The Art of Us

by KL Hughes

  “I know,” Alex murmurs in her ear. “Listen to me. Focus on my voice.”

  “Alex, please.”

  Alex latches onto Charlee’s hands from behind. “Listen to me,” she says, holding Charlee’s back against her chest and pressing the pads of their fingers together. “Can you feel my hands? How many fingers do I have, Charlee?”

  “Ten,” Charlee gasps out. “T-ten.”

  “Are you sure?” Alex taps her fingers against Charlee’s again. “Count them for me.”

  Charlee forces in a shallow, useless breath and grabs Alex’s thumbs first. “One,” she says. “Two.” The next breath comes a bit easer as she moves to Alex’s index fingers. “Three.” She sinks a bit more into Alex’s chest. “Four.”

  “That’s good.” Alex’s voice is soft and soothing, warm against Charlee’s cheek in the cold night air. “Keep going.”

  The cab driver takes off before Charlee even makes it to seven, but she keeps her focus on Alex’s fingers and Alex’s voice—on counting and breathing. By the time she reaches ten, she’s relaxed in Alex’s arms. Though her chest is still aching, she can breathe deeply again.

  Charlee collapses a little more, resting her head back against Alex’s shoulder as if she has been drained. “Thank you.”

  “Yeah, thank you.”

  At the sudden sound of Chris’s voice, Charlee and Alex jolt, stepping quickly apart from one another. He and Kari had apparently been lingering by the restaurant entrance, watching. He makes quick work of wrapping an arm around Charlee when Alex steps away.

  “I’ve never seen that happen to her before,” Chris says, rubbing her shoulder. “I wouldn’t have known what to do. Thank you, really.”

  Alex doesn’t say anything. She merely nods, and Charlee can’t stop staring at her. She can’t stop feeling the heat of Alex’s chest, the warmth of her breath lingering on her neck, on her cheek, on her ear.

  “Are you all right, Charlee?” Kari steps forward and loops her arm around Alex’s waist. “I’ve had a few anxiety attacks before. I know how awful they can be.”

  “Yes.” She is unable to fully meet Kari’s gaze. “Thank you.”

  “We covered the bill,” Chris says, holding up his arm to hail another cab. “I’m going to run her home so she can rest, but, um, thanks for dinner, you two. We should do it again sometime.”

  No, we definitely shouldn’t. But Charlee doesn’t say anything. She simply lets Chris lead her back to the curb when a new cab arrives. She glances up at Alex just as Chris rattles off her address to the cab driver, and her stomach bottoms out when the last thing she sees before the door shuts her inside is the widening of Alex’s eyes—the realization sinking in.

  Charlee’s still living in their loft.

  The third floor of the university library was mostly empty, the majority of shelves dominated by the Theatre and Arts collection. Mostly only drama nerds and artists found their way up there. The occasional sleeper grabbed one of the moth-eaten couches, though, which Charlee completely understood. Eight a.m. classes were designed by the devil.

  She was browsing through the alphabetized shelves, looking for art collections that might spark a bit of inspiration for one of her first class projects, when she caught sight of a familiar bush of brown hair. Charlee felt a smile begin to form as she rounded the end of the aisle just in time to block the girl’s path to one of the small private study rooms no one ever used. No one but this girl.

  “Well, well, if it isn’t the cute asshole who insulted me on my first day here.”

  The girl startled at first, but then her full, pouty lips flattened into an uninterested line that only made Charlee’s smile widen. She looked just as gorgeous as she had in the parking lot, all long legs and eyes like the forest. Just as annoyed too.

  “Oh, the rude blonde who stole my spot,” the girl said. Charlee winked at her, eliciting an annoyed huff. “Have your feet been glued to the floor, or are you capable of moving?”

  “What brings you up here?” Charlee couldn’t stop grinning like an idiot. She tried, but her damned mouth just wouldn’t cooperate. “Theatre student? Are you a theatre student? I bet you are. I can totally picture you on stage, giving some snobby, pretentious monologue to an audience that can’t stop weeping over your elegant neck and sharp, dramatic voice. Tell me I’m right.”

