Don’t Be in Love

15

Don’t Learn About His Hobbies — Adelaide

“We most likely won’t be back until one because we have to meet my dads at their place first. Then we’ll head to the red carpet and the actual movie and after, well, the afterparty.” Sabrina was rambling.

She tended to ramble when she was nervous or guilty. Currently, it was the latter. Because looking at her roommate (me) who was dressed like the epitome of the Tired College Student (the flannel pajama pants and an over washed T-shirt uniform), made her feel like she should’ve tried harder to convince me to go.

“Brina.”

“Addy.”

“I. Am. Fine. I’m actually more than fine. I had my last midterm and now all I want to do is watch cocky people go on cringey dates and fight about whose villa is larger,” I explained before tediously pushing a bobby pin into her hair.

I tilted her head down to make sure the pins were parallel before letting her get up from the coffee table. Her light blond hair complemented the glittery lavender A-line dress, along with her iridescent eyeshadow and teardrop earrings. She looked like a gumdrop. A gumdrop with a frown.

“If you look at me like my dog died one more time—”

“But you’re going to be all alone. On a Friday night. In London! What if you need something and don’t know where to go?” she stressed.

“We’ve lived here since June! She’ll be fine!” Mia shouted from her room. “Addy loves to be alone, she’s like a little grandma.”

You crack down on homework and suddenly Summer Adelaide is forgotten and has become the grandma of the group .

“I really wouldn’t mind some time by myself,” I emphasized.

“You’re sure?” Brina whispered.

“Yes. Now you’re going to be late!”

She grabbed my wrist and read my watch. “Crap! We’ll see you later!” she shouted into my ear as she hugged me.

Mia gave me an enthusiastic wave before they were out the door. I watched the picture frames rattle on the walls before pushing myself off the couch.

“Time to start the night.” I slugged back a gulp of my milkshake as I shuffled into my bedroom with my slippers.

I had an entire night to mold the couch cushions with the shape of my body as I thought about nothing but Jenny’s taste in men with tattoos and poor conversational skills on the island.

My desk drawer screeched as I dug around for my maroon nail polish in the sea of neutrals and stormy gray blues.

Meow .

The polishes jumped in the drawer under my grasp.

Maureen’s stupid cat was sitting on my balcony railing again.

“How are you even balancing on that? Your single thigh is larger than the width of the railing.”

His meow lowered an octave.

“What type of greeting did you expect? If you’d like to sit in peace, go to your balcony.”

He bared his canines and hissed.

“Fine, we’ll do this the hard way.” I reached for one of my magazines, stepped onto the balcony, and began fanning him. Then he turned his face.

“Kurt, come on. Go away, please! This is my only night where I don’t have to do anything . Do you understand how rare that is? No, of course you don’t, because you’re a cat.”

I rolled up the magazine and nudged his butt. The more I nudged him, the more he shifted. “Yes, there we go. Keep going.”

He hopped away onto my windowsill, between mine and my neighbor’s balconies, and … sat down.

“Are you seriously going to wait for me to leave? No way. I’m not getting up from the couch once I’m sitting down.”

I poked at his belly, trying to get him to hop to the neighbor’s balcony.

“I. Can’t. Deal. With. Your. Cat. Hair,” I huffed with every poke. I wedged my foot between the railings to prop myself up. My lower stomach squished against the baluster. “Go. That. Way. Come. On!” I gave him one more final push and—

I screamed as my feet left the balcony and the cement of my windowsill flew towards my face. I squeezed my eyes shut and threw my hand out as fingers latched onto my hips, tugging me in the opposite direction.

“Jesus Christ, Adelaide, what are you doing?” Dorian breathed out a sigh full of disbelief.

My chest churned out air like a broken air mattress pump.

“I,” exhale, “Kurt,” inhale, “room,” exhale.

“Someone was in your room?” He was horrified .

I shook my head. “No, no. The neighbor’s cat, Kurt.”

His stomach deflated. I fell deeper into his chest.

If I could count his breaths, it was time to get off.

I pushed away from him, stepping to the other side of the balcony.

