The Art of Us

by KL Hughes

  Alex shakes her head and lets her hand be drawn into Kari’s. She watches as their gloved fingers lace together, and she says, “Yeah, you’re right. I do.”

  When Kari suddenly stumbles to a stop, Alex jolts and blinks away the memories making a foggy cloud of her mind. Kari smiles at her, pointing toward the door of a beautifully lit building with large glass windows that peer into a massive space. It is adorned in art and packed with people. “This is it.”

  Alex doesn’t bother reading the words stamped across the building. She simply lets Kari lead her through the door and into the merciful warmth. An older gentleman greets them at the door and offers to check their bags and coats while they browse. Alex takes their collection ticket and stuffs it into her pants pocket.

  The flow of traffic in the gallery seems to be moving counterclockwise, so she and Kari move to the right and take in the first piece they encounter—a pen drawing of a woman’s body in profile. She’s bare and holding a swollen, pregnant belly with one hand while the other dusts across her neck. It is simple yet elegant, and Alex finds it lovely. Kari, though, scans it quickly, shrugs a shoulder, and pulls Alex along to the next piece.

  Twenty minutes later, they find themselves standing in front of a collage painting that spans nine small canvases positioned into the shape of a square. Each individual canvas is painted with different pieces of flowers, but when looked at as a whole, the nine flower paintings create one collective image of a woman’s mouth. Thick lips are slightly parted, and a pale pink tongue peeks out under stark, white teeth.

  “That’s incredible,” Kari says, and Alex nods as she takes a glass of champagne from a passing server. “I think I like the paintings better than the drawings.”

  Alex smirks. “Yes, I noticed that after the third drawing you dragged me away from.”

  “I like the colors,” Kari says, poking her. “The paintings feel more alive somehow, like the pictures are moving.”

  “That would make for a large number of naked women moving around this place,” Alex says, and Kari laughs loudly before cupping a hand over her mouth.

  They duck their heads and glance quickly around.

  “There are definitely a lot of naked women in these paintings,” Kari says, whispering.

  “I’m not complaining.”

  “Of course you’re not.”

  “I have no arm candy.”

  Charlee looks over and takes in Cam’s red cocktail dress and sparkling flats and her long, straight, dark hair resting over one brown shoulder. It’s rare to see it down. Cam almost always wears it in a ponytail. “You are the candy, Cam. You don’t need any extra on your arm. I’ve already seen at least five different people ogling you instead of my art.”

  “That’s true.” Cam gives Charlee a wicked grin. “I’m so bad for your career. Why do you keep inviting me?”

  “The gallery is just as much yours as it is mine. You build everything and transform the space every time we have a new show, so, really, we’re both featured artists here.”

  “You are like compliment crack.” Cam releases a dramatic sigh. “I wish I had a pull-string-doll version of you that I could have around all the time just to boost my ego.”

  They both crack up, and Charlee says, “Because that wouldn’t be creepy.”

  When their laughter dies down to silence again, Charlee quietly says, “I’m glad you’re with me.”

  Cam doesn’t look at her, but Charlee sees her nod out of the corner of her eye. “So, where’s Massey?”

  “Bathroom, I think.” Charlee shrugs a shoulder. She hasn’t seen Chris in at least fifteen minutes. “Or likely posted up at the minibar. He wa—”

  The elbow digging into her side cuts her off. Charlee looks at Cam. “What?”

  Cam subtly points across the gallery. “Looks like you’ve got some potential buyers for your giant pining.” She coughs. “I mean painting.”

  “Rude,” Charlee says, but her gaze locks on to the two women studying the centerpiece, and her heart begins a heavy thumping. The thought of selling the piece is painful, but she shouldn’t keep it. It needs to go.

  She needs to let it go. Then maybe she can let go.

  “I suppose I should go talk to them,” she says, grabbing a fresh glass of champagne from a passing server.

  Cam nods, calling quietly after her as she heads toward the center of the main room. “That painting is ten thousand dollars, Charlee. Give them back rubs if you have to.”

