Hunter rests his fingers over his closed mouth and stares at my arm like it’s Michelangelo’s David. My heart beats hard twice. I painted on my arm—I forgot about my scars, and I’m drawing attention to them...
“That’s why you didn’t think I purposely left out the star,” Hunter says as if paint on extremely scarred arms is normal. “Why you said if I had meant for it to be missing I would have somehow let that missing piece be known.”
I wince. Freak of nature! “I promise this whole speaking-out thing is unusual for me.”
“I hope it’s not,” he says. “It’s what I like about you. You’ve got fire, Echo. Don’t apologize for it.”
I’ve got fire. My lips lift a little. “Noah’s the one that’s lit it.”
“Fire is there or it’s not. If anything, he probably showed you where to look. Don’t give him any more credit than that.” He cuts off any response by directing me to the canvas. “Tell me, are you painting four or three?”
It’s like he poured a bucket of water over my blaze. “I don’t know.”
“You’ve got plenty of time to figure it out. I’m not asking you to finish it in days.”
“I only have days,” I mutter, though I guess I could finish it from home, but the only reason I’m doing this is to impress him. I’d rather have the people of Munchkinland toss me into a tornado than do this painting for kicks.
“That’s where you’re wrong.”
I dare to peek at him from the corner of my eye. Hunter picks up the stool and places it next to me. A nonverbal for me to sit, and I do. He remains standing, and my knees bounce.
“The other people in this program have spent months of their lives filling out applications and gathering portfolios for the opportunity I’m presenting to you.”
I check over my shoulder, and there’s no one there. Oh, heck, he’s talking to me.
“Study under me for the next year, Echo. We’re on a break, which is why it’s so disorganized at the moment, but in two weeks, I start teaching classes again.”
My pulse thuds in my ears. “I have a scholarship to college.”
“You’ll have a scholarship here. Most of my students do, but it’s a barter system. You’ll work in the coffee shop and the gallery twenty hours a week in exchange for studying under me. Most of the students find apartments together. If you still need extra money, I’ll pay you for anything you work over the twenty hours.”
My eyes dart in front of me, but I’m not finding what I’m looking for. Hunter Gray just asked me to study under him. The room shakes, though it’s more my hands than the floor. The best artist in the country believes in my work enough that he invited me to study under him.
“On top of that,” he continues. “If you can get this painting in decent shape before next week, I want to show it at the Denver Art Festival under my work-in-progress section along with those ten sketches of hands you’ve done.”
I snap out of my stupor. “That was in my sketchbook.” And I haven’t shown you that.
He points to the floor where I had left my sketchbook for anyone to peruse. How would he respond if he knew those are Noah’s hands? Drawn while he slept beside me. Drawn after he had caressed me so tenderly in the night.
“What do you say, Echo?”
What do I say? “Yes.”
A huge smile brightens his face. “Good.”
Hunter pulls out a key from his back pocket and lays it on the easel. “This is yours. Come and go as you please. I’m assuming you’ll need to return home and collect some stuff, but I expect you back here by the start of session in two weeks.”
Go home...then return here... Noah...my stomach plummets. “I mean, no. I mean...I mean...” This would mean being separated from Noah. “I mean I can’t...”
“You’re saying no?”
“No,” I rush out. “I mean, I don’t know.” I rake my hand through my hair, pulling at the roots. What’s wrong with me? “I need time to think.”
“What’s there to think about? You’re going to college for art, right? Is their program better than studying underneath me?”
“No,” I admit weakly. “But...” But Noah won’t be here. There’s no doubt he’ll go home. The state’s paying for his education. His entire world—his brothers are back there. There’s no way he’d cut off ties and leave his home to be with me.
“But what?”
“My father...” I whisper. But my father is moving. Moving forward, moving out, moving on. Our relationship works better via phone than it ever did in person. “I...told him I would try business classes as well as art because I was good at it...the business stuff as well as the art.”
“Business?”
My neck cracks to the side. I’m so exhausted having to explain this. “It’s not just my father’s idea, I believe it’s a good move, too—”
“It’s a brilliant move.”
That stalls all train of thought. “Excuse me?”
Hunter grabs a stool and sits across from me, and this rattles me more than him standing over me like a kid called into the principal’s office. It’s like he values me as an equal.
“This is where most artists run into problems—the making money part. We can paint anything we want, anytime we want, but it changes when we attempt to make money. Art is art and will always be art, but I also like eating. You, Echo—” he leans forward and his leg brushes mine “—are a genius for thinking ahead.”
Mouth completely open. “What?”
“When does college orientation start?”
“Two weeks.”
“Where are you studying?”
“The University of Louisville.”
He blanches like he tasted sour wine. I know, I know. Not the Mecca of art, but they have a great program. He taps his finger to his face in a persistent pattern as he assesses me in this slow, agonizing way that makes me self-conscious. I’m clothed, right?
His hand lands on my knee, and my body goes rigid under his touch. “I’m going to work on this, but in the meantime, you need to get the painting of Aires in decent shape for the showing.”
