though a storm cloud had just passed above the skylights of the gallery and landed right above her face. God, why did I always put my foot in my mouth? Chloe was just trying to be kind, to ask me about my life and here I was, once again reminding her of all the reasons I’d picked another woman. I was a monster.
