“My idea of housework is to sweep the room with a glance.”
Anna Collins
We didn’t say much to each other on the ride to my studio. I was weirdly nostalgic to be back in Darius’s Land Cruiser. I tried not to pet the dashboard but failed. Darius was too distracted to comment or even smirk, and I wondered what was fueling the little hamster on the wheel in his head.
“You’ll have to find a spot on the street,” I told him when we pulled onto Burton Street. “It’s why I don’t keep a car.”
“Where do you park your bike?” he asked.
“How do you know I have a bike?”
He gave me a side-eye, but said nothing.
“There’s a spot by the dumpster behind the building. It’s protected and mostly hidden, and I make sure the garbage guys get cookies a couple of times a month.”
“Cookies?” He sounded incredulous and … annoyed.
“It’s not a bribe,” I said quickly. “It’s a courtesy. They’re considerate of my bike, I’m considerate of their stomachs.”
He lapsed back into silence, and I wondered which one of us was being unreasonable. He found a spot a block away, and I told him the history of the building as we walked.
“My aunt left me her space at the Carl Street Studios, which was what Carl Miller and Sol Kagan called their design project in the 1920s and 30s. Carl Miller was an artist who mostly worked in architectural design, and a lot of the things he became famous for were first tried in this building.”
I led the way into the old Victorian mansion and compound that had been converted to twenty-two individual spaces. Mine was a small studio on the third floor, and I watched Darius’s face for his expression as I opened the door.
He didn’t disappoint. The hamster wheel stopped spinning in his brain when he stepped inside my studio, and I saw his imagination engage. I looked around, trying to see everything through his eyes. The space was a single room with a soaring ceiling and tall windows with stained glass accents that made the walls glow with jewel tones. The wood floor was laid with contrasting strips of ebony, walnut, and ash, and the fireplace which dominated one wall was surrounded by art deco tiles in all the shades of green. I had set my bed up on a platform under the window, and the heavy tapestry I threw over it during the day, plus big pillows against the wall and a thick rug on the floor, gave it a distinctly divan vibe. A small galley kitchen and same-sized bathroom occupied the other side of the studio, and an old wardrobe that I’d inherited with the space, which held my small collection of jeans, T-shirts, boots, and two dresses, dominated one wall. The only other thing of Alex’s which had remained in the studio was her easel, which stood in the corner holding the painting she had been working on when she died.
Darius strode directly to the easel. It was a portrait of two women, nearly identical to The Sisters painting in style and use of color. The only real difference was that the subjects weren’t my mom and Alex, they were Colette and me. She’d used a photograph my dad had taken of us when we were home for Christmas a couple of years ago.
“The letter Alex left for me was taped to the back of the canvas,” I said, as Darius examined the faces. I’d spent a long time doing the same. He picked up the snapshot from the easel where I’d found it and flipped it over to read the inscription on the back. “Sophia misses you every day,” he read. “Whose handwriting is this?”
“My dad’s. I’m not sure my mom ever knew he’d been in touch with her sister, and I’ve never asked him about it.”
“The painting is beautiful, Anna.”
“It is, isn’t it. She didn’t finish the edges.” The edges of the canvas that stretched over the wooden frame were still white, and it made the painting feel more like a print than something a paintbrush had ever touched.
He studied the edges then walked around to peer at the back of the canvas. “Single canvas?”
“Yeah. I checked.”
“Can I see the letter she left you?”
I fished it out of a drawer in the wardrobe where I kept things that were precious to me, and Darius saw what else was in the drawer before I could shut it.
“You have a T. rex costume?” he asked as he looked over my shoulder.
I snorted. “You don’t?” I shut the drawer before he could see the rhinestone tiara.
He laughed and wandered away from the painting. “The tile baseboards are cool.”
“Right? Only a few of them repeat, and all of them were hand-fired in a kiln that was kept downstairs for all the artists to use.”
“I like the heart,” he said, pointing to a tile I loved near the fireplace.
I tried not to swoon as I handed him the letter. Swooning was poor form when corsets were not involved. They were par for the course when corsets were involved, but that was not a story that bore repeating.
“Do you mean to say such lovely things to unsettle me, or are you really a guy who thinks hearts are cool?”
