I tried to shake the image of Earl’s teeth in her mouth and refocus on the wonderful moment I was having.
The man was talking to William Chamberson, who noticed me and started heading my way. Now both men were coming toward me, and in a moment of panic, I almost ran.
I calmed down—barely—and faked a smile that hopefully showed I wasn’t about to need a change of pants.
“Ryan,” William said, gesturing to me. “This is Emily. Emily, this is Ryan. He took over running my wife’s bakeries when the TV side of her business took off. And it so happens he’s in need of an artist.”
Ryan. Even the name was familiar. I must have done some serious memory repression in my high school days because I was having trouble putting a name to the face of my cupcake baking tormentor from all those years ago. I could've sworn it was Ryan, though. Up close, the feeling of familiarity had only grown stronger, too.
Ryan reached to shake my hand. So formal. I swallowed and reached to grab his hand, even though in all my fantasy scenarios, our first contact would be a kiss.
I completely missed the lock-in procedure and ended up squeezing his middle and index fingers instead of his whole hand. Somehow, he managed to smoothly cover my mistake by pulling my hand gently toward him in an old-fashioned kind of maneuver that had me blushing.
“Hi,” I said.
He narrowed his eyes and looked at me. If I didn’t know better, I’d say he was feeling the same sense of déjà vu. His head tilted a little, and it looked like he might say something, but he gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head.
“So you’re the artist? William has talked up your work a lot. I’m excited to see it.”
"I mean, I'm poor, and I like to draw pictures. I also wrestle with a lot of insecurities, self-doubt, and emotional pain. I think that qualifies me as an artist, right?"
He grinned and turned his head to William. “I’ll take her.”
“Where?” I asked.
Both men held back laughter.
Where? Did I seriously just say that? I felt like I needed one of those old-fashioned fans to cool off, or maybe just a big burlap sack to put over my head.
“Figuratively speaking,” Ryan said. “Sorry. I’m getting ahead of myself. I’m putting on a Halloween party for everyone at The Bubbly Baker and Galleon. It’s kind of a team-building thing. At least that’s my excuse for using William’s money.”
The Bubbly Baker. My memory filled with images of the guy I’d known in high school and how we’d been paired together in Home Ec class our first day of senior year. He was the typical, popular jock, and he was dating the most obnoxiously gorgeous and mean girl in the school. I’d expected him to slack off and want me to do all the work, but he had really seemed to love cooking, and he had been good at it. It was the same guy. It had to be.
As soon the thought crossed my mind, it all came back in a rush. The way he hadn’t stood up for me when his girlfriend, Haisley, had embarrassed me in front of half the school, or how he’d let her make up a story about me and never defended me. To top it all off, he’d even taken credit for smearing a cupcake we baked together across my senior art project.
The only thing stopping me from stomping on his foot and giving him a few choice words was that I felt fairly certain he’d never actually been the one to do it. His girlfriend had been sneering victoriously at me the whole time, and the Ryan I had known seemed much more like the kind of guy to take the fall for someone than to do something like that.
So I never knew the truth, but none of it felt quite so life-shatteringly bad now, especially after so many years had passed. We were kids, and we did stupid things. Yes, I’d hated him, but right now, he was an opportunity for a job. Besides, it had been years and years, so it would be ridiculous for me to still hold a grudge, right?
“Ass.” William was looking at his phone and didn’t seem to actually care about Ryan’s admission. “Hey, it looks like I’m about to get into a bidding war on eBay. Gotta leave you two astute business-people to the contract negotiations.”
“eBay? People still use that?” Ryan asked.
“Uh, yes. I buy shit on eBay all the time.”
“Like what?”
A mischievous glint entered William’s eyes. He waggled his eyebrows mysteriously and backed away. “All kinds of things,” he said, then turned and left.
Ryan shook his head. “Probably dildos.”
“Definitely dildos,” I agreed. My stomach was practically bursting with nervous butterflies, but there was a friendliness in Ryan’s eyes that was at odds with his rugged looks. I’d never dream of talking about dildos with a guy I’d just met again for the first time since high school, especially not one I’d sworn was a mortal enemy, even in my bodice-ripping fantasy world.
I thought about asking him if he remembered me, but what if he’d rescind the job offer if he did?
“So do you have any samples of your work? A portfolio, or anything?”
His words hung in the air. I felt time slow down, like the potential of the moment had a crushing gravity of its own. Behind the innocent words, I felt his curiosity—his interest. I felt it crackling through the air like electricity, and all I needed to do was reach out and grab it. In some ways, making things right with him felt like it’d cover up an old, long-forgotten scar. In other ways, I thought it might rip it back open.
“You could sit in on my class,” I said. My head spun a little when I heard my own words, just as innocent as his but carrying their own hidden meaning. I didn’t tell him I’d email him my portfolio or even offer to show him several of the sketches I had just a few steps away in my art bag. I couldn’t help it. On any other day, I might’ve had the willpower to let the moment slide harmlessly by, but today? Today I felt the unshakable excitement of changing seasons and the coming holidays. It felt like a day for taking chances and doing reckless things, and I couldn’t stop myself. “We’re doing the classic Van Gogh recreation of Starry Night, but in Halloween colors. It’s kind of an art cliché by now, but they’ve all been asking when we’re going to do Starry night, so...”
