by Danika Stone
Friday she’d skipped class, leaving Cole in a black mood. That night, he’d pounded away at the sandstone slab until he could no longer feel his hands. He was surprised to discover that the male shape he’d been trying to reveal had started to show the looser, curvier lines of a female. He was working front to back, the way he’d once carved into slabs of butter on his grandfather’s table, earning him a slap to the back of the head. It was like ice melting… the form slowly peeling back in layers.
Cole had let his muse lead, watching as muscled shoulders receded, the wide chest dipped inward revealing breasts and the waist narrowing so that hips emerged. He’d worked until he couldn’t, the nerves of his hands buzzing with the repeated blows of the mallet, upper arms burning. Again, exhausted, he’d headed home to shower and bed.
His last thoughts, before weary sleep pulled him under in bed that night, had been of her.
Tonight, she was in his thoughts once more. He was counting on her presence at this opening; willing to bet that a graffiti artist with a police record and an anti-war message would lure her out. With this in mind, Cole dressed warmly and walked downtown.
: : : : : : : : : :
Ava and Marcus wandered through the vaulted gallery space, drawn to the clashing colours and layered words of the artwork lining the walls. ‘The guy is really fucking good!’ she thought. Chim leaned in, eyebrows raised.
“Yours are better,” he whispered.
She grinned and turned to argue, but her voice disappeared along the way. The dark-haired sculptor from her art history class had just wandered in and was chatting with some of the other students by the door, an easy smile on his lips. A corner of her mouth tugged up as she watched him from afar. Ava had thought of him more than once since he’d talked to her (though she would have denied it if she’d been asked).
‘Cole Thomas.’
The name, like an incantation, was on her lips. He wore a heavy wool coat tonight, the tips of his ears bright red from the cold. She absently wondered if he owned a car.
Chim stepped away from Ava’s side and she heard him greet someone.
“My friend Ava here,” he said, voice pitched to catch her attention, “will be giving you a run for your money in a couple years.”
Ava spun on her heel, about to tell Chim to ‘shut up’, but she stopped when she saw who he was talking with. Next to him stood Kip Chambers, tonight’s feted artist, somehow even taller and more impressive in person. He had amber eyes, a runner’s lean frame, and warm, tanned skin that hinted at his First Nations heritage. Tonight he wore a suit that was simultaneously too big and too small, his wrists sticking out past sleeves that were made for a much bulkier man. His longish brown hair hung half into his eyes. It all made him look more like a skateboarder than a famous artist.
Ava smiled despite herself. Kip looked as out of place as she felt.
On his arm was a slender woman, her hennaed hair in a pixie cut. She wore a black dress and high heels; her wrists and neck glittered with heavy silver jewellery. The woman smiled pleasantly, reaching out a manicured hand to Ava.
“Raya Simpson,” she offered, shaking her hand firmly. “Chambers’ agent.”
“Ava Brooks,” she finally answered, lifting her chin. Defiant. “My tag’s Booker.”
Next to Simpson, Kip laughed, stepping forward and interrupting.
“Well I’ll be damned!” he said. He clapped one hand on her shoulder while the other pumped her fist in a hard handshake. “Then I’m a fan.”
Ava grinned, embarrassed by the overt praise. Kip stepped back from her, crossing his arms and giving her a head to toe once-over, eyes lingering on her curves. Ava was very god-damned glad she’d chosen the outfit she had. She caught Chim’s eyes over Kip’s shoulder. He nodded smugly, then stepped away, leaving them to talk.
“So Booker,” Raya said amused. “That’s an interesting tag. What’s the story behind it?”
Ava glanced over at Chim’s retreating back. He was better at telling this story than she was.
“Uh, well… It’s kind of a silly story,” Ava started, looking over at Kip who was grinning. ‘Fuck this,’ she thought, feeling bold. This guy had done jail time for his artwork. “I guess it started the first time the police caught me spray-painting,” Ava said, looking back to Raya. “I was underage… got away with a slap on the wrist and some probation, but my friend Marcus there, started joking about how I was going to get caught. Kept telling people ‘police are gonna book her, you watch, it’s just a matter of time’. I’d gone back to it – painting train cars and such – and my friends kept getting caught. There were times it was close for me too, but I just seemed be really good at sensing when to cut my losses and leave.”