  Kari’s sudden gasp startles Alex, drawing her attention. “Oh my God,” she says, waving her hand to beckon Alex toward the next painting.

  The canvas stretches over a large portion of the post it’s attached to and is encased in glass. Alex absorbs it in sections at first, in details—the blending of black and white, the way the shadows dip over this woman’s body, visible only from the back. A bit of yellow light peeks through windows where breath fogs the panes, making it feel delicate and intimate. It’s a stunning piece of work in all its meticulous mastery, but it feels familiar. Even in pieces, it’s familiar, and Alex has to take a few steps back to look at the painting in its entirety. When she does, her heart slams against her ribs, and her throat grows so tight, she feels like she can’t breathe.

  “This is beautiful,” Kari says, her tone soft and reverent. “It reminds me of you. Her hair is wild just like yours. Alex, I love this.”

  Every single shallow inhale through Alex’s nose is a desperate effort to get air into her lungs, but it just won’t go down. It won’t reach, and Alex quickly begins to feel light-headed and dizzy.

  “Ten thousand dollars,” she hears Kari say. “Damn.” It sounds muffled in Alex’s head, like someone has suddenly cupped their hands over her ears. She hears Kari’s words, but they never fully sink in, just like the air evading her lungs. “How much would I have to beg to get you to agree to buy this painting?”

  Alex’s voice comes out strained. She’s surprised it comes out at all. “You don’t really want it.”

  “I thought you might try to convince me of as much.” Kari’s laughter reaches Alex’s ears again in muffled thumps of sound. She hasn’t yet peeled her eyes from the painting, so she doesn’t see Alex’s panic. Alex wonders if it’s even evident at all, if her barely maintained facade of control and calm has visibly crumbled. Because her insides are on fire. In ruins. She feels like she might collapse any minute.

  “I’m sure I can talk you into it, though.” Kari steps away from Alex, closer to the painting, and Alex watches her. She has to watch her, because she can’t look at the painting. She can’t look at the lines, the lighting, the curves of the body she recognizes. The body she knows.

  “Home is a Lover in Low Light,” Kari reads off the sign to the side of the piece before letting out a sigh and stepping back into the space beside Alex. “Even the title is gorgeous.”

  “Thank you,” says a voice from behind them, and Alex’s entire body goes cold. Her stomach drops like it is trying to push down into her legs, and her heart jumps up into her throat as if it intends to escape through her lips. She is going to tear apart with the stretching.

  That voice.

  Alex would recognize that voice anywhere, anytime. She spent years with that voice. Years with it murmuring against her skin, whispering in her ear, laughing against her lips, and haunting her dreams.

  Once, that voice was everything.

  Charlee smiles when one of the women admiring her painting turns at her words. A bit shorter than Charlee, though not by much, she’s beautiful. Her thick curves, clad in a flowing, deep green dress, draw Charlee’s gaze, and she quickly corrects herself, locking back on to the woman’s face. Her hair is long, falling over one shoulder in a straight, shiny wave—dark and beautiful like her eyes. Freckles dot the spaces around her nose, spreading out under her eyes, and her smile is radiant enough to cause Charlee’s to widen.


  “Oh,” the woman says, stepping toward her. “Are you the artist?”

  “Yes. Charlee Parker.” Meeting her in the middle, Charlee shakes her hand before stepping back again. “Do you like the piece?”

  “I love it,” she says. “I feel like I’m already in a long-term relationship with it.”

  Charlee laughs, but the sound is too soft, too sad even to her own ears. The painting will be gone by the night’s end if this woman has anything to say about it. It’s an unsettling feeling. Like she is gearing up for another loss.

  “I’m glad you like it,” she says. “It’s one of my more personal pieces, and it’ll be hard for me to let it go, but if you love it as much as you seem to, then I suppose I wouldn’t mind sending it off to live with you.”

  “Well, I’m going to have to convince my girlfriend here to loosen her pockets,” the woman jokes, and Charlee’s eyes flicker to the stiff figure beside her.