“You were leaning over a railing for a cat?” he asked.

“He’s covering my clothes in his fur!”

“Bloody hell, I was thinking you were saving the cat.” He massaged his forehead. “I will buy you new clothes, Adelaide, if it means you’re not fighting with a cat and risking falling twenty feet.”

Wait. “What are you doing here?” I crossed my arms.

He bit on the inside of his cheek. “I need you to look over my project.”

I held my finger up. “Oh no, no, no.” I laughed and stepped off the balcony. Returning to my drawer, I rummaged for a base and top coat.

He followed me. “You—”

“Close the balcony,” I interjected. The balcony door screeched shut.

“It’s still been two weeks since we last met—and the library doesn’t count.”

“How unfortunate.” I wiggled my fingers around in the back of the drawer.

He exhaled. “I really—God, let me help.” Then his body was leaning over mine.

My eyes could’ve been shut, and I still would’ve felt him there. Even without the rich scent of his sweaters and jackets. No contact between us was necessary. It was simply him . My body was so hyper aware of him. Like a page expecting the drag of ink. I could’ve been unconscious, and I would’ve felt his presence.

He followed my hand, his arm running along mine like paint on a canvas, until his fingers were on mine, feeling for the bottle. I retrieved my palm hastily. He wriggled his hand until the polish was free and in my palm.

“Thank you,” I shut the drawer, put the polish down, and picked up my milkshake. “And I can’t, I’m busy.” I took a sip.

“Really?” he asked. He glanced down at my fuzzy slippers. But it sounded more like relly with his accent.

“ Relly ,” I repeated, referencing the milkshake.

He raised a brow as if to say oh, we’re doing this now?

“Is there alcohol in this?” he questioned.

Before I could respond, he was leaning forward, strands of his hair flopping forward as he took the straw into his mouth and sipped. His Adam’s apple bobbed. Then he was standing back up with one swipe of his tongue across his lips before I could let the image simmer any longer.

“Nope, you’re just making fun of me while sober,” he commented. “Change your slippers, we’re going.”

“Going where? I just told you I’m busy.” I shook my shake.

“We’re checking something off your to-do list and going over my project because that was our deal. Go throw on some real clothes, it’s my turn to teach you something tonight.”

Dorian wouldn’t budge. Not on the walk down the stairs. Not in the car when I held the milkshake out the window after he tried stealing a sip. Not even his driver would tell me.

“You’ll enjoy it, don’t worry,” he kept saying.

So I didn’t worry or ask any more questions. Only traced the hem of my maxi skirt and tried not to feel the weight of his gaze as he watched the movement until the tires halted, stopping in front of a red brick townhouse smooshed in between identical buildings painted a variety of grays and whites.

I heard the tree’s dew drip onto the car’s roof before I noticed Dorian opening my door and reaching for my hand. In public. In the middle of London.

I remained in the car. “Anyone could see or take a picture,” I reminded him.

A photo of him leaving a cologne launch had appeared in my feed a few days ago. Days before that, a tabloid was reporting on his choice of loafers that he wore to our class on Monday. And last week, he was at a charity event speaking to author Bella Lola (who was very single apparently).

I didn’t ask for any of this information. The public simply cared enough to put it in magazines and wake me with its middle-of-the-night notifications.

He braced the car frame above me, leaning down. There was so much leaning. So much cutting into my space. I was beginning to get dizzy.

“I haven’t forgotten. I come here every week, so it won’t be a problem. I know everyone who owns these buildings anyway.” I’d take care of it , were the words left unsaid, but I got the message.

He pushed off the car and offered his hand. Reluctantly, I accepted as he placed his other hand between my head and the car frame, stepping out.

Once we buzzed into the building, our footsteps bounced off the empty oak hallways. The sound was quickly replaced with French music and chatter as he opened the last door.

An art studio?

I breathed in the woodsy smell of charcoal pencils and took the punch of the oil paints.

I didn’t know what I was expecting. Maybe a restaurant that only made food I hated. Or a university party where every student was waiting with their phones raised to take a picture of us and send it directly to Sabrina and the Board.

