The Art of Us

by Hilaria Alexander

  “Even though that was some funny shit, I have to admit.”

  I let out a frustrated groan.

  “Let me go, Amos.” I was mad—at myself, mostly—and I thought my voice would reflect that. Instead, it came out like a plea. He inhaled sharply through his nose and let his hands fall to his sides.

  “Wait, before you go, there’s something I need to say.”

  I had been ready to walk away, but his words anchored me in place. What did he need to tell me?

  “What is it?” I asked.

  His eyes danced across my face as if he wanted to memorize every line of it. His lips shifted into a humorless, straight line.

  “I’m sorry about Saturday night.”

  A warm ache spread in the middle of my chest, my heart lodged in my throat.

  Did he feel it, too? Did he feel the same way I felt?

  “I realize…I realize I wasn’t honest with you. I led you on, and for that I’m sorry.”

  “Oh.” The one syllable I was able to form was loaded with disappointment. I had obviously been hoping for something different, but really, what did I expect? Did I think he was suddenly going to break up with his girlfriend because we’d been flirting for an hour at some drunken party?

  This isn’t you, Lena, I thought to myself. It wasn’t. I didn’t pine over guys, much less guys who belonged to other women.

  “Are we okay? I’m sorry if I behaved like an ass Saturday night. I would like to be your friend. That’s all I ask,” he said, shoving his hands in his pockets and giving me a small shrug.

  His face…I couldn’t stop looking at it. I wanted to capture his expression and draw it, the worry and hope mixed with beauty…his strange, unusual beauty…his brown eyes that sometimes seemed to turn into a brownish green…his cheekbones, straight nose, and full lips that gave him such a distinguished look.

  His face was so unique and remarkable. I didn’t want to stop looking at him.

  But then my brain registered what he’d just said.

  Friends. He wants to be friends.

  I don’t do friends.

  “Sure,” I mumbled. He gave me a sincere, radiant smile, but I couldn’t quite reciprocate it. I backed away from him, staring at him wide-eyed, as if I had just come face-to-face with an alien.

  No one shocked me the way he did.

  I thought he’d say something else. Instead, he remained quiet.

  “I’m going to leave now,” I said, and he nodded.

  I made a beeline for the elevator, but before the doors opened and I could get in, he grabbed one of my hands and held it.

  My breath hitched and my poor, stupid heart started galloping in my chest, excited at the prospect of what could happen, while my brain reminded me this was wrong and I needed to get away from him.

  He was much too tempting, and I didn’t know if I could resist this temptation.

  The feel of his hand holding mine prompted a jolt of electricity that coursed through my body; the knot in my throat grew bigger, and tears filled my eyes. In that moment I realized we could never be friends, because just the touch of his hand made me crave more of him.

  All of him.

  I wanted all of him.

  Tears spilled across my cheeks and I was thankful I was still facing the elevator as it meant he couldn’t see them.

  “Lena, if you ever want to talk to me…if you ever want to tell me about Japan, about the reason behind your tattoo, I’m here for you.”

  The doors of the elevator opened. I tugged my hand away and stepped in without ever turning his way.

  AMOS

  After Lena left, I walked back to her cubicle to turn the lights off and noticed she’d left her notebook on her desk. It was the same one she’d had during the trip to Seattle, the one she sketched her ideas in.

  It was black and leather-bound, with one of those thin straps to keep the mark. I flipped through the pages and found all kinds of images. There were some inspired by her own characters, and others inspired by comics and characters she loved.

  I found myself flipping through more and more pages.

  There was a blank section in the middle, and after that, there were more sketches.

  There were several pages dedicated to Rika Ishikawa’s manga Aiko, the one she’d been talking about in the car.

  I had read the comic book—well, parts of it—once upon a time. It was about two girls with the same name who ended up living together after a mix-up with the apartment agency.

  One of them was a musician, while the other was an aspiring writer.

  Together, they went through every possible life-changing experience, including the tragic loss of one of the characters’ boyfriend. The manga had been suspended for years now, and no one had any idea how or when the story was ever going to reach its conclusion.

  Lena’s drawings didn’t seem to ring a bell. I didn’t recognize the storyline I was reading. A quick search on my phone to reread the highlights of the plot made me realize many of the pages in the notebook were not mere reproductions of Aiko’s pages.

  Lena was writing Aiko fanfiction, and from the looks of it, she was determined to write an ending for the unfinished comic book.

  Impulse took over.

  The fingers of my right hand twitched, all too eager to start. I couldn’t help it.

  Drawing was the best way I knew how to express myself.

  I considered this my way to tell her I was sorry.

  I had told her as much and she’d listened to me, but I wasn’t sure if she was ready to forgive me.

  I placed the notebook down on the desk and pulled out the chair. I sat down, ignoring the voice in my head that told me I had no business meddling with her things and that I should go home.

  Before I could even think about what I was doing, the pen touched the paper and I started drawing in Lena’s notebook.

  LENA

  “Hey, sorry I’m late,” I said, pulling out a chair across from Violet.

  She’d texted me the night before when I got home and asked me if I wanted to meet for breakfast before her wedding dress fitting. As my ass hit the chair, I winced. It hurt. Actually, I had noticed my ass hurting when I’d gotten on my bike on the way to meet her.