“Didn’t Van Gogh cut his penis off or something and mail it to his girlfriend?”
I grinned. “His ear. I can’t remember if he mailed it or delivered it by hand, though. I guess you’d want something like that to get there fresh, right?”
“Well, then you forgot the most important detail. That’s like the difference between a break-up text and doing it in person.”
“Right, because ear or penis, what’s the difference? But the delivery method…”
He nodded. “I’ve seen paintings of the guy. He probably had a lot more use for his ear than his penis.”
I covered a smile with my hand and shook my head at him. “If you think some jokes about famous artists are going to make me like you, you’re right.” I was scared at how quickly I could feel it happening. The same easy conversation that had flowed between us back then came now like no time had passed at all. I remembered how quickly I’d fallen for him, and how much it had stung when he returned my teenaged girl crush with coldness.
“Who says I want you to like me? I’m just here for the practice. My dream is to become famous enough that when I cut off a body part, they’ll make high school kids learn about it for centuries.”
I gave him a wry look. “I’ll make you a deal. Sit through my class, and then I’ll tell you how much your self-mutilation would rock the art world when I’ve seen what you can do.”
“Perfect. You do have supplies for finger-painting, right?”
I rolled my eyes, but smiled once I’d turned my back to him and got back to setting up the room. My heart was pounding from our quick conversation, and I felt giddier than I had in a long time, especially from talking to a guy. He was shockingly handsome and had the kind of quick, playful personality I liked.
I didn’t even know if he was single, or what his intentions were beyond his supposed need for an artist. God, for all I knew, he could
still be with Haisley. I made a quick promise to myself. If he was, first, I’d find a way to ruin her day, and second, I’d run as far from him as I possibly could. There were limits to my capacity for forgiveness.
What I did know was he had a way of making me feel like I was straight back in high school, where something as simple as a glance could set my heart pounding and make my skin burn. He’d given me more than a glance though, hadn’t he?
I took a deep, calming breath. All I had to do was remind myself about art school. No matter who Ryan had become or what he wanted, that was priority number one. Paris. My future. My dreams. Everything depended on me stepping on an airplane in January and setting off for the new chapter in my life. Hopefully it’d be the part of the book where things got interesting. So far, the book of my life had been the parts you skim while you decide if it’s worth forking over a few bucks.
I just needed to remember. I had a life to think about, and the last thing I needed was to fall for some guy who would make me think I had a reason to stay and miss my chance.
But I did need a real job. As much as I loved art night at the retirement home, it wasn’t exactly the Sistine Chapel.
I started my lesson and stammered my way through the brief reminder on mixing paints and how to set up a color palette for a larger project.
I stumbled over my words more than once because I couldn’t stop stealing glances at him. Ryan wasn’t just good-looking. It was like he’d been carved out of a chunk of crystallized female desire and plopped right in front of me. He was exactly my recipe of sexy. Confident, but not in the in-your-face kind of way. Dark, heavy eyebrows, dark hair, and a look somewhere between action hero and the male lead in a romance movie. I could imagine him punching Russians at the helm of a hijacked boat or picking up girls in a rainstorm while he professed his undying love—okay, who am I kidding, I was picturing him picking me up in said rainstorm.
It had either been way, way too long since I had any serious attention from a guy, or Ryan was something special.
I could almost feel my brain mentally flicking me for attention, like it was trying to say, you know what else is special, ovaries for brains? Paris! Art school. Your professional and financial future. Your dreams.
My ovaries were too busy running through ridiculous fantasy after ridiculous fantasy to hear. As long as I was looking right at Mr. Dreamboat, there was going to be no logic bouncing around in my skull. It was all hearts and little kissy-face emojis. Even reminding myself what a jerk he’d been in the end back in high school didn’t help. That was, what, one million years ago? Two? How could I fault him and those intense, smoldering light-brown eyes for something that happened so long ago?
Ryan seemed to actually be very focused on doing a good job, but he was adorably bad at it. I was relieved to see he was kidding about finger painting, but he held the brush like he thought he might have to bash someone over the head with it. I had to stop and help him more than the seniors because he was color challenged.
“What do you get when you mix yellow and red?” I asked.
“Brown,” he said confidently.
I tried not to laugh. I took my job seriously, even when I was getting paid less than minimum wage and covering the cost of supplies. My parents had never managed to climb their way up the career ladder, but one thing they taught me was to do my job with integrity, no matter what it was. For my dad, that was mopping the floors of office buildings, and for my mom, it was scheduling appointments for a dentist’s office. Still, they showed me how to take pride in a job well done instead of what job was being done.
My dad always had a way of phrasing things that made them stick in my mind, and I still remember what he’d told me when I said I wanted to be an artist. He hadn’t discouraged me or said there was no money in it. He’d thought for a while, took a deep breath, and nodded his head. “That’s great. People are going to try to put that down, but those are the same ones who would put you down for wanting to be a plumber or a cook or a secretary. Do what you do well, and you’ll never have to care what they say.”
