The Art of My Life Read online

  He crossed the two steps between them and pried her fingers from the bulkhead, slipping the blanket around her, pulling her close. “It’s just a squall. It’ll blow over.”

  A wave smacked against the hull, lurching the boat to one side and pitching them off balance. They fell onto the bunk in a tangle of limbs.

  Cal laughed and tried to sit up.

  Aly’s arms snaked around him in a death grip, pinning him to the bunk. “It’s not funny.”

  Cal pushed the hair out of her eyes. “The thing that looks like a wire brush on top of the mast is a lightening arrestor. You’re as safe here as you would be in your condo.”

  “That’s not helping.”

  Cal stuffed pillows under their heads and repositioned the blanket over her. He rubbed circles on her back. “It’ll be okay.”

  The boat rocked in the wind. A shudder passed through Aly’s body with every clap of thunder.

  Van Gogh put his front paws on the bunk and tried to scramble up.

  Cal shoved him down. “No, you big sissy. If I let you up here once, you’ll think you get to sleep here every night. Besides, if it’s between you and Aly in my bed, she’s going to win every time.”

  Aly giggled.

  Good. She was calming down.

  The storm sounded like an all-night rain and not a squall that would rumble through in half an hour. Maybe that was wishful thinking.

  Now that Aly was in his arms, he didn’t want to let her go. With the exception of his short-lived infatuation with Raine, he’d probably always wanted permanence with Aly. Only now, time was running out. Aly probably dated some guy now. She was always seeing someone. But at twenty-three, people didn’t just go out. They got engaged. She could marry the guy in months.

  He closed the space between them and filled his lungs with the scent of mint growing in the forest. He needed Aly to rescue his business, his self-worth, so he’d have something to offer her. It was humiliating to ask. But he was out of options.

  The thunder subsided, but rain continued to assault the boat and his optimism. Aly had said the bank was past the point of giving him more time. She was too smart to sign on to a sinking business. He needed to prepare himself for her no.

  Aly’s breathing eased into a normal cadence, and his body warmed against hers. He’d made some pretty stupid decisions in the past, but having sex with Aly tonight would go into the hall of fame. He put air between them.

  Light from the main cabin spilled across her sleeping eyes. Every fiber in him wanted her.

  Mascara coated her almost colorless lashes. He picked up a white-blonde tendril from the hair pooling on the bunk around her face and rubbed it between his fingers. He hadn’t gotten the color right the first time he painted her when she was fifteen. In Sleepy Aly, he’d painted to stay sober after Raine dumped him; the color had been better, but still not exact. When he painted Aly again, he’d take his time and get it perfect.

  He propped his head on his hand and studied her thin brows, exactly proportioned nose. The asymmetrical quality of her eyes, the left larger than the right, wasn’t detectable to most people. She’d always hated her “lopsided” eyes and used makeup to minimize the difference. But Cal loved the contrast. He’d drawn and painted her enough to know it wasn’t so much a matter of size, but of one eye appearing wide open and the other heavy-lidded. He ran the back of his finger against the blush of her cheek. It would be a challenge, but he knew he could capture the silkiness of her skin on canvas.

  The shadowed gap between her blouse and chest teased him. Aly had offered to comfort him with her body when he’d been reeling from Raine. He’d turned her down, one of the few good decisions he’d made during that dark time. He’d get that chance to make it with Aly if he had anything to say about it.

  That depended on Aly’s answer to his plea for help. And it didn’t look like he would get a reply in the next five minutes. He could think of worse ways to wait.

  Panic jetted through Aly as she gained consciousness. A heart thumped under her right ear. Male scent filled her nostrils. She’d woken up in some guy’s arms—something she promised two years ago she’d never do again. Her tongue ran across the roof of her mouth and tasted morning breath and remorse.

  A dog whimpered in his sleep. Van Gogh. Cal. Her head rested on Cal’s chest. An underwire dug into her ribs. Fully dressed. Relief filtered through her. Thank God, it was Cal. Then, she remembered the storm, the feeling of safety in Cal’s arms. How she always felt with Cal. But the feeling was a lie. Cal had snapped her heart in two.

