Page 76 of None Of Your Business

When the laughter eventually fades, Hudson turns his head toward me.

There’s no guardedness in his expression anymore, just tired blue eyes and yellow paint on his nose.

“Thank you,” he says quietly.

I smile and reach over to squeeze his wrist where it rests in the grass between us.

“You’re welcome.”

Twenty-Two

Alistair has been staring at my paintings for four minutes.

Not that I’m counting.

I am absolutely counting.

Four minutes and eighteen seconds.

Four minutes and nineteen seconds.

I stand behind him with my hands shoved into my pockets.

The gallery isn’t open yet, and the silence is painful.

Three canvases are propped against the wall.

Twenty completed works sit in my studio. Two more are almost done. One is currently turned toward the wall because I hate it.

But these three are different. I know they are.

Alistair steps closer to the first.

Two figures sit at opposite ends of a long dining table, their bodies rendered in muted greens and bruised blues. Neither has a face. Their hands rest on the wood between them, separated by inches.

He examines the second.

A woman stands behind a man with one hand resting between his shoulder blades. He’s leaning away from her.

The third is the one I’m least sure about.

It’s just three pairs of hands.

One holding too tightly.

One hanging loose.

One reaching into empty space.

The rest of the canvas is almost bare.

I nearly painted over that one yesterday.

Alistair tips his head.

Four minutes and forty-seven seconds.

“Can you say something?”