Ava caught Kip’s eyes. He hadn’t been so lucky.
“Guess I just got… really good at not getting caught,” she added sheepishly.
“Wish I could say the same,” he answered.
Ava dropped her eyes. There was something a little suggestive about the way his gaze lingered on her mouth and breasts, the edge of his lips curling though his eyes were at half mast. Although Kip was a good-looking guy, very good-looking, actually, she had no intention of being a quick lay in the back room of the gallery. Not her thing.
“Like a sixth sense for me,” she muttered, a warm blush rising up her throat. She turned back to Raya. “So then Chim – Marcus, I mean – kept saying that they’d book her… me… and somehow – you know how those things go – the name became Booker and somehow that just stuck.”
Kip’s voice drew both of them back to him.
“Saw your work out in the train yards,” he said, slouching closer to the woman at his side. Ava stepped back slightly. “Raya here is filming a documentary about up-and-coming underground artists,” Kip explained, “and we saw some goddamn amazing work by you. Took me a bit to figure out your tag. Complex.”
He grinned, and Ava couldn’t help but feel at little more at ease with him somehow. He just seemed so strangely comfortable with her, but maybe, she thought, all celebrities were like that. Kip Chambers had half the world eating out of his hand. Not a surprise then, that he’d expect her to be, too.
“… And so that’s you!” he said, a slight pause punctuating his words. He was watching her again, an inquisitive half-smile tugging at his lips.
“Yeah, it is...” she answered awkwardly, not sure what else to say.
“Lot of anger in your work,” Chambers added, his smile unwavering.
Ava shrugged. He was right, of course, and if he’d seen her work in the train-yards, then it had been years since she’d originally painted it. Her mother’s face flashed into her mind. Shay had left when Ava was five, but her mother’s legacy still emerged in Ava’s darker moments, even to this day. She shivered. Her mother’s disappearance was a turning point in her life. A good one.
“Don’t see the point in painting if it isn’t real,” Ava growled, her eyes narrowing, watching as his gaze flicked down and up her body once more. “I mean why do you stir all the shit up about the war if you don’t want a reaction from it?”
Chambers nodded, smirking. He glanced over to the dark-haired woman on his arm.
“Exactly.”
Simpson turned to Chambers, the appraising smile on her face matching his. Ava felt like she was missing something that had just passed between them. She just wasn’t quite sure what it was yet, but it was definitely there.
“May I...?” Raya asked, her hand reaching out to touch Kip’s shoulder. There was something possessive in the small gesture and Ava realized that Kip Chambers’ agent had a personal interest in his success.
“Absolutely!” Kip answered, beaming down at her. He turned his gaze back to Ava. “Great meeting you, Booker. Now, I gotta do a little ‘work’...” He made quotation marks in the air as he said it and Ava rolled her eyes, earning another bark of laughter.
“Yeah, I’m sure you do,” she answered saucily.
“I do actually,” he said, his
eyes doing that almost-imperceptible flicker once more. Down, up. “But uh… take a minute and talk to Raya here. I think she might have an offer that’d interest you.”
And with that, Kip Chambers turned to a cluster of potential black-suited buyers who were looking to decorate the entrances of banks and businesses across the country and beyond. Simpson stepped forward, her hand dropping to Ava’s elbow, thin eyebrows raised. She looked far more businesslike now. Her actions had a harder edge and Ava wondered at this slight change in demeanour. The tone felt almost… aggressive.
“I’d like to talk to you privately for a few minutes if I could,” she said, voice brusque. “Is Mr....” her words trailed off and she waved a ringed hand toward Chim who was standing at the hors d’oeuvres table, stuffing croquettes into his already full mouth. “...Your agent?”