  “What’s that face for?” Violet asked.

  “My ass hurts.”

  “What in the hell did you do? Did you go on one of those crazy bike rides of yours? Like, thirty miles and counting?”

  I laughed, trying to recall if she might be right. No, I hadn’t been on one of my “crazy” bike rides, as she liked to call them. I replayed the events of the last twenty-four hours and realized why my glutes were so sore.

  Oh.

  “No,” I said with a half-embarrassed laugh. “I masturbated.”

  Violet’s eyes bugged out and a surprised laugh escaped her lips. “What? Why? I mean, what the hell were you doing, Lena?”

  “I guess I kind of was going to town on it. It was pretty epic.” I smiled and shrugged nonchalantly, grabbing the menu and scrolling through the available options.

  Part of me felt ashamed, however—not because I’d spent my evening masturbating, but rather because of whom I had been thinking of while doing it.

  Amos.

  Amos was all up in my head, and I couldn’t shake the thought of him, as much as I tried. I had been thinking about him looking at me, his arms, his scent, the memory of his lips that seemed to haunt me any time I let my guard down.

  Amos, who was in a relationship; I shouldn’t have been thinking of him.

  He was off-limits, but that didn’t seem to be enough of a turnoff for my dirty mind. Did I want him now because I couldn’t have him?

  Was I so twisted and selfish to desire him only now that I knew he was unavailable?

  No.

  Part of me had always wanted him, but my sense of self-preservation had made me run away from him and shut the door on any kind of sexual relationship we could have had. I needed to stop thinking about him, but as I th
ought that, something twisted in my stomach and I felt a painful twinge in my chest.

  Oh, great. Just great.

  Was I developing feelings for him now? It was absurd.

  I was the hookup queen. I didn’t do love, and I ran away from people who could hurt me.

  And yet, there I was, fighting an internal battle to forget about the guy.

  Violet’s laugh distracted me from my inner monologue. She gave me that kind of sympathetic smile friends have for each other and shook her head.

  “Oh, goodness. You must have been. But, you know, you might want to be careful. One of these days you might break your vagina—or your vibrator. One of the two.”

  “Ehhh. I might have to watch out for my clitoris, but my vagina doesn’t get a whole lot of play with that massager I use,” I told her with a wink, and she laughed again.

  “Why are you resorting to toys anyway? I thought Tinder was working just fine for you.”

  “Ugh. It’s been days and days of swiping left. Not a male worth fucking in a twenty-mile radius.”

  “Gosh, dating in the digital age sounds exhausting. It was exhausting years ago, so I’d guess it’s even worse now. I wouldn’t know where to start.”

  “It’s not just that. The horror stories you hear are true. It’s not just hard to find someone to date, it’s also hard to find someone you can fuck one or two times without them turning into a freaking psycho. Mostly what I find depressing is how pathetic some of these profiles are or how they decide to approach you. You can’t honestly believe I’m going to fall for it if you put ‘big dick’ in your profile. That will be the number one thing to make me swipe left.”

  It was true that I had been in a funk. Since I wasn’t one who looked for a relationship and was in it just for a bit of fun, I could be quite shallow when it came to swiping right. A guy had to have a certain “something” for me to want to meet him, and no, I didn’t mean the size of his package. In my experience, those with a big dick weren’t always all that. Scratch that—in my experience, those with a very big dick almost never knew how to use it, because they thought size would automatically take care of everything else.

  Wrong.

  Going jackrabbit on a woman never did it for anyone, thank you very much. It was all about the rocking of the hips and hitting the right spots.

  I hadn’t found anyone not even just good-looking, but who looked interesting enough lately.

  “What do these guys look like anyway?” Violet asked. “What do they put on their profile?”

  “Here, I’ll show you,” I said, pulling out my phone.

  “Ugh. What is that guy wearing in that picture? And why would he think disclosing that would be appealing?”

  “I know, right?” I kept swiping left to show her more profiles. “Jerk, poser, too sure of himself, power trip, jerk, tortured soul.” Then I swiped again and came across one that wasn’t half bad.

  Tall, broad shoulders, short dark hair. Strong jaw, straight nose. His eyes were brown, and there was something about him that reminded me of a certain someone.

  “This one looks all right,” Violet said.

  Seventy-eight percent match.

  He really did look like Amos in a way; maybe it was his shoulders or the shape of his face. Since I couldn’t get the thought of Amos out of my head by going to town on my own, maybe fucking someone who mildly resembled him would work?

  This is bad.

  This meant my pathetic crush was getting out of control and heading for obsession-ville. I wasn’t the kind of person who got obsessed over anyone particularly.

  This wasn’t me, and part of me knew already that fucking a guy who sort of looked like him wasn’t going to help at all.

  But something had to give.

  Maybe if the guy answered and we ended up meeting, it wouldn’t be too bad.

  Oh hell. What did I have to lose? Go for it, Lena.

  “You swiped right! Are you sure about that? Now what?”

  “Now we’ll see if he answers.”

  He might not even swipe right. Oh well. I didn’t really need to meet the guy.

