His Work of Art (7 page)

Adam stepped forward.

Reese pointed to one guy. “This is Lee. It's his apartment.” Adam nodded at him. She moved to the guy on his left. “This is Chris. Where's Kim?”

Chris toyed with the dice in front of him. “She had a final to study for.”

Reese looked at Adam over her shoulder. “Kim is the only other girl who plays. Now I'm outnumbered.” She turned to the last guy, who was setting up a folder in front of himself. “This is Frankie.”

“Are you playing?” Frankie asked.

Nothing like being friendly. “I'm not sure. I just came to hang out with Reese.”

“He can play an NPC for the night. That's okay, right, Frankie?”

Adam nudged her shoulder. “NPC?”

“Non-player character. It's a character that he can create for just tonight's mission.”

“He doesn't even know what he's doing, Reese. Who the hell did you bring?”

Reese reached behind her and tugged on Adam's sleeve. “He's a friend who wanted to check out the game.” She pushed Adam toward the seat beside Chris and she sat between Adam and Frankie.

“Stop being a dick,” Lee said.

“Whatever.” Frankie set some papers behind his screen.

Adam leaned over and whispered, “I'm really okay just watching. I don't want to mess up your game.”

“There's nothing to mess up. It's like a story that unfolds as we play. You'll catch on.” She pulled a small pouch from her bag. “You can use my dice. We'll explain as we go.”

Frankie was scribbling away behind his cardboard screen. Reese, Lee, and Chris all started talking about where they had left off last week, and Reese kept breaking off to offer Adam insight and explanation. It all sounded very complicated. The more he listened, the more he believed this had been a colossal mistake.

And then they started to play.

Frankie looked at him and said, “You can be a dwarf who is searching for the magic potion to save his village.”

“A dwarf?”

“Yeah.”

Reese snickered.

“What are you?” he asked her.

“An elfin archer.”

He could see her as an elf. Not much better than a dwarf. He looked at Lee.

“I'm a knight.”

Chris said, “I'm a sorcerer.”

“Why can't I be a knight?”

“Because you're just playing today. Knights play important ongoing roles,” Frankie answered. “Let's start.”

As Frankie explained the mission for the night, Adam focused on what he needed to do. It seemed simple enough. Roll the dice to determine what happened. He could follow this.

Frankie continued, “You enter the cave and discover no light source. What do you do?”

Reese's eyebrows nearly joined. “How big is the mouth to this cave?”

Frankie shrugged. “Six.”

“What does it smell like?”

Frankie narrowed his eyes. “Bat shit.”

Reese opened her mouth to argue, but Chris spoke quickly, as if he knew the question-and-answer session would keep going. “I'll cast a spell to create an orb of light.”

“Your light has just awakened the ogre. Prepare to battle.”

Reese, Lee, and Chris argued over a battle plan.

Adam spoke up. “How about you guys distract him and I'll sneak around him. Ogres are huge, right? And I'm a little guy.”

All three of them stared at him like he was nuts. But Frankie spoke. “No, I called for a battle. They can't pretend.”

“Okay. You guys battle and I'll wiggle my little ass by to collect the precious stones we need from the other end of the cave.”

Lee said, “I draw my broad sword.”

Reese added, “I have my arrows ready.”

They each rolled their dice and then Reese slid hers over to Adam again. He rolled a five.

Frankie laughed. “You just fell into a pit.”

“But we defeated the ogre,” Reese said.

“He didn't complete his part of the mission,” Frankie said, pointing at Adam.

Adam asked, “How deep is the pit?”

“Eight feet.”

Frankie wanted him out of the picture. Adam knew there was something going on there. Lee and Chris didn't seem bothered by his presence, but Frankie was a different story.

“So we rescue him,” Reese said. She winked at Lee. Seriously, a flirtatious wink. “Lower me down, would you?”

Frankie wanted to argue with the unorthodox plan. It was like he had a picture of how things were supposed to go and if someone deviated from his concept, he got pissed off.

It took three tries, but they rescued him. The game went on, and over the next couple of hours, Frankie had tried to kill Adam no fewer than four times. He'd only completed his mission to find the potion because Reese had been looking out for him.

Adam waited by the door as Reese said her good-byes so he could walk out with her. Over the course of the night, he'd seen another side to her, but what he found interesting was that she was the writer everywhere. Even here, her purpose was to build story. She had fun and got caught up in the details, details that had been lacking in the first written story she'd given him.

She gave Lee a huge hug and whispered something to him. Adam felt like a voyeur, but at the same time, he wanted to be close enough to eavesdrop. What did she have to say to Lee that she couldn't say loud enough for everyone to hear? She hugged Chris too, but it was shorter, and when she pulled away, she told him to wish Kim good luck on her final. When she turned to Frankie, she just nodded and said good-bye.

Adam held her coat out for her to slide into. “All set?”

“Yep.”

They walked in silence down the flights of stairs. At the bottom, before going out into the cold, she said, “I should apologize.”

“For what?”

“Frankie.” She heaved out a sigh. “I really thought it'd be okay by now. He's my ex-boyfriend.”

That explained a whole lot about how his night had gone.

Reese pulled her gloves on. “It's been a long time, and we've continued to play the game every week. I've known these guys for years, and I didn't want to leave the group because of my failed relationship with him.”

“I'm guessing you've never brought another guy