It was anything but a shirtless male model sitting on a stool in the center of the room with easels and chairs surrounding him like a recreation of the solar system. The planets around him were made up of a mixture of people. Some looked like accountants with their ruffled blouses. While others resembled fashion interns and grandparents. Each one was twisted away from their canvas to talk to the person beside them. Warm smiles and rosy cheeks everywhere.

“Hey Poppy,” Dorian greeted a woman who had tiny violins for earrings and a blush pink pixie cut.

Her face exploded into a smile. “Dorian, you’re never this early—” Her words snagged once I stepped beside him. “You brought a friend! Oh, how wonderful.” She clapped. “The more the merrier. Get a stool from the back, we’ll get started now. I’ll let you fill your friend…”

“Adelaide,” I filled in her gap.

She smiled. “I’ll let you fill in Adelaide on how we do things here.” Then she left to pass out a few cups of brushes.

“Go sit, I’ll grab another seat.” He gestured to the lone seat.

I nodded, moving to the small stool perched in front of an easel. I was fortunate that our seat was to the side of the model. It felt wrong to stare him in the eyes or be staring at him in the … backside.

Another stool tapped the space beside mine. I scooched over, making room for him.

“I can’t believe you have a hobby. Especially not this hobby.” I was dumbfounded.

“I have to be interesting somehow. You don’t even find me being British interesting,” he responded, a smile tugging at the corner of his lips. “I dragged James the first few times because I was so nervous they’d kick me out for being horrid.”

“You really paint?”

“Do you think this is a front for a recreational football team?”

“This just doesn’t seem like something you’d do!”

He rolled his eyes. “And someone as type A as you doesn’t seem like the type to hoard stuff and then hang it on expensive pocketbooks.”

I clutched my bag. “They’re souvenirs, not stuff .”

“Everyone have their brushes?” Poppy asked over the music. Everyone raised their brushes, including Dorian.

I put my bag on the ground and pulled out my lapt—

“Not yet.” He took the purse and put it beside him, away from my reach.

“But I need to go over your work—”

“We can do that later. This is the ‘try something new’ of the list, so you do have to try it first.”

“How do you know I haven’t done this?”

“I think it’s fairly evident you don’t make much time in your schedule for…fun.” There was a smug look on his face. He knew I couldn’t argue.

“Dorian, did you give our guest the rundown?” Poppy reminded him from the other side of the room.

“Doing that now.”

“The rundown?”

He turned his body to face me. “Poppy takes creativity very seriously. So when you’re in here, you can do anything you want that’ll garner some type of inspiration. Sing, dance, paint the model, don’t paint the model, close your eyes. Take off your trainers and paint with your toes if you wish. As long as you’ve painted something.”

“Do people do that?” I hope they had highly fragrant candles nearby.

“Arnold, once.” He pointed his brush at a man in his sixties wearing a tie dye bandana. “He takes things quite literally when they come from Poppy. He fancies her quite a bit.”

“Oh god, does she know?”

“You say it like he’s committed murder. What’s wrong with a crush?”

I could’ve written a dissertation on it. Ran my own TedTalk on it.

Crush , like love, was a sweet, romantic word for lust. Crushes were The Chase portion of the lust. That well-known Pursuit rather than the actual person or relationship.

Crushes were exciting because they were completely fictionalized. They led to unreliable, energetic lust.

I felt it whenever Dorian grabbed onto my hips or stared at my lips or looked into my eyes when he wanted an honest answer.

It wasn’t that lust shouldn’t be enjoyed. But this unpredictable version that made you question your emotions and their motives? That’s where it went downhill.

I settled for a simpler response that wouldn’t lead to my TedTalk: “It’s embarrassing .”

“Of course it is.” His brows crinkled together. “It’s love . Everything about having love is embarrassing. You’re pining over someone who’s across the room hardly thinking of you. That’s incredibly embarrassing. But I also think there’s something romantic about being secretly fond of someone in a way that only you know.”