  Just as I thought that, my phone buzzed with the notification.

  “Oh, look! He said yes! What’s next?”

  “One of us will message the other, see if we want to meet up.”

  “What do you do with these guys? Do you actually message them or talk on the phone before you meet?”

  “You know me, I try to get straight to the point. I try to make sure they aren’t into some weird fetish and I check their Facebook profile to make sure they aren’t in a relationship—or worse, married.”

  “How many douchebags like that have you come across?”

  “A few.”

  “Men are such bastards.”

  “Women do it, too.”

  “You’re right. It’s just that I hate cheaters. Marty and I had a long heart-to-heart about it.”

  “Please. Do you think Marty is ever going to cheat on you? You guys have been together how long now? He’s still as in love with you as when you first started going out, if not more. Plus, after what happened to him with that slut in college, he’s not down with the cheaters.”

  “Sure, you might be right, but marriage is hard, Lena. Yes, we’ve been living together, but you never know what life will throw at you. You never know how a relationship will develop over time. I just hope we can make it.”

  “You will,” I told her with absolute certainty, holding her gaze. Not only had I witnessed Marty and Violet’s relationship bloom, I had been around them long enough to know how much they loved each other.

  Sometimes—only sometimes—I got a little twinge of sadness thinking I was probably never going to have something like what they had.

  I didn’t seek it, and I didn’t put any hope in ever finding it.

  Yes, it was irrational to think I was cursed in some way, but in the last few years, I had come to the conclusion that I wasn’t destined to find happiness—not with another human being, at least. For as long as I could remember, every time things were good in my life and I was truly happy, something inevitably changed and I ended up losing the person I loved.

  My phone buzzed in my hand again.

  We both stared at it.

  “Oh, look! You got a message! How exciting. He’s so cute, let’s see what he has to say.”

  Violet and I went to her fitting. Somehow, she had decided to spare me and had made arrangements for me to try on my bridesmaid dress with just her.

  She had a separate appointment scheduled with the rest of her wedding party.

  “Ugh, the other bridesmaids are going to think I’m such a bitch!” I lamented, but I understood why she’d done it. I didn’t do well with large groups of women, for one reason or another. I was too different from them, and it always seemed so hard to find common interests with women who were outside of my work circle.

  I didn’t fall for the latest hairdo or fashion trends. I didn’t dream of having a family of my own one day.

  My dreams didn’t include wedding dresses.

  I dreamed of drawing and creating new characters and stories until the day my old self couldn’t hold a Staedtler pencil anymore.

  Yeah, I know, I was a weirdo, but that was what I did, what I lived for.

  I stared at my reflection, clad in a heather-lilac dress with a wide skirt and an organza strap around my neck. The bustier with a sweetheart neckline made my boobs look bigger. My eyes widened, surprised by the fact that I didn’t look that bad, after all.

  I couldn’t remember the last time I’d worn a dress.

  “Yeah, yeah, you’re welcome,” Violet said dismissively from inside her dressing room.

  “Well, I appreciate it. Thank you for giving me some peace of mind and your undivided attention.”

  “All right, maid of honor, are you ready? It’s time to give me your undivided attention and tell me how I look,” she said, stepping out of the dressing room in a gorgeous organza tea-length dr
ess with a slight ’40s pin-up vibe.

  It fit Violet’s personality to a T.

  The corset highlighted her curves perfectly, and it made her look both sexy and sweet. Her violet hair looked incandescent under the bright lights of the fitting room.

  “You look like a sultry cupcake,” I blurted out.

  “What? A cupcake? I don’t want to look like a cupcake. Is this the wrong dress? Oh my gosh, it’s totally the wrong dress. I need to have a backup plan,” she let out in a high-pitched voice.

  I took her hands in mine, realizing I might have said the wrong thing. I sucked at this stuff. How could I always be so damn awkward at basic human interactions?

  “Violet, listen to me: you look beautiful. Marty’s going to want to eat you up as soon as your minister is done declaring you husband and wife.”

  My words seemed to reassure her, and she let out a deep, calming breath.

  I turned her around, and we both faced the mirror. I put my hands on her shoulders, determined to make her realize she was fretting over nothing.

  “Look at yourself—you look gorgeous. Marty is one lucky man, and he knows it.”

  She gave me an uneasy smile and then slumped her shoulders, relaxing a bit. She stared at herself and after a few more seconds, a confident smile appeared on her red lips.

  “This is the one,” she said in a low, sure voice.

  “Yes, it is. This is your dress.”

  LENA

  After the bridal store, Violet accompanied me back to the diner, where I had left my bike.

  “Where are you going next?” she asked.

  “Not sure. Maybe the cute guy from the app will message me back,” I told her, pretending to be more excited than I actually was. Truth was, I had no plans. I pretty much worked weekends, too, if I didn’t have anything else going on. Sometimes I went shopping if I could stomach dealing with weekend shoppers, or I’d go for a bike ride on one of the city’s bike trails.

  My absolute favorite was Forest Park.

  I was a city girl at heart, but I liked that I could hop on a bike and go straight from my apartment to a thirty-mile trail that got you lost in the woods for a little bit.