  The rain had stopped. The Escape rocked softly, water slapping contentment against the hull. She closed her eyes to savor the quiet whistle at the end of Cal’s breaths as he slept—intimate and foreign.

  If they’d been together since she was fifteen, Cal would have put a ring on her finger a long time ago. Their firstborn would sleep in the bow berth. And when Aly woke up at dawn, her hands would explore the map of Cal’s body—one she’d know as well as her own. It was just this kind of useless daydreaming that would set her up for a second heartbreak.

  Cal shifted in his sleep and tightened his arms around her. A sense of being loved washed over her—did he know it was her in his sleep?—and subsided.

  Regardless of her vow, if Cal woke up and wanted her, she didn’t know if she had the strength to say no. She hadn’t had sex in two years—which probably accounted for the near-starvation she felt for Cal’s touch. If she gave in, she couldn’t feel more guilt than she already felt.

  She could see her sister plopping her hands on her hips and saying, “Don’t do it. You’ll be sorry. You know you will.” Easy for Kallie to say. She’d held onto her virginity with a vise grip until her honeymoon.

  Cal and Kallie thought she slept with guys because she was looking for Daddy’s love. They were probably right. Kallie had convinced her that just because she responded to Daddy’s defection differently didn’t mean she was any better than Aly. But knowing why she slept with her boyfriends didn’t make the guilt go away. The nuns had always made it perfectly clear that sex was only permitted in marriage. Her drive to be loved had always trumped doing the right thing.

  And she was sick of trying to get Daddy to care about her. The back child support Mom had sued him for could rot before she’d spend it. Blood money—money that came from Daddy’s bloodline running through her body, not from his love.

  She’d already learned the hard way that Cal was a bad risk, no matter how safe he felt. He’d chosen Evie over her before. And Evie’s one-act last night proved she was still in the picture.

  She eased herself out of Cal’s grasp and sat up, tugging the blanket with her.

  Cal’s jean-clad knee poked out when she disturbed the covers.

  Dawn warmed the cabin, the stubble on Cal’s face. His lips slightly parted. Sea-softened, kinky hair sprawled across his pillow. Warm brown eyes blinked open. He looked disoriented, then his expression cleared and he lumbered up. “I must have fallen asleep.” Gravel roughened his voice.

  “Yeah. It’s morning.”

  He leaned forward, hesitated.

  Her pulse sped and her breath hitched.

  Cal smiled and planted a kiss on her cheek and the corner of her mouth. A second stretched into eternity, and the kiss ended. “Thanks for coming. For hearing me out.”

  Her brain scrambled for something intelligible to say. “For going psycho.”

  Cal grinned. “Do I look like I’m complaining?”

  She mumbled something about needing to wash her face and shut herself into the head.

  Everything changed with that kiss, and nothing changed. It was a perfect kiss—not steamy or platonic. The impact felt small, like a punctuation mark at the end of a sentence or a capital letter at the beginning of the next. But it wasn’t.

  She rubbed toothpaste on her teeth, swished water around her mouth, and spit.

  She could resign from the world’s most boring job at the bank. Other than socking money aw
ay, she wasn’t getting any closer to her goal of owning her own business before she turned twenty-five. She’d always thought she’d open a gallery, but the type of business was less important than running it.

  Aly splashed cold water on her face and toweled it dry. Goose bumps rose on her bare arms. She grabbed the sweatshirt that hung on the back of the door and pulled it over her head, inhaling Cal. She could run his business. She knew she could.

  Cal sliced pumpernickel toast into eight triangles dotted with butter. They chased the toast with a Dr. Pepper they split. No weirdness crept in.

  She huddled in the back of Cal’s dinghy trying to capture all the ideas for his business pop-corning into her brain as they neared the dock.

  In the distance Evie climbed out of her hatch.

  Aly snapped back into sanity and the sting of reality. Cal and Evie had to be still going out. Things seemed strained between them yesterday. But she’d swear to it that Evie was the only one Cal had ever slept with.