“No… No agent,” Ava admitted, shrugging. “So you’ve just got to deal with me.”
Raya nodded seriously before pointing to a recessed doorway at the side of the gallery.
“I’m certain Jeffrey won’t mind me borrowing his office for a few minutes,” she said, and the two women left the bustling gallery space behind.
Chapter 3: The After Party
Ava's mind was abuzz with possibilities. Raya Simpson had just invited her to paint in the newly-created downtown public exhibition space the following summer. Beyond that, Ava would be one of the street artists featured in the larger film production that Simpson was organizing. It would be a paid, working vacation, but more importantly, it would give Ava the kind of exposure to dealers and buyers she needed to kick off a professional career. She grinned, suddenly realizing that she could now create the art she loved and get paid for doing it.
Life had done a one-eighty in the last twenty minutes.
Ava wandered back into the exhibition, stunned. The gallery was cramped and sweltering, with many more people in the rooms than had been there half an hour ago. Celebrity artists tended to do that. For a second, the image of Salvador Dali arriving in a car full of cabbages popped into her head and she giggled at the absurdity. She crossed the floor, dodging elbows and toes, trying to catch sight of Chim. Near the front, Kip Chambers was signing autographs. He caught her eye and winked before going back to his fans. Ava turned around in a slow circle, trying to find someone… anyone… she knew. As she made the final circuit, she stopped.
Cole Thomas was a few steps away from her, watching.
He smiled hesitantly as she saw him. ‘Fuck me...’ Ava thought to herself, a slow smile lifting the corner of her mouth. Her good mood had just gotten better.
She stepped forward, almost walking into a loudly laughing woman in high heels. Ava stepped back, gritting her teeth, then tried again, avoiding someone else before finally making it to Cole’s side. He’d been doing the same awkward dance through the bustling gallery and was holding her eyes as she reached him.
“I’ve had my fill,” he said, face grim, gesturing to the milling crowd. “You want to grab a coffee?”
Ava grinned, shaking her head. The abrupt intensity of this guy made her nervous… and here he was doing it all over again. But there was something else too… a sense that she knew him somehow.
“Wow,” she said with a smirk. “Don’t waste time screwing around, do you, Thomas?”
He stared at her, then stepped slightly closer. It could have been because it was so busy in the gallery that he wanted her to be able to hear him, but Ava felt her body react to the proximity. Leaning in, he spoke again.
“No, actually, I don’t.”
He moved his face away, those bright grey eyes watching her intently. Ava’s smile wavered, then returned. For half a second she wanted to run from him, and she couldn’t imagine why. She liked the feeling of him watching her.
“Well, you can buy me a drink, if you want,” she said, arching an eyebrow and walking away without looking back, “but it’s not going to be coffee.”
: : : : : : : : : :
They ended up at The Crown and Sceptre, a bar on the main floor of a nearby brick building. It was where the gallery's after party would be held. Not the official one, of course; that one was by invitation only. This was where the fun one with drinking and loud music would be held. For now, Cole and Ava had the place almost entirely to themselves.
Ava walked to the back table that she and Marcus and Suzanne generally shared, shrugging off her leather jacket and throwing it into the booth. It was her table by squatter’s rights, and the waitress nodded as Ava and Cole sat down. The woman brought two draft beers without asking, setting them on the table with a pair of menus. Cole smirked.
“Come here often, I take it?”
Ava nodded, taking a sip before turning to him, her face regaining the earlier wary look.
At once, both of them started to speak – “What did you—” – then stumbled awkwardly to a stop. Ava grinned.
After a single breath, they both started up: “I thought that—”
Again it had happened. Their words tumbling on top of each other in a strange symmetry. Cole pointed at Ava and she flushed.
“You go,” he said, taking a sip of beer, his eyes dropping slightly to watch her. “I’ll wait.”
“I was going to ask you,” she said, feeling conspicuously bare, “what you thought of the opening?”
He frowned before smoothing the expression away, growing cautious.
“I like the medium,” he said – surprising her – since she’d figured as a sculptor he’d be turned off by spray paint. “But I think the guy’s BSing a bit.”