I never heard him speak so seriously. He seemed to even shock himself.

The air in the room was thick. Not middle-of-October-air or even an expensive heating unit hung behind me. But this heavy unidentifiable thing between us. The thing that made me want to ask more and ask who .

“Have you never had a crush?” he questioned.

“No.” I brushed my hands on my skirt.

“I don’t think I believe you.” His words dragged my gaze back up.

“Why would I lie?”

“Because you don’t want to be embarrassed.” He watched me carefully.

“It’s a good thing I have nothing to be embarrassed about then.”

“I guess so.” His eyes flickered across my face until he was satisfied. “Well then. Do you want to start?”

I handed him the pencil.

He pressed his forearm to the paper on the easel and sketched the silhouette of the model. He started with the arch of his back and the curve of his neck. Then he shaped out his side profile, trying to get the arch of his nose just right. Within a few minutes, angled arms, bent knees, and a thoughtful face were drawn.

“Alright, you’re up,” he said, putting the pencil down and flipping the notepad to a new page so that his drawing hung over the easel.

“I thought we were working off your drawing.”

“You have to make your own. It’s the first-timer rule.” He handed me the pencil.

“Dorian, I will look like a toddler compared to you.”

There was a pull at the corner of his lips. “Why don’t you paint something then. Not the model. Just anything. Anything you want.”

Want .

Looking at him now, his head bent to meet my eye and the knowledge of our knees barely touching, he was what I wanted.

What I wanted to paint, of course.

To explore the color of his eyes with the selection of brown paints with a hint of orange to achieve that brightness. I wanted the satisfaction of running a sharp line of paint across the paper to fulfill that need of holding his jaw. I wanted to try retracing his tattoos from memory to figure out if my dreams had been distorting them for the past month or if I had them memorized down to each curvature.

I cleared my throat. I stretched my arm across his lap for the brush. He instantly moved. I took that as an offer to scootch in rather than a reaction to my proximity in order to maintain sanity.

I dipped it in the blue and then realized— “Are there any smocks?” I glanced down at my white shirt.

“Poppy doesn’t believe in smocks here. She thinks if paint ends up on your clothes, then it’s proof of your passion.”

“Poppy has obviously never owned a favorite shirt before.”

“Adelaide, her favorites obviously have paint on them.”

I suppressed a smile. “What are the chances she’s willing to give one of those up?”

“She’d probably give you the shirt off her back if it was in the name of art. I did bring something though.” He rifled through his bag and pulled out a T-shirt.

“You’ve got to be kidding. Is your name on the back too?” I asked. It was a gray short-sleeve with a British flag at the center—one of the items on the list.

“I can make that happen.”

“I’m sure you can.” I took the shirt before he could take it back to some embroider that’s worked in his family for a century. That or he’d probably paint Blackwood on the back.

I pulled the shirt over my head. The cotton fabric was soft and worn, the woodsy aroma surrounded my nose as I dragged it over my face. The collar sucked all of my hair in like a vacuum, strands trapping themselves in my mouth.

“How much of a tourist do I look like now?” I asked.

He brushed my hair to the side, meticulously pulling it from the collar without it tugging or knotting. He pushed the last piece behind my ear.

“Very much so,” he answered. “But London looks good on you.”

“Where did you get this?” I questioned, looking down at the graphic.

“My closet,” he responded. He was biting the inside of his cheek to keep from smirking.

I shook out my hair and picked up the paintbrush, trying to ignore the blush on my cheeks. “You’re the worst.”

I dipped the brush in the blue and mixed it with a bit of white and green on the palette attached to the side of the easel. I outlined a house, leaving space at the top for a roof. I brushed short strokes in a horizontal line until the home was fully sided. It truly did look like a toddler’s painting.

“I like your souvenirs by the way,” he commented.

“I like that you draw,” I admitted.

“Because it makes me seem like less of a snob?” he guessed.

“No, because you draw with vulnerability,” I said. It might have been the most honest thing I had said to him. From the quiet look on his face, I could tell he was thinking the same thing. But I wasn’t sure what that meant for me.