He looked surprised. “Sorry?” He gaped slightly, then seemed to realize he was doing it and stopped. “You do remember I was denied membership in the man club of manly men, right?”
“And yet, here you are – undeniably male.” I waved my hand in an up-and-down motion that denoted my clear thoughts on the matter of his attractiveness.
“And here I am,” he echoed, as though wondering why.
I studied my aunt’s handwriting as he read her letter. She had nice handwriting, sort of architectural and blocky, and I wished I had gotten letters from her my whole life.
“May I photograph this and the painting?” he asked carefully.
I shrugged. “Sure.”
I plopped down on my bed to wait for him as he pulled out his phone and took the photos. When he was done, he refolded the letter and handed it to me, then sat on the edge of the bed next to me and looked around the room.
“I expected to see books.”
I leaned over him to pull my kindle out from under my pillow. “I travel too much to buy paperbacks, and the studio isn’t really big enough for bookshelves.”
“It’s beautiful here,” he said quietly.
“Thank you. I think so too.”
We sat side by side, but not close enough to touch, and finally, Darius sighed. “Why did you ask to work at Cipher?”
I did not expect that question and looked over in surprise. “I like your bosses.”
He didn’t meet my eyes, but nodded. “They’re good guys. Quinn’s intense, but his wife makes him human. She reminds me a little of you in some ways.”
I smirked. “She jumps out of planes and climbs Half Dome whenever she gets a chance?”
He smiled, still not looking at me. “No. Her filter is … odd.”
“Ah, but she has one,” I wagged my finger. “Not the same.”
He was silent for another long moment as his eyes wandered the room, settling on a mirror I’d hung on one wall that was almost completely obscured by my collection of postcards from my adventures.
“I have Sunday roast, Iranian-style, with my family every Monday night.” He looked over at my mouth, already open to protest the ridiculousness of that statement, and laughed. “Yes, I’m aware of the irony – Iranian food for a quintessential British meal, served on Monday instead of Sunday. It’s a habit left over from my father’s taxi driving days, because everyone else had Sunday roast taxi needs, and Mondays were typically quiet.”
“Makes sense.”
He inhaled. “Why did you ask to meet my parents?”
I hadn’t quite formulated words to go with the request when I’d asked, so I winged it now. “You’ve met my family,” I watched his face and was happy to see the upward quirk of his lips, “and that probably filled in some of the colors of your picture of me.”
He smiled properly at that. “One or two,” he said.
I wondered what color my mom’s topless dip in the freezing ocean added to the picture of Anna Collins, then decided I hoped it was hot pink or sunset orange.
I met Darius’s eyes. “I want to add some colors to my picture of you.”
His eyes searched mine long enough for my inside voice to start whispering self-consciously. “Would you like to come with me tonight?” he finally asked.
I sighed. “I do realize I just put you on the spot. I could meet them at your boat, or at a café. If I go to a family dinner, all kinds of awkward assumptions could be made about the non-existence of our status.”
“You said we’re friends. That’s a status, right?”
“Of course it is,” I said impatiently. “Some of my best friends are … friends.” I couldn’t help the smile at my own nonsense, and Darius finally lightened up to smile too.
“The restaurant we went to in Boston was good, but my mum’s cooking is much better. Come. They enjoy meeting my friends.”
His expression had shifted from carefully neutral to friendly-ish. It made me want to tickle him, just to see him laugh, but I resisted the urge. Barely. It was a close one though.
“Sure, I’d love to. Thank you for inviting me,” I said formally, in an attempt to quell the tickling instinct.
“Great,” he said, standing up. “I’ll pick you up at six?”
“Sure. Is this okay?” I said, looking down at myself. “It’s either this or a dress. I don’t really have other options besides jeans.”
He smiled. “You look good in whatever you wear, and yes, jeans are fine.”
I walked him to the door and tried not to skip for joy at the compliment, because really, I could take a compliment without doing backflips. He turned to take one last look at my studio. “This really is a great place. The color, the light, all the quirky bits and unexpected beauty - it suits you.”
He turned and left, and it probably was my imagination when, on his way down the stairs, I heard him say, “It is you.”