Present Day - Three Months Later
I walked into The Rollins’ Vineyard office early Friday morning pushing a dolly with several large, wrapped canvasses. This was the last batch of paintings requested in their commission and I was delivering a couple of weeks early. I checked in with the secretary in the front and headed down the hall to Mrs. Rollins’ office. I knocked and was met with the pleasant surprise of Marie’s smiling face when she opened the door instead of her mother.
“Madi, I didn’t expect to see you today.” Her tone held surprise and joy, something I noticed was present way more often now when talking with her.
“I finished the last of the paintings last night and thought I’d bring them in now instead of waiting for the deadline.” I gestured at the dolly I parked on the side of the door. She careened her head around the door.
“Ooh! Mama is going to love this.”
“Is she in?” She shook her head as she stepped out of the office.
“She’ll be in later. Here, let’s put these in one of the conference rooms. She can take a look at them when she gets here before we move them to the hotel.” I grabbed the dolly and followed behind her.
Like any other time I had unrestricted access to this view, I stared unabashedly at how her jeans hugged her hips and the delicious curve of her ass. Being seduced by her walk was business as usual and I was already thinking about ways to release the instant tension flooding my body when I got home.
With my eyes focused on her walk and not where we were headed, I almost collided with her when she stopped abruptly at a closed door. Thankfully, I was quick enough to catch the paintings before they tipped forward and tapped the top of her ass, something I wished I could do right now.
“What happened?” She looked over her shoulder with concerned eyes. I shook my head and put the paintings back upright.
“Nothing. I was moving too fast and these almost slid off the dolly.”
“Oh.” She opened the door and I wheeled the dolly in. She waited while I lifted each one and placed it on the table. They were heavy and I didn’t want Mrs. Rollins to have to do it.
“Okay, that’s it for now,” I said, walking back out the room. She closed and locked the door.
“What do you have planned for the rest of the day?” She asked. We walked down the hall side-by-side.
“The interior paint I ordered for The Artisan Academy got delivered this morning, so I’m headed down there to get started on that.”
After a few weeks of being “friends,” I told Marie about The Artisan Academy. Her response was full of pride and awe that overwhelmed me. Hearing her talk about a project so important to me like it was the best idea since sliced bread stirred the beast in me. I wanted to duplicate that feeling I got when she told me she was proud of me. But I also knew that was a dangerous line to walk.
“Do you want some help?”
“I’m not taking you away from work?”
“Not today,” she smiled easily, and I was fascinated by the extreme change in her attitude.
When Marie asked to be friends, I envisioned a platonic professional relationship where we could put our past to the side for the sake of being cordial and getting work done. What we had was something much more developed and. . . intense. For starters, she never left my side. Whether I was working on furniture, painting, or shopping to re-up on supplies, she was with me. She offered the explanation that working at my house was more productive than being at her parents’ house. There was probably some truth to that, but there was likely a truth to some other shit she wasn’t saying. But I wouldn’t force the issue or push her to explain her sudden desire for constant closeness. I knew how fast she could retreat if I asked for more than she wanted to give in the moment.
No doubt, this would end badly for me, especially when she went back to New York in a few weeks after the vineyard reopened; but my feelings for her never wavered. I’d take whatever scraps I could and deal with the fallout later.
“Then yeah, come roll with me for the day.”
* * *
“Madi, all this white paint is outrageous.” Marie put her paintbrush in the tray and wiped the back of her hand across her forehead. “Why white?”
“To promote stillness and neutrality.” I was high up on a ladder, filling in the crevices where the wall met the ceiling that the rolling brush had missed, so I didn’t look down at Marie. “You don’t like it?”
“It’s not that. It’s just a lot.” I kept my focus on the paint and listened to her footsteps on the tarp I rolled over the floor.