  “You’re wrong.” She rolled her eyes. “Now, move.”

  Moving out of the way, Charlee watched the girl enter the study room. She followed, but the door quickly closed in her face. Charlee laughed out loud, then clamped a hand over her mouth and glanced around. She was in a library. Predictably, the aisles were mostly empty. She didn’t bother to knock before throwing open the door to the study room, stepping inside, and closing it behind her.

  “That was rude,” she said, leaning against the door and looking over the pocket-sized room with its single wooden table and two small office chairs. Cushioned—nice. “We were talking.”

  The other girl gaped at her for a moment before saying, “We weren’t, actually. You were talking. I was hoping you would disappear so I could study.”

  “First week of school and already so serious. That’s cute.”

  “You realize that’s the third time you’ve called me cute since we met, right?”

  “We’re getting serious. I’m thinking of taking you to meet my mom.”

  “She wouldn’t approve.” Her mouth tugged up at the corners with an easy smile, and Charlee’s stomach flipped. The girl was beautiful when she scowled and stunning when she smiled. Even that small hint was like sunshine, making Charlee feel warm all over.

  “You’d grow on her. You’re growing on me.”

  “You seem to be growing on me as well, like a fungus. I should seek medical attention.”

  “Nah, let me grow,” Charlee said, still grinning so widely it nearly hurt, but she didn’t care. “Let me live. You might like how I look when I’m covering your body.”

  “Wow.”

  “I know.” Charlee’s cheeks burned. “I can’t believe I just said that.”

  “Are you flirting with me?”

  “Well, that depends. Would you be susceptible to me flirting with you? Because if yes, then yes. If not, then no, I am absolutely not flirting with you.”

  The brunette rolled her eyes again, despite the slightest hint of a laugh escaping her. It made Charlee’s heart race. “What do you want?”

  “Well, obviously, I want you to get out.” At the girl’s shocked expression, Charlee said, “It’s just that I’ve been waiting for this study room for seven minutes. Seven full minutes, okay? And I know you saw me. I was here first. I waited. So you need to get the hell out.”

  The girl’s lips pursed as though she was trying to hold back another laugh, but it broke free a moment later, and Charlee felt like she was floating on the sound of it. “I can keep going.”

  “Please don’t.” She didn’t offer a verbal apology, but regret was clear in her eyes. Fleeting, certainly, but it was there. “What do you really want?”

  “I can’t just want to get to know you?”

  “No, you can’t.”

  Charlee still felt like she was floating as she crossed the short space between them and dropped her art books on the table. She then squatted beside the girl’s chair and looked up at her. “In that case, I’ll just say this: I’m Charlee Parker, and I really want to paint you.”

  “What?” Her voice went high-pitched, and her eyebrows knitted together. “Why?”

  “Because even though you’re an asshole, I wasn’t kidding about your elegant neck.” Charlee searched the girl’s questioning eyes, her stomach fluttering with every word. “I think you’re beautiful.”

  She was stunned for a moment, silent and gaping. When she spoke again, her voice escaped in a murmur so soft and disbelieving it made Charlee ache. “Y
ou think I’m beautiful?”

  Charlee hesitated only a second before she reached out and lightly rested a hand over the girl’s knee. “So beautiful.”

  It was a surprisingly tense moment, heavy, like they suddenly knew each other, like they were seeing each other in a new way. And Charlee expected it to break. Those sudden heavy moments always did. They were just too much to endure for most people, so they shattered around awkward laughter, clearing throats, or turning heads. She expected her hand to be shoved away any second now, expected the girl to laugh at her or ask her to leave.

  She was caught completely off guard when, instead, the other girl leaned forward, nearly falling out of her chair in the process, and pressed her lips to Charlee’s. It was only a quick, gentle kiss, one that clearly surprised them both. They separated only seconds later, and Charlee searched the girl’s green eyes for any hint of regret.

  It wasn’t there.