  Aly touched her lips. This morning he’d kissed her. Maybe it was just a thank-you kiss from his perspective. But it didn’t matter. She’d have to be a masochist to face Evie or the possibility of seeing Cal and Evie together every day. No contact with Cal was the least painful option. And the smartest.

  Like a slo-mo DVD, Aly watched Evie’s chin navigate toward the parking lot, then angle to where she and Cal sat in the dinghy. Evie slammed her hatch and marched in their direction.

  Aly sucked in a shaky breath of salt-laden air as Cal grabbed hold of the dock. She squinted at him in the morning sun—needing to spit the words out before Evie descended on them. “My boss is going to call in your loan no matter what I say. I-I want to help you, Cal. You have to believe that. But I can’t. I just can’t.” Her voice broke.

  She couldn’t read his expression with the sun in her eyes, but she heard him fill and empty his lungs. “It’s your call, Al.” His voice was heavy, resigned. He held out his hand to help her up the ladder to the pier and her grip closed around his thick fingers, the calluses on his palm. She could almost feel herself rip in two.

  Evie glared down at them. “Isn’t this cozy. Seven-thirty a.m. Yesterday’s clothes.”

  Chapter 7

  October 16

  Why did Monet choose mood over exact representation? Was Georges Seurat OCD or did he just like dots? What if Picasso had spent his life painting portraits or landscapes? How do you make a decision?

  Aly at www.The-Art-Of-My-Life.blogspot.com

  Cal sat on the deck, his legs dangling over the word Escape on the transom. He glanced at the thick, plum-colored sky churning overhead and breathed in the scent of rain. He’d been an idiot to think Aly would help. Freaking coincidence that he’d blurted out a prayer, then realized he was doodling Aly’s face on the pad in front of him.

  She said it was the bank that shut him down, but he couldn’t help thinking Aly wanted nothing to do with him. And he knew why.

  No amount of explaining would erase the day Aly saw him making out with Evie on the beach more than two years ago. That he’d been trying to protect Aly in his own skewed way made no difference.

  His mind wandered back to the summer he got caught smoking weed on New Smyrna Beach Surf and Sailing Camp property. He didn’t know who had hurt worse—him getting fired from his annual art teaching gig and losing Raine or Jesse firing his own brother. Or maybe it had been Aly who thought she was pregnant with cheating asshole Garner Fritz’s baby.

  Aly had found him in Cody’s garage, Kurt Cobain blaring from the boom box, staring at Raine’s portrait, halfway between a hangover and getting lit. They tangled in each other’s arms on the bare sleeper-sofa mattress, her tears smeared against his.

  Aly filled her lungs and released a shuddering breath. “We could, you know….” She drew circles on his chest with her finger. “…comfort each other.” Her words were muffled against the neck of his two-day-old T-shirt.

  Even with his emotions fogged with Raine and days of chemical comfort, the heat of Aly’s suggestion fisted in his groin, flushing outward all the way to his fingertips, toes, the skin of his scalp.

  He didn’t say anything, didn’t move. Didn’t breathe. Didn’t dare.

  “It was a dumb idea. Forget I said it.” She started to roll away.

  Cal held on. “Stay here. Let me hold you. You don’t need another guy to use you right now.”

  She relaxed against him, and he thought about changing his brake pads, estimating how much turpentine he had left in the can against the wall—anything to keep his hands from touring her body.

  “I told Raine you and I were like siblings, but—” He pulled away a little so he could see her face. “That’s not quite right, is it?”

  Not even close.

  The wind whipped the river into tiny whitecaps, bobbing the Escape on her anchor line.

  He yanked up his sweatshirt hood.

  He’d let Aly think he took her offer of sex and the I love you she blurted out later as friendship. And two days later when Evie thrust her breasts in his face at Stoney’s—he touched.

  Getting some after twenty-three years of nada clouded his brain longer than it should have. Instead of messing with Evie, he wished he’d kept his bong lit till he smoked Raine out of his gut.

  Aly would have pulled him out of his Raine tail-spin, set him on his feet, and cheered for his success. Maybe he’d be graduating from college now, getting a real job, planning forever with Aly.