Hunter hops off the stool and is across the room before I can process anything that happened. He touched me. He’s offering me the world. He’s changing the game. Forget that...he touched me.
“Wait!”
Hunter glances at me over his shoulder. “What?”
What? “Really? That’s all you have to say. You offered me the chance of a lifetime, and I may or may not have accepted it, and you tell me you’re going to work on something?”
“That sums it up.”
Because I can’t control it, I smash my foot to the floor like a toddler. “Am I studying under you now?”
“That’s up to you, but what I’ll work on is that business class angle.”
I throw my hands out now, more confused.
“Only worry about that painting. We’ll discuss the details of you studying under me later.” Ending the conversation, Hunter waves his hand in the air as a goodbye then disappears down the stairs.
I release a long breath, and my palm scrubs the spot on my knee where his hand briefly made contact as if that will erase the sensation of someone other than Noah touching me. Going two years with hardly any physical contact leaves me uneasy when someone does offer such an intimate gesture. It’s especially weird when it’s from someone like Hunter.
My eyes fall to the key on the easel, and a flash of guilt hurts my soul. How do I explain this to Noah and even better, how can I explain it when I’m not sure which road I desire?
Noah
Beth sunbathes on the concrete walk next to the entrance of the pool. She’s soaking up the last remaining light of the evening in the two-piece Echo lent her. I sit on the curb and alternate between watching Isaiah
tune up Echo’s car and keeping an eye on Beth. She has a habit of attracting trouble.
“What’s going on at home with her?” I ask Isaiah.
Isaiah pulls his head out from under the hood long enough to glance at Beth and switch tools. A sheen of sweat covers his forehead—the only hint that the day’s been warm. “Trent’s selling.”
Trent: Beth’s mom’s sad excuse for a boyfriend. “He’s always selling.”
Isaiah shoots me a look that raises the hair on the back of my neck. “He hasn’t sold this shit before.”
Fuck. “Beth doesn’t know?”
“If she did, she wouldn’t be here.” Isaiah yanks on something with the tool. “Do you ever feel like we’re in a PlayStation war game, man? Like someone has set the clock, and the rest of the world’s counting down the last seconds of this level yet we don’t have a clue everything is about to go to hell?”
Right now and every damn day since my parents died. “Yeah.”
Isaiah assesses Beth again. “I don’t know how to save her. Not when she’s so damned determined to redeem someone who doesn’t want to be saved.”
He’s referring to Beth’s constant need to protect her mother, but the dark irony of his statement nags at me. I should tell him that Beth doesn’t want to be saved any more than her mother does, but it’d fall on deaf ears. Just as if he said the same words to her.
Possibly as if I said the same to Echo about her mom, or if Echo said the same to me about my mother’s family. Each one of us is screwed in the head.
At the other end of the building, Echo rounds the corner with her gaze stuck to the ground and a canvas in her hands. She has that lost-in-her-own-world expression again, and my insides hollow out. That painting of Aires is going to kill her then me. I jump to my feet, causing Isaiah to snap to attention. “Trouble?”
Considering what Hunter said to me, possibly. “Echo’s earlier than I thought she’d be. Will you give us a few minutes alone in the room?”
His lips turn up. “Sure.”
I punch his shoulder as I pass. “I just need to talk with her.”
“Some people are into that talking shit while they do it, man. I’m not here to judge.”
I raise a single finger in the air as a response, and Isaiah chuckles. With a wide enough start, Echo’s not in the hallway when I enter the hotel. I pull the key card out of my pocket and with a click, the colder air of the room rushes past me and into the hall.
Echo relaxes on the bed with her feet tucked underneath her, and she’s focused on the newer canvas that now sits on the floor, propped against the chair. The edges of the canvas are a blue-black. It’s foreign from anything I’ve seen her do before, especially the blank part in the middle.
Personally, I prefer the painting on the chair—the painting representing the night we made love. “S’up, baby.”
“Hey.” Echo sends me a smoldering smile, and I’ve got an instant hard-on. The door shuts, and I swear my dick moves with the sound.
“Are you ready to discuss what happened this morning?” she asks.
No. “It can wait.”
“Are we alone?”
“Yeah.” My body screams to stride over to her, wrap my arms around her waist, kiss her until she’s drunk on me and slowly remove every article of clothing on her body. Because I love Echo, and she deserves respect, I hitch my thumbs in my pockets and cock a hip against the wall. “Homework?”
She squishes her lips to the side. “No. Yes. I don’t know. If I get enough of it done in time, Hunter says he’ll enter this and ten of my sketches in his work-in-progress wall at the Denver Art Festival.”
This is where I bite back the crappy comment and prod for where she’s at on this. Echo can give me shit all she wants about what I say and do, but in the end, I’m learning fast. “Denver—is it a good thing or a carnie sideshow?”
Echo giggles, and her laughter plays along my skin, easing some of the stress built from my conversation with Hunter. “Carnie sideshow?”
“Tilt-a-whirl, Guess Your Weight, cotton candy and hot dog purging, Traumatized Goldfish Games. Carnie sideshow.”