Ava smirked, rolling her eyes.
“Isn’t that what all artists do though?”
Cole’s face turned deadly serious.
“I don’t.”
There was a vehemence to his words. She took a sip of her beer, eyes narrowing.
“No, I didn’t think you would… But a lot of mainstream people do. That’s my take, anyhow.”
Cole leaned forward and Ava found herself matching him, knees brushing together under the table.
“But then why the fuck be an artist in the first place?” he asked, his words edged with irritation.
Ava grinned. She liked this side of him… could relate to his anger.
“I don’t know, Cole Thomas,” she answered, her voice breathless. “Why the fuck are you an artist?”
He smiled at that, eyes sparkling intently.
“I have my reasons...” he said, lids lowering suggestively. Then he changed the subject. “You said something in class the other day...” he began.
Ava snorted, rolling her eyes.
“You mean when Wilkins flipped?”
Cole smiled, leaning back in.
“Yeah… the thing about Michelangelo’s women...” She glanced up at him, amazed that he even remembered one rude comment from a semester full of them. “You’re right, you know. The musculature’s off on them – and the bone structure too. I mean a woman’s pelvis doesn’t look like that… but he must have idealized men to paint like that… sculpt like—”
Ava sneered.
“That’s stupid,” she interrupted, rankling at the suggestion.
Cole laughed, his finger moving along the edge of his glass, tracing the smooth shape.
“Might be, but that’s what Michelangelo did...” He glanced up at her, smiling slowly. “Wilkins knows it too. It pisses him off that you were right. Just wants everyone to listen to him lecture and barf back his answers.”
Ava broke out in bawdy laughter at the jibe. She tipped her head back against the back of the booth, the buzz of the alcohol merging with the heady feeling she was getting by being near him. Her body was starting to burn.
“But I like muscles and a woman’s form,” Cole said, his gaze dropping to her body. His eyes traced her form the same way his fingers were caressing the frost-beaded glass. “I want to sculpt you sometime,” he said quietly. There was no hesitancy to the words.
She shivered, watching him.
“
Why?” she asked, the feeling of being slightly off-kilter now back. He reached out, drawing a line up the side of her arm with the damp pad of his finger. He followed the invisible striations of muscles, leaving her skin pebbled with gooseflesh. A slow, mischievous smile was curling the edge of his mouth and he hadn’t dropped her gaze.
“Because you’re beautiful… and you inspire me… and because then I’d have a good excuse to spend time with you...”
Ava’s face flamed red and she turned to look out at the growing crowd, heart pounding. That feeling was back, the one that kept urging her to run, but an even louder voice was now telling her to stay… and not just that, but to move closer. She took a steadying breath, forcing her eyes to catch his. Matching them in their blatant longing.
“Only if I get to paint you first,” she taunted, her blue eyes challenging. “Fair’s fair.”
He grinned, his eyes dropping to her body for a second. He offered his hand across the table, and Ava focused on the heat of his palm as he shook her hand.
“Deal.”
They both laughed and the tension disappeared as quickly as it had arisen.
In moments, the two of them were joking like old friends. Around them, the Crown filled with patrons from the gallery, while Cole and Ava talked artwork and sculpture and crucified Wilkins’ teaching style. They moved together like magnets. By the time Suzanne and Chim arrived, they were sitting side by side, his arm looped loosely around her waist.
: : : : : : : : : :
It was hours later, The Crown and Sceptre emptying as the after party broke up, when Cole offered to share a cab. Ava was overheated after the oppressive stuffiness of the nightclub and three hours of drinking. (That and the nearness of Cole.) Pulling a hat and gloves from her purse, she said she’d walk instead. He then offered to walk her home; his own apartment on campus was in the same direction, after all.
She nodded, accepting his offer.
The air was cold but not harsh; abnormally calm so that sound carried for long distances. Dogs barking and people’s laughter arrived disembodied from the streets beyond. They had been walking for some time in companionable silence when Cole spoke.