  Instead, she saw shock and wonder, a touch of embarrassment, a spark of thrill. That same wide smile blasted again across Charlee’s lips. She leaned in, stretched up on her toes, and claimed another kiss. Her heart raced. It was as if this one touch, rapidly escalating, was the first, or maybe even the best, impulsive thing she had ever done in her life, and, well, Charlee was living for it.

  There was something so intoxicating about the kiss. They both sank into it. A moan vibrated into Charlee’s mouth, and Charlee clamped her thighs together. She rose to her feet, wrapping her arms around the girl’s waist as she drew her up with her and pinned her against the wall. One hand slid up to curl into her hair, and Charlee wedged her thigh between skinny legs.

  They broke the connection for only a moment, panting and staring at one another, and Charlee thought it was over. Surely this beautiful stranger would put a stop to whatever the hell was happening between them, this strange, spur-of-the-moment magic, but she didn’t. Instead, she reached for Charlee’s hand and brought it to the top of her jeans.

  “This is stupid,” she said against Charlee’s lips, breathless.

  Charlee nodded. “Maybe.”

  “I don’t know you.”

  “I’m amazing. I promise.” Charlee planted another kiss on her lips. “And also, you know, a dork.”

  “This is stupid,” the girl said again, still holding Charlee’s hand at the top of her jeans. She was smiling now, though, smiling as she muttered into the minimal space between their lips. “Stupid and reckless and stupid.”

  “We can stop, uh…” Charlee wanted to say her name, but then she remembered she didn’t even know it, so she just bit her lip and repeated herself. “We can stop.”

  The girl stared at her for one long, heated moment, her gaze flitting back and forth between Charlee’s eyes and lips. She licked her own before saying, “My name is Alex,” as if she knew it was what Charlee was searching for. She then popped open the button on her jeans and pushed Charlee’s fingers down into her underwear. “And I don’t want to stop.”

  When Charlee dipped inside Alex for the first time, she already knew she didn’t want it to be the last.

  Chapter 5

  “No way. You’re making this shit up.”

  “I’m not.” Alex hustles down the street toward her office. “I couldn’t make this up if I tried, Vinny.”

  “You forget I knew you as a kid. You used to get away with the most ridiculous lies.”

  “I’m not lying.” Alex tucks her head down against the cold breeze. “My life is a cruel joke.”

  “You seriously went to one of Charlee’s art shows without knowing it was her art show?”

  “Yes.”

  “You actually expect me to believe you didn’t know it was her art show?”

  “No, Vinaya, you’re absolutely right,” Alex says, droning. “I willfully planned to take my girlfriend to my ex-girlfriend’s art show so we could mutually admire a giant painting of my naked ass together.” She tossed a hand in the air as she carried on. “But why stop there? Why not proceed to have the world’s most awkward dinner, ending in my ex-girlfriend having a panic attack, which I heroically swoop in to soothe away while my current girlfriend and my ex-girlfriend’s boyfriend stand by and observe?”

  A hard laugh shakes through the line. “Okay, okay,” Vinny says. “I get it. You can’t make this up. But holy hell.”

  “I know.”

  “That’s some seriously mortifying shit, Alex.”

  “That’s what I’m trying to communicate to you, yes.”

  “Like, that’s worse than the time Charlee’s art professor caught you guys in that studio, screwing.”

  Alex stops at the crosswalk and jabs the button. “This conversation is making me hate you.”

  “This conversation’s making my life.” Vinny laughs again, deep and echoing. Alex suspects she is holding her belly. Or rolling on the floor. “I mean, this is some grade-A fuckery.”

  Alex tugs her beanie down to cover more of her forehead as she crosses the street. “Can we move on from your shock and amazement, please?”

  “Why can’t you and Charlee ever do anything like normal people? You throw down in a parking lot the day you meet. Then you screw in a library, because ‘we just clicked, Vinaya.’” The voice she uses to mimic Alex is drawling and painfully accurate, and Alex wants to hate her for it, but it only makes her smile. “And then a year later, you’re telling me she’s the love of your little gay life and moving into a shitty loft with a perverted alien on the wall.”