  Instead, next week, the boat would go up for sale. He’d move back into Henna’s, beg Stoney for his job back at the Ink Slab. Without a prayer of winning Aly.

  He pulled the joint out of his pocket he’d rolled earlier, ran it under his nose. He wanted to go back to how he felt with Aly in his arms filling his senses—full of hope, desire, the future. Marijuana couldn’t take him there, but it could, for a few hours, make him not care.

  Starr stood on the dock and stared across the water at the Escape. Angry clouds boiled and spit mist from the sky.

  Cal hunched over the back of the boat, his cupped hand moving to his lips, pausing, returning to his side—a dance she’d watched her parents do till she could watch the video on the inside of her eyelids. But never Cal. Of course, she knew he smoked pot. He’d been arrested with a felonious quantity on his person. But actually seeing him smoke—

  She sank to the damp boards of the dock, winded by the impact of her emotions. Oh, God, no. Her son repeating her father’s life. She clenched her arms across her waist and tried to pray, but her thoughts seemed to plummet into the Intercoastal instead.

  Gradually, grief receded, and rage crashed back in its place. She texted Cal to come in and paced the dock.

  Cal palmed his phone, stared at it. The drawbridge opened, slicing a ribbon of purple sky between the two halves of the town. Cal pocketed the phone. He turned his face toward the dock.

  Starr halted, hands at her sides. If Cal didn’t make a move in five minutes, she’d take a dinghy tied behind one of the larger boats and row out to him.

  Cal looked away. A gull swooped toward the mouth of the Intercoastal and the freedom of the ocean. He stood, took a long drag, and flicked the remains of the joint into the river.

  Starr watched Cal untie the rope from the deck and drop into the dinghy, wondering if Cal obeyed because he felt her fury from across the water.

  He rowed with languorous strokes. Muscles worked across his back, the cords of a man. He wasn’t the six-year-old who pulled a Calvin and Hobbes prank or the teen who skipped school. But he was still her son whom she loved with desperation.

  Cal tossed the oars into the bottom of the boat and grabbed hold of the ladder. He shot a sullen glance at her, then stared at the barnacle-encrusted piling in front of him.

  “Evie came over this morning in hysterics because you and Aly slept together. Didn’t I teach you better than that?”

  Cal raised bloodshot eyes to her. “We did not have sex.”

  She believed him,
and she was surprised. Maybe she was crazy, but something in his eyes, the flatness of his voice convinced her. A mother knew when her son was telling the truth. Relief sanded the edge off her anger.

  “I get down here and I see you smoking weed, something no mother should ever have to witness. I’m watching a rerun of a bad movie—my dad’s life.”

  Cal’s jaw hardened. He stared past her right ear.

  “People say pot’s not addictive. That’s bullshit.”

  Cal’s head jerked up.

  Good. She wanted to shock him. She probably hadn’t used a coarse word in four decades—since her girlhood best friend’s mother taught her what they were. “You want to be Leaf? Well, I have a story to tell you.” She crossed her arms and stared down at the off-center part in Cal’s hair.

  “My father came home drunk and fought with my grandfather. Leaf knew he’d never been able to do anything good enough to please his father. And when he said as much, my grandfather said, ‘You’re damn straight you haven’t.’ ”

  Cal’s knuckles whitened on the ladder.

  Starr sighed. “That was the last time they saw each other—the night of my father’s high school graduation. I heard the story when I was a teen one night when Dad was flying particularly high.”

  She tucked a wisp of hair behind her ear that had fallen from her bun and tickled her neck. Her fingers brushed the slick outline of her scar. “I researched his three siblings on the Internet—all college graduates with white-collar jobs. But my father chose a love affair with marijuana instead of a real life. Pot numbed him from the pain his father generated, but it also robbed Henna of a deep emotional connection with him. It robbed me.” Her voice broke. She stopped, filled her lungs with damp, fishy air.

  Cal looked up, his eyes searching hers. Something inside each of them welded in that second.

  Starr squatted down, shortening the distance between them to a few feet. “We have an addict’s genes. If you don’t make a choice, you’ll keep walking down this road. Someday you’ll be a paranoid old man with no gut-level bond with another human.