  The other woman’s back is still facing her, and she hasn’t moved since Charlee approached, hasn’t murmured a word. Something about her, even from the back, seems familiar: the long length of her exposed neck, the bit of her strong jawline that Charlee can just make out from the side. Her hair is up in an elegant bun, and her slender body is long and lovely in its sharp angles—dressed in a pair of dark classic flares and a green top to match her girlfriend’s dress. Charlee can’t help but stare.

  She has an artist’s eye, she tells herself. It’s natural.

  Looking back to the woman still smiling at her, Charlee says, “Well, the piece is pricey, so I understand, but a lot of heart and work went into it.”

  The woman nudges her girlfriend. “You hear that? A lot of heart went into it. It deserves a good home.”

  When the other woman still doesn’t turn, Charlee addresses her. “You do seem rather enraptured by it,” she says, teasing. “Can I ask what you think of the piece?”

  Charlee could almost swear the woman trembles in response to her question. She half expects her not to answer. Maybe even walk away. She’s never encountered weirder behavior in her gallery. I shouldn’t have come over. Maybe she feels pressured to buy it now. The idea makes Charlee uncomfortable. She’d hate for someone to shell out thousands of dollars they don’t have or that they don’t actually want to give.

  She opens her mouth to excuse herself, to give them time to discuss, when a hard, staggered breath shakes out of the woman just before she turns around.

  Charlee’s champagne slips from her hand and hits the floor. The sound of shattering glass breaks through the soft buzz of the gallery. Her lips part before she has time to think about what might come rushing out, and then her voice echoes through the room.

  “Fuck.”

  Chapter 3

  “So maybe we shouldn’t say goodbye.”

  “What do we say, then?”

  “The same thing we always say when one of us leaves.”

  “And then what?”

  “Then I’ll go.”

  “You’re just going to turn and go?”

  “I don’t know how else to do it. If I stay, if I linger, I might never get on that plane.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay.”

  “So I love you.”

  “I love you.”

  “Alex, wait!”

  “Charlee, that was supposed to be our goodbye.”

  “I know. I know. I just… This is hard.”

  “I know, but this isn’t the end. We’ll say hello again. I promise.”

  “When?”

  “Soon, I hope.”

  “Okay. Soon.”

  The room is spinning every second Alex stands unmoving under a painting of herself, unable to breathe, while both Kari and Charlee try to gain her attention. When she finally turns around, it’s as if the entire place slams to a sudden, jarring stop.

  Charlee’s glass of champagne hits the floor, shattering on impact, but Charlee’s eyes don’t shift from Alex’s. Their gazes catch instantly, like the pins of a lock all clicking into place, and suddenly, the door to the past swings swiftly open.

  “Fuck.”

  The word slams from Charlee’s lips, breathless and guttural, and Alex feels it acutely, as if it could have jumped from her own mouth. She isn’t surprised by Charlee’s reaction or by the broken glass on the floor. The only reason her own champagne glass isn’t currently at their feet is because she’s gripping it so tightly she’s shocked it hasn’t crumbled to dust in her hand.

  Charlee doesn’t move an inch, and neither does she, and Alex still can’t breathe. She can’t move. Can’t speak. Charlee is looking at her like she’s a ghost, and maybe Alex is. She could be a ghost, because her body is too still, her insides too silent. Everything is frozen in time.

  “Whoa,” Kari says, shuffling forward as if to help. “Are you okay?”

  Charlee doesn’t answer. She continues to stare at Alex, her eyes wide like those of a deer caught in headlights. Alex is the car that just rounded the corner and crashed into her.

  Alex can feel Kari looking at her, looking between the two of them, undoubtedly confused, but Alex can’t turn to her. She can’t stop looking at Charlee. Her blue eyes are like something out of a dream, mesmerizing.

  It’s incredible seeing her again. It’s incredible and painful, and incredibly painful, and Alex somehow is floating and drowning simultaneously. Charlee is just as beautiful here, now—in her sleek, strapless white dress and black pumps—as she is in Alex’s meticulous memory. As beautiful as she has been in every secret, sacred, unspoken fantasy that’s painted her mind in the last five years.