So when Ryan looked up at me with those dreamy, light brown eyes, I looked back down to his palette and focused on the task. My dad would want me to remember my job was to teach art right now, and Ryan desperately needed to be taught.
“Actually, you get orange.” Without thinking, I grabbed his hand and helped show him how to mix more in a circular motion instead of the choppy, aggressive cuts he was using. I pulled my hand off of his incredibly warm and wonderful skin as soon as I was done, feeling a wave of tingling prickles roll through me where my skin had been against his.
“Hm,” he said. “I don’t think I understood the technique there. Can you show me again?”
I almost swatted at him and giggled like an idiot, but I managed to suppress it as I turned around and squeezed my eyes shut. Paris. I chanted the word in my mind like a mantra. I’d been doing a perfectly fine job of avoiding men up until now. Bit by bit, I could feel myself fighting through the girly stupidity that was threatening to make me deaf and blind to reason and good sense.
“Are you going to teach the rest of us how to paint this shit?” barked Grammy. Her words came out a little slurred through Earl’s teeth. “Or are you going to flirt with the little boy in the front all night?”
“Did you need help?” I asked. My voice was a tight squeak, but I pretended nothing was wrong.
"Yeah.' Her lips turned up in a wicked grin. "I forgot how French kissing works. Maybe you horn-dogs can show us?"
Earl, whose mouth was a sunken, puckered little hole without his teeth, burst into scratchy laughter punctuated by hacking coughs. The rest of my students didn’t seem as amused, or they were oblivious—I couldn’t tell.
When class was over, Ryan’s painting somehow still looked like it had been finger-painted, even though I’d definitely seen him using a brush. It was, without a doubt, the worst painting I’d ever seen a grown adult produce. If Jackson Pollock had a baby with Picasso and the baby grew up to be a cocaine addict who painted with shaky withdrawal hands, it still would’ve been better than Ryan’s work. He held it up and looked at it with a wrinkled forehead, then turned it and smiled a little. “Oh, it was upside down,” he said.
“You can tell?” I asked, tilting my head.
“No, not really. You’re lucky I’m not looking for an art teacher, because I didn’t learn a thing.”
I frowned. “None of my other students complained.”
“I guess they didn’t have as hard a time focusing on what you were saying instead of how you looked saying it.”
I self-consciously ran my hands across my hair, immediately thinking I must’ve had something embarrassingly wrong the whole time.
“No. I’m saying it was nice watching you. I can tell you really care about all of this. I guess I forgot to actually listen, is all.”
I grinned. “If you had listened and ended up with that painting, I’d fire myself.”
“From a place this nice? No way. You can’t give up this kind of gig.”
“Hey. Watch it. I’m lucky to have this job. I’m doing something I love and getting paid for it.”
A slow smile spread his lips. “I like that.”
“You like what?”
“You’re passionate. It’s refreshing.”
“And what about you? Is your passion taking art classes at a retirement home?”
He didn’t answer me immediately. Instead, his eyes ran over me as he bit his lip a little and let it go in a way that made my knees feel like jelly.
Paris. Just think about Paris…
A change came over his face, as if an unpleasant thought occurred to him. In an instant, the heat and flirtation in his body language melted away and there was only friendliness and professionalism left, but no heat. “Actually, I’m passionate about two things. Running my business, and, well this is going to sound weird, but holidays.”
“What’s weird about that? Everybody likes holidays.”
He shrugged in a self-conscious way that was endearing from such a gorgeous guy. “Maybe not quite as much as me.”
I smirked. "Sorry. I'm having a little trouble imagining what it looks like for someone to be too into holidays. Caroling dressed as Santa? The person on the block who turns their house into Halloween Horror Nights? Or the guy who gives speeches about pilgrims and Native Americans before letting anyone take a bite at Thanksgiving?"
He rubbed the back of his neck and scrunched his face like he was trying to figure out how to answer that.
“What?” I laughed. “Don’t tell me that’s you…”
“I mean—I’ve never done the pilgrim thing. But I do think people miss the point of Thanksgiving.”
“Oh no,” said William, who poked his head in the door.
I jumped back from Ryan like I’d been caught doing something wrong.
“Am I too late? Is he already admitting what a geek he is?” William strolled into the room and frowned as he plucked Ryan’s painting from his hands. “Jesus. You call yourself an art teacher? This looks like you made him swallow as much paint as he could and let him vomit it up on paper. Actually, it’d be generous to assume this came out of his mouth. Maybe he—”
“Thanks for the professional critique, William,” interrupted Ryan. “I’ll try really hard to do better next time.”
“I’ve seen an elephant paint a better picture than this, come to think of it. True story, there’s this place where—”
“We get it,” Ryan said. He gave William a healthy glare that pretty clearly said “get lost,” but William was either oblivious or didn’t care.
"So," William moved around the room, running his hands idly over everything within reach as he walked. He picked up a paintbrush, ran a finger down its length, and then set it back down after some consideration. "I came in here and caught you two grinning at each other like some horny high school kids. Highly unusual. What happened to the Ryan I know?"
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