by Mia Miller
Neither could I. There were times when she seemed shallow and self-absorbed and then there were time she seemed thoughtful. I wasn’t sure which one was her genuine side, but if I had to guess, it was the latter.
“You can’t stop thinking about him, can you?”
“I wish it were that easy, but even if I could, I’m not sure I would want to. There is this magnetic air hanging between him and me. There always has been. When he walks into a room, I can’t look away. We’ve always been like a moth to a flame, you know?”
Kayla lifted her eyes to me, and then something behind me caught and held her attention. She opened her mouth but closed it before saying anything.
I felt it again. Something akin to an electric current near my back. I lifted my own eyes and, sure enough, Oscar was standing behind me, an eyebrow cocked and a smirk I wanted to wipe off on his face. His gorgeous, beautiful face.
“Which one am I?” he asked, and his voice stabbed through me.
“What do you want, Red?” my voice was more disinterred than anything else, and I was mentally high-fiving myself for the composure I was showing.
He grabbed the back of the chair next to me and turned it so he could straddle it. I watched his leisurely, unhurried movements, his long leg going over the chair, his fingers gripping the back as he sat.
“Um . . .” Kayla cleared her throat as her eyes danced between us while she gathered her stuff and stood. “I have to get up early for a recital, so we’ll need to catch up tomorrow.”
“Traitor,” I mumbled and returned to Oscar.
“Can I help you with something?”
My voice reverberated around the room that had become almost empty. I felt cold and hot at the same time, as if someone had put me into a sauna and then threw ice on me. There came that lopsided grin.
“I was wondering when I would see her again.”
“See who?”
“That brave girl I met at camp. I was wondering what happened to her,” he mused, his fingers strumming impatiently against the back of the chair. “When I first laid my eyes on you, you were yelling at boys who were larger than you and who didn’t know any better than to throw stones at us. Back in the Silver Building, you ran into me and the cats had your tongue ever since.”
“Cat does not have my tongue,” I countered meekly. “You’re just too damn confusing!”
“How so?”
“How so? You hurt my heart and then you hurt my head. You don’t write and you pretend you don’t know me. Then you act as if you’ve known me for a lifetime. Then you push me away. Then you nearly make out with my roommate right in front of—”
“That didn’t happen.” His fingers stopped strumming the chair and tentatively touched my arm. One-two . . . one-two, he played a beat I didn’t recognize on my skin. “And are you jealous?”
I scoffed. “No!” Yes.
“Tell me, Dellie? Which am I? The moth or the flame? Which one of us is going to get burned?”
Me.
“You,” I answered spitefully.
It was his turn to scoff.
“I’m curious, little moth,” he said, offering me his answer on the state of things between us. “Why did you break your promise?”
“What promise?” I blurted, withdrawing my hand from his touch and getting ready to flee.
“That day in the forest? You promised you would always love me?”
I felt a wave of nausea almost knock me off my feet.
“You’re kidding, right? What about your promise? What about you saying you’d never forget about me?”
His jaw worked for a while, his eyes clouded. Not being able to bear the silence any longer, I stood and started toward the door.
“I guess those people are both forgotten,” he concluded.
“I guess so.”
Chapter Eight
Delia
Then
The night when they announced the music competition, I put on the prettiest dress I had with me and sat in the first row, listening to him play. He was the on the stage, but I was the one who trembled like a leaf as his fingers moved to play the first chords of “Paparazzi.”
It wasn’t the version they played on the radio—no he slowed it down a lot and turned it into more of a melody instead of a pop song. I’d never heard live piano played before, and the way his fingers moved over the keys was mesmerizing. I thought he was the most talented friend I had. Then he added his voice to the keystrokes, and his tone simply commanded the whole room. My whole body broke out in goose bumps, and my heart was raced to escape my chest. From the corners of my eyes, I looked to the people around me, and almost all of the kids had their mouths open in admiration. Behind me, someone whispered about what an old soul he was and how his execution was flawless.
I decided that his musical ability was just as brilliant as his mind.
***
After he’d dazzled everyone with “Paparazzi”, Oscar sang just for me. He pulled me away from the rest of the kids during a scavenger hunt.
“I have a surprise for you,” he murmured and closed his eyes.
He opened his mouth and after just a few notes, I was hooked. It was raw, hearing his voice without any backup or instruments accompanying it. The emotion was laid bare; all the kinks and cusps of the song wrapped around us like a shroud. It was all the more sacred, when he sang it with just me as an audience. No pretenses, no competing for attention. It was all the more special because he confessed that was the first melody he’d written by himself. If whatever existed between us were a painting, I would have colored the air in a sharp, vibrant blue shade of forget-me-nots.
Chapter Nine
Delia
Now
I had no idea art teachers would be so brutal. My one and only drawing tutor throughout all my formative years had been an elderly painter who was rich with knowledge but mild in tongue when it came to giving feedback. Maybe she had spared my feelings a little too much.
If she hadn’t, maybe the instructor for Color Theory wouldn’t have been so shocking. The teacher looked like a quirky savant, and I offered her my widest smile when she signaled for our attention.