A few minutes later, the crevices were cleanly painted to match the rest of the walls in the area I referred to as the great hall. I carefully stepped down the ladder until my feet touched the ground. Marie sat on the ground sipping from the tea she made me stop at the nearest coffee shop to get. I walked over and sat next to her, my body already screaming from the hours of weird positioning and movement to paint.
“White in design is used to express neutrality, common ground; and that’s where I want my students minds when they walk through the door,” I explained.
“Everything you do is intentional.”
I nodded. She was right. Every detail of anything I was involved in, whether it was art or making love, I pressed certain buttons on purpose.
“Everything in my life is intentional; my art imitates that.” She sipped more of her tea and then laughed as she shook her head.
“I wish my art reflected my life. Those songs charting and being played on every radio across the country don’t speak to anything I’ve ever experienced.”
“What you mean by that?”
“Like the romance. The love. Relationships that feel like powerful drugs you get a constant high from.”
“You’ve never experienced that?” I asked, wanting to know if that night together meant half as much to her as it meant to me.
“Not in a way that is lasting. When it comes to excitement rushing through my veins about a person, a desire to be in his skin at all times, and lovemaking that leaves marks people can’t see, none of the men I’ve dated have even come close. They’re not—“ She stopped mid-sentence. Her flushed cheeks and refusal to meet my gaze told me everything she wouldn’t. They weren’t me. But I knew that already.
“I’m in awe at you artistry and your career.” The unexpected shift in conversation topics didn’t bother me; I was standing firm on not forcing her hand.
“The things you’ve accomplished in such a short time. What drives you?” There was that good feeling unfolding in my chest again, and she had no idea of her effect.
I didn’t have to think too hard about how to respond to her question. The amount of self-reflection and inner work I engaged in on a regular basis made my “why” obvious, at least to me.
“History. My ancestors. Desire.”
Our eyes connected and I stared into hers intentionally until she shifted her gaze; I peeped a light blush climbing her neck. I relaxed my gaze and smiled. She knew. Even if she never moved on it, she knew she was my biggest desire.
“History?”
“Yeah. Personal history that intertwines with certain past events in this town.”
“Like what?” I sat up straighter and wrapped my arms around my knees, wondering how much to tell her.
Her family history was just as rich and storied, but whereas the Rollins’ path in Langston Lake was characterized by wealth and comfort, very few of the Silvers could say the same. That was no secret, but that lack being the ultimate drive behind this town rejecting my uncle so severely was less known. The connection between his story and my own were invisible to the naked observer, but Marie wasn’t a naked observer. She had very specific context.
“My great-great-great- uncle, the one I’m named after, Amadi Silver, drank himself to death.” Marie looked at me with eyes widened in horror.
“Oh my God, Amadi. I’m so sorry. What happened?”
“The short version? He lost the love of his life and their child.”
“And the long version?” She asked softly, tipping around emotions I hadn’t openly expressed, but because of our connection, she knew they were there.
Despite everything in me telling me not to, I let my guard down and shared those pages from my family’s lengthy history book. She listened eagerly, drinking in every word. When we made it to the part about people disowning my uncle because of his audacity to love outside of class lines, tears sprang up in her eyes.
“That’s so foul!” She uttered with clear disgust in her voice and face.
“It was,” I agreed. Would she have this reaction if I told her the same energy applied when it came to my desire for her?
“I’ve always hated the way these families intermarry on some Game of Thrones kind of bullshit. My mama was on that with Emerson and we’ve been beefing about it since I left his ass fourteen years ago,” she growled lowly.
My ears burned from the mention of her mother but that revelation stunned me. After the way she dismissed me from her life, I assumed she had the same classist agenda as her mother.
“She wanted you to marry Emerson?”
“Mhm. Probably still wants that. But I let her know way back when, if and when I marry, it won’t be based on my future husband’s last name.”
Countless thoughts and emotions filled my mind. Learning that she didn’t subscribe to that bullshit put new hope in my heart for a future with her, but seconds later, the hope was drowned out.
If class loyalty and hierarchies weren’t important to her, why did she ghost me?