  The urge to move, to run to Charlee, is immense, like the instinct to throw out your arms when falling, to grab anything, anyone, nearby. It’s natural, automatic, and yet Alex can’t help but wonder if she’d be rejected, if Charlee would let her fall.

  Her eyes sting horribly, and she can see the sheen of tears already coating Charlee’s as well. She wonders whose will fall first, or if they will be able to hold the tears back. Hold them in. Like a dam blocking the current of all they used to be to one another.

  She knows it’s only a matter of time before the dam bursts wide open and drags them both under, along with everyone else in their lives.

  “Alex?”

  Alex turns, finally yanked from her frozen position by a new but also familiar voice. Camila Cruz stands only a few feet away from her, staring at Alex much the way Charlee continues to, as if she is seeing a ghost. Any response Alex has escapes as nothing more than a strangled jumble that barely makes it from her throat to her tongue, passing through on sheer luck. It’s better that actual words won’t come, because no words can do justice to this moment.

  Her knees are shaking.

  Cam’s arms are around her before she even realizes that the other woman has moved, and Alex stiffens. She’s a rigid board in Cam’s embrace, but Cam doesn’t let her go. She only jostles her a bit and says, “It’s been five damn years, Alex. Hug me.”

  Releasing the breath trapped in her lungs feels like relief, like collapse. Alex sinks into the feeling, into the embrace, and wraps her arms around Cam.

  “Cam.” She grips her tightly, and she tries not to look, but Charlee’s always been like the sun—her sun—the gravitational pull yanking Alex into her orbit. Her eyes lock with Charlee’s again over Cam’s shoulder. Charlee’s cheeks are streaked with tears, her makeup rapidly growing splotchy and smudged.

  Surprisingly, though, there is affection in her eyes. There’s also pain. That one look is like a mirror reflecting all that is suddenly storming through Alex’s insides.

  Hello, Charlee mouths, and Alex nearly splinters apart. Even without sound, that small movement of her lips stirs something wild and wonderful and wretched inside of Alex. She closes her eyes for a moment before locking on to Charlee again and
mouthing her reply.

  Hello.

  It’s years past due. Years too late. How can something so painful feel so good?

  When Cam steps back from the embrace, her eyes, too, shimmer with unshed tears, and she laughs mockingly at herself as she fans her hand at them. “It’s about time you came home,” she says. “When did you get back? How long are you staying? Wait, are you living here again?”

  Her lips spread with a wide smile as she bombards Alex with questions, but it quickly falls when Cam’s gaze darts past Alex to the elephant in the room behind her. Alex watches Cam’s eyes widen to the point that they are practically bulging, and dread pools in her gut.

  Exactly, she thinks. She doesn’t know what to do with the situation they’ve all found themselves in, because as far as Kari has ever known, Charlee Parker didn’t even exist until tonight.

  After they split, it was painful to talk about Charlee, so Alex didn’t. She thought it might grow easier with time, but it never did. Eventually, it just became easiest to let all that they were stay buried in the past. In the dark, quiet places inside her where she’s never since allowed anyone access.

  Kari never asked about exes, so Alex never told her. They never talked much about the past at all.

  Now the past is staring Alex in the face, and Kari’s looking at her like she has some explaining to do. Alex doesn’t want to touch that explanation with a ten-foot pole.

  “So, you three obviously know each other,” Kari says before Alex has a chance to answer any of Cam’s questions. Her stomach rolls as the room begins its second round of spinning.

  Charlee’s chest tightens as she watches Cam move without thought, without hesitation, and sink into Alex’s arms. If she did the same, would Alex embrace her? Would she still feel like home?

  When Alex’s gaze locks on to her again over Cam’s shoulder, Charlee’s lips move without command. Hello.

  One word. One word that feels heavy and overwhelming. Much like the moment itself. Does she know? Does Alex know all that swirls within it? Does she know that that hello is adorned in their past and in their present and in all the painful syllables of it wasn’t supposed to be like this?