  “Which she’s apparently still living in,” Alex says, licking her chapped lips and shaking her head. “I heard her boyfriend give the cab driver the address.” Vinny suddenly goes quiet, and Alex feels like a weight has just dropped in her stomach. She stops in her tracks. “Did you know?”

  “Alex, listen, I—”

  “No, Vinaya, tell me you didn’t know Charlee was still in the city,” Alex says. “Tell me you didn’t know she was still living in our—” She stops, closes her eyes for a moment. “In that loft. I need to hear you say it.”

  “Would it be so bad if I knew? It wouldn’t have changed anything.”

  Alex blinks, stunned. “Have you been talking to her? Did you stay in touch with her all this time?”

  “No,” Vinny says. “Well, for a while, but not all this time, no. We haven’t talked in a long time, and I haven’t seen her since she asked me to stop coming around. You know that. I’ve just been keeping tabs on her. Mostly just making sure she’s okay from a distance. It’s not like we’ve been going out every weekend, Alex.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Because you never would have gotten your shit together if you knew. You would’ve just obsessed over it and asked me a million questions every time we talked, and you wouldn’t have been able to live.”

  Alex leans against the brick wall of a random building. “I can’t believe you kept in touch with her.”

  “If you can even call it that. I don’t think an occasional random text really counts as keeping in touch.”

  “Still.”

  “You kept in touch with Gabby all this time. She calls you every Wednesday, and Charlee doesn’t even know about that.”

  “That’s different. The woman is practically my adoptive mother.”

  “Yeah, well, Charlee is practically my sister.”

  The words hit Alex like a punch to the gut, and her own words to Kari come rushing back to her. Family. They’d been a family—she, Charlee, Vinny, Cam, and Charlee’s parents. She and Charlee hadn’t been the only ones who lost something.

  Alex and Charlee leaned tiredly against each other as they sat at the Parker family cabin’s kitchen island, watching Gabby flip pancakes on a massive skillet. The radio on the kitchen counter churned out old classic tunes, and the sun beat through the window over the kitchen sink. It was the second day of the family vacation they’d ag
reed to take with Charlee’s parents, and they hadn’t gone to bed until nearly three in the morning. Charlee had been too excited about the sky and how visible the stars were away from the city, and Alex had been too excited about Charlee’s excitement to drag her inside to bed.

  “Why are we awake?”

  Charlee yawned. “Pancakes.”

  “It’s ten o’clock,” Gabby said, shaking her head at them. “You two act like the sun just came up.”

  “And it’s not our fault you stayed up all night whispering sweet nothings to each other under the stars.” Charlee’s dad came down the stairs, sandy-blonde hair sticking up in places. He looked so like Charlee, the same round cheeks and blue eyes. His hair was just a bit lighter than hers, but they had the same cleft chin and the same sense of humor. Charlee’s button nose and gentle smile were all Gabby, though. Alex’s chest warmed with a sad sort of pleasantness: she had never looked in the mirror and seen anyone’s features but her own. She could hardly remember her parents at all.

  “They were definitely sweet somethings, Dad.” Charlee waggled her eyebrows.

  Alex blinked. The warmth in her chest spread to her cheeks, and she pinched Charlee’s side. It drew a wild laugh.

  Drew stopped at the island to drop a kiss to Charlee’s head. “Good morning, sweet pea.”

  “Morning, Dad.”

  Moving over to Alex, he kissed the top of her head as well. “Good morning, sweeter pea.”

  Alex laughed at Charlee’s offended gasp. “Good morning, Drew.”

  “Why is Alex the sweeter pea?” Charlee tugged at Alex’s hair as she leaned back into her chest. She pulled Alex’s arms around her even as she glared at her dad from across the kitchen. He’d already moved to wrap his own arms around his wife.

  “Good morning, sweetest pea,” he said before planting a kiss on Gabby’s lips. He ran a hand over her shoulder-length brown hair, copper tones catching the light from the window, and kissed her again. He then popped a blueberry from a bowl by the stove into his mouth and leaned against the counter, facing the girls. He grinned at Charlee. “You know Alex is the sweeter one.”