“It’s not a carnie sideshow, but there’d be a ton less pressure on me if it was.” She gets lost in the painting again.
I walk over, rest on the bed beside her and slide my fingers along the nape of her neck. “Jesus, Echo. You’re cement blocks.”
Echo waggles her eyebrows. “Are you going to rub the tension away?”
Any room I had before in my pants vanishes. She means the tension in her neck. In her neck alone. I cup both hands over her shoulders and begin to knead out the knots. I love how she dips her head forward, and her muscles melt under my touch.
A soft moan leaves her lips, and screw me, that sound vibrates to my toes. I clear my throat. “Denver’s a good thing, then?”
Any ground I’d gained with her muscles I lost with the question, but I keep massaging her shoulders. It’s not a sacrifice to have an excuse to touch her smooth skin.
“It’s a good thing,” she replies. “He wants to put up the sketches I did of your hands.”
My fingers still. “My hands?”
“Uh...yeah... I...um...” Heat radiates from her neck, and red splotches develop. “Sometimes, after we made out and stuff, you’d fall asleep, and I’d sketch your hands because...well...” The blush spreads from her neck to her face. “I...uh...liked how you touched me so I wanted to draw your hands.”
When Echo used to draw, I saw the picture on the paper. Being with her this summer, seeing her create, experiencing the same day together, I understand now that there’s a meaning in what she chooses to draw. Echo wasn’t drawing my hands, she was drawing us.
“You can draw my hands anytime you want.” A surge of pride wells deep within me. Unable to contain it, I let the hands in question glide down her arms. I press my lips to the spot below her ear, and she leans back into me.
My hands sneak around her waist, and she links our fingers together. I pull her tight to me, and Echo admires the canvas again.
“When’s the art show?” I ask.
“The end of next week.”
Next week. Thursday or Friday. The time we need to leave so I can attend Jacob’s last game. My teeth click together.
“If he puts my work in the show, I’d like to be there,” she says quietly.
I’d miss my brother play ball. He asked me to come. I told him I’d try. “I don’t know.”
“I know.” Echo slips away. “You don’t have to decide now. He was sort of speaking gibberish by the end of the conversation, so I have no idea if it’s going to happen.”
Guilt eats at me over how casual she’s behaving. This is important to her, but part of me is ready to head home. It’s time for us to go back to our real life and figure us out there. It’ll be easier when we go home. Much easier. That is if Echo wants to return home with me.
She releases my hand and turns to face me. “If my work is displayed in the show...what if I stay and you go home?”
My eyes flash to hers. “Leave without you?”
She shrugs and immediately casts her gaze down at her lap. “It’s not like you enjoy the shows anyhow, and I know you’re ready to go home and see your brothers, and we’ll be okay away from each other, right? Like we’re okay if we don’t see each other every day?”
“Are you asking for time away from me?”
“No! I’m saying there are things that are important to you, and there are things that are important to me, and we’ll be okay together if we pursue them separately, right?”
It’s happening. What Mia said, what Hunter said, all of my fears...Echo’s moving forward...without me.
“Noah...” Her head falls back, and she stares at the ceiling like she’s saying a silent prayer. “Hunter as
ked me to study with him here in Colorado...for the year...and I might want to do it, and I was wondering what you thought?”
I think someone slashed me open with a rusty blade, and I strive for numb. Why did I decide to feel again? I was good at numb. I survived well on numb.
Echo’s eyes plead with me as she waits for an answer.
Stay with me.
Not here.
Not with him.
With me.
That’s my answer. My fingers twitch with the need to grab her, shake her, tell her that she’s killing me with this, but I don’t. I made her a promise. A promise that I’d take care of what she had given to me.
“It shouldn’t matter what I think. You’ve got to make this decision, and you’ve got to make it without worrying about me or your dad or your mom or even Hunter.”
Her eyebrows pull together. “You still want me, right? I mean...if I do this, we’ll still be together? Because we have to work. I want us to work.”
Long distance. Thousands of miles. Echo in an art studio where she belongs and me back flipping burgers. I drop my head, and my hands dig into my hair. “All I want is for you to be happy.”
She sniffs, and her voice cracks, the sound pushing a knife through me. “What if I chose Colorado...do you think that...maybe you could...come with me?”
I’m bleeding out. “I just got my brothers back.” And I have a shot at college. A chance at being something more...the more Echo deserves.
The door squeaks open. Laughing, Isaiah and Beth stumble in.
“Are you ready to go?” asks Beth.
I lift my head, and Echo stares at me. Tears pool in her eyes, and my heart is breaking. There’s a thickness in my throat I try to ignore. I don’t want to talk about this anymore. I don’t want to think anymore.
“Yeah,” I say to Beth. “Let’s go.”
Echo
Following the instructions on the GPS that Noah had programmed in before I told him Hunter’s news, I take a right into a middle of nowhere driveway and sag with relief when I spot the lines of cars, the shadows of groups of people milling around and the bonfire in the back field. In the passenger seat beside me, Noah leans against the door. It’s like he can’t place enough space between us and if he had bricks, he would have already built a wall.