“I'm here to prove to you that everything you know about colors and their combinations is wrong or at the very best mediocre,” Ms. Lacy said and got back a lot of snickering from the class.
My instinctive response to that statement was to try to prove her wrong. I spent a great deal of the following two hours laying supplies on the floor, looking at palettes, and going through the first year’s syllabus. Each time the teacher stopped in her rounds and scoffed at my answers to her questions, I died a little on the inside.
By the time I got to the second class of the day, my morale was hovering around rock bottom. Things could only look upward, right? It was incredibly naïve of me to think. Anton, my professor, was a resonant name in the East Coast artistic world, having won numerous grants and awards, including some titles for his acrylic works within Tribeca Festival. He was a big deal and I was hungry for a mentor.
He was scrawny, but moved with the grace of a feline. His brown hair fell sleek over more than half of his face, in a long, oblique fringe that didn’t allow for age guessing. I smirked a little on the inside, thinking that Dalton would approve of his clothing choices, seeing as he wore an embroidered blazer. But only on the inside – as my outside was too focused on having my hands stop from shaking.
The introductory email had said Anton would want to look at our extended portfolios, and I had come prepared. Thus, while he was whispering critique to my fellow students, I made quick work of arranging the works I’d brought for his scrutiny in a hierarchy of mastery, ranging from more simple techniques I had used to the most complex ones. I smiled in the general direction of the easel, where I had ordered my work in a certain fashion, quite pleased with myself.
When the girl closest to me started crying over what Anton was saying, he shook his head, and then raised his voice loud enough for the class to
hear.
“I don’t know what you thought, but I'm not here to hold your hand. By the end of this semester, you're going to have been asked what you're going to do with you lives so many times you'll already want to quit—so don't put that on me.”
I cringed as his attention left the crying girl and landed on my work. His brows were already furrowed when he started taking inventory of what I had in my catalog. It was a good rendition of horses running, something I’d spent months studying how to portray. He lifted the paper as if it were a cockroach.
“If you don’t bleed for your art, is it even art?” he asked and laid the paper on the ground.
On. The. Ground.
I tried to quiet the boiling blood in my temples so I could actually hear him.
Next came a self-portrait. A fantastic scene. An abstract piece. He scrunched his nose and laid that paper on the floor as well. The next painting joined the first two . . . as did the next and the one after it. I looked at my works as they fell, heavy like the tears on my classmate’s cheeks. I was pretty sure my vocal cords had dissolved in the acid I felt in my throat because I couldn’t form words.
“You have no muse,” he said, quizzically. “No muse and no guts. How can you live without guts, Miss?”
“Buchanan,” I offered and shook my head in an unintelligent manner that I was sure would haunt me for days.
He’d reached the final few of the works I had brought to show him and stopped at a sunset scene. I rarely painted nature, but that one time we were at the beach and there was a storm brewing on the horizon. The sky was red, and the air was thick with sand carried in the wind. The mustard-like quality of it, mixed with the appearance of the clouds, gave a reddish tinge to everything. It had made me think of Oscar and of all the questions I had about how he looked as an adult. Therefore, my painting represented a stand of sand, a narrow patch of water, and a vast array of pink and red clouds. However, when you looked closely, you could see the haunting, possessive, tormenting yellow eyes I’d hidden in almost every cloud.
Anton snapped his fingers repeatedly near my face, making me blink.
“Okay, Buchanan! Maybe you aren’t a lost cause after all. Come see me for directions at my studio when you have a free afternoon.”
***
Anton didn’t care that we all had other classes. He’d given us different themes to choose from and had made sure we had work enough for twelve paintings that were due in eight days.
If I stopped eating, sleeping, and showering, I might be able to accomplish it.
In my desperation to calculate my schedule for the following days, I paid little attention to the waves of people passing me from the opposite direction as I strode from the subway exit and into the rain. It was unusually warm for the time of year, and I guessed that was one thing to be grateful for during that day—my teeth not chattering while I made a run for Brittany Hall.
There always was something about rain that diminished the intellect of humans a bit, and I barely escaped collision with three random pedestrians on my hasty route. Thankfully, they seemed to be as unseeing as I was, and barely muttered as I passed them.
Once I was in front of the building, I squeezed my portfolio between my elbow and side, balancing my bag on a lifted knee, as I dug unsuccessfully for my key card.
How hard was it to find an access card?
I felt something warm on the small of my back, and I turned, lifting my eyes to look into a pair of amused yellow ones.
The wetness peppered on his translucent skin made it almost see-through. He looked like a marble statue. Gorgeous. Perfect. I wanted to replace those rain drops on his skin with my lips.
“Need some help?” Oscar asked, his fingers lifting to take over the weight of my portfolio. His fingers fell softly on my elbow, and the same current that always seemed to accompany the man ran through me, simultaneously pinning me to the spot and shocking me into action. I moved to pass the folder from one arm to the other, and between both of us pulling at the papers at the same time, some of the files fell onto the dirty, wet pavement.
“Fuck.” His voice was rough as we both bent to collect them.
“Don’t worry, it isn’t the first time these have been on the ground today,” I told him, barely containing my tears. At least if I cried, the rain would hide the evidence. “Apparently, my art is crap and belongs there.”
Except for the work inspired by you, Oscar.
“Somehow I doubt that.”
My only response was a small huff as I shoved the papers back into the leather casing.
“You’re still so amazingly beautiful in the rain,” Oscar said, making everything around me and inside me freeze.
While I stood there staring at him, all I could think of were Corbin’s stupid goldfish when we were kids. We’d make fun of their silly faces, opening and closing their mouths to send air to their gills. That was probably what I looked like—a fish gasping for air. Except that I had no gills, and I probably needed to find words, fast. Oscar found them for me.
“You’re a contradiction in behavior too, not just in hair colors,” he said.
“How so?”
“Just now, you were standing in the rain, desperate to get inside and out of the rain, but now, you seem perfectly content and unbothered by it.”
Before I could respond, he pulled out his own card and then shifted my portfolio and my bag into his arms.
“You’re carting around over one hundred pounds in here,” he noted the obvious, running ahead and opening the door for me. Once we were inside, I tried my best not to look like a drowned cat.
“Thank you,” I told him, beaming up a smile. “I guess chivalry isn’t dead.”
His scoff was loud, and his consequent movements fast. My bags were placed on a nearby table and then my back was plastered against the glass door, blocking it. Oscar came into my space, breathing me in and letting me feel him. Everywhere. His wet shirt stuck to his muscles, and his breath came out in rapid heaves as his large hand came up to cup my cheek. He smoothed a thumb over my bottom lip, hard. The sudden pressure sent tingles everywhere.
“I can’t do this anymore,” he whispered, as if to himself.
“Do what?” I whispered back.
“Stay away from you,” was the tormented answer that came right before his lips came down on mine. Devouring them, devouring me.
His heat engulfed me.
His earthy scent taunted me.
His chest pressed against mine with each draw of breath.
Wanting more, I pressed deeper into the kiss, taking everything he was offering and begging for more. His groan was so loud it almost scared me, but I held my ground as he continued to taste me. When his teeth gently nipped at my bottom lip, my knees almost gave out, and he pressed me tighter against the door.
He steadied me, wrapping both palms around my face, his thumbs caressing my cheek and neck at the same rhythm as his tongue caressed mine. I was lost in the kiss right up until someone banged on the door behind us.
My eyelids fluttered, and he let a slow, sexy grin pull at him lips. I could see his eyes looking into mine, a little bit like we were under strobe lights. He looked like he felt my own panic. His mouth let go of mine for a bit.
“Welcome back into my life,” he said.
I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.
Chapter Ten
Delia
Now
Oscar, Corbin, Enzo, and I were wandering about in East Village, and I was delighted in the street art found in every nook and cranny. An interesting creature named Ajax had joined us, but he kept to himself, and I was too engrossed in the mixture of Oscar and the sights around to try to make small talk. Almost every twenty minutes I was pulling them into an antique jewelry shop, and if it weren’t for Corbin forcibly removing me from the last shop, I would have stayed there all afternoon. Still, he didn’t get me out of the door before I exchanged phone numbers with the girl and promised to visit her again.
The guys were more interested in the dive bars and made a priority list about which food to try first. Enzo boo-ed the karaoke bars when we passed them, but he stopped us for an Asian snack in St. Mark’s Place.
“I want to live here someday,” I told Oscar, and he smiled. His hand was clasping mine hard.
“Where?”
I showed him a building that looked like it had been frozen in time—in a good way. The wear and tear of weather hadn’t affected the façade’s beauty. There were massive terraces on several floors, and I had no idea what the inside of those apartments looked like, but I wanted to see them.
“Yeah, I could see myself playing a song while you worked there under the sun,” Oscar said pensively as he lifted our entwined hands and dropped light kisses across my knuckles.
I was so tickled by the reference to a possible future together I instantly felt like I was soaring. Like, who was I to judge? I had an inkling of pure happiness at the side of this guy, and if he wanted the same thing, I wouldn’t rock the boat with the abhorred discussions about feelings that make men run for their lives. I knew so much from Corbin.
We reached Infatuation—another dive bar in the sea of them on this street and Enzo rapped his fist against the locked door.
It was a dive bar on a street filled with dive bars. This was the only one though that had a wooden sign at the entrance, with carved letters that read: “Infatuation. Live music every night. We play everything. Come be adventurous with us.”
It would turn out that Infatuation was love at first sight for all of us.
The bar was closed until four, but we had been assured the owner would be waiting for us. The behemoth of a man of a man who opened the door was easily six-foot-four, with a dark hair peppered by a few white streaks that didn’t look half bad, but could maybe use a stylist’s hand in it to tame the frizz. He wore leather pants and skull silver rings on all his long fingers.
“I’m Micky Barrett. Welcome to my house,” he boomed at us. His voice had a wear in it from smoke and alcohol, but it was still melodious. It was clear that Micky Barrett was a man who had spent a good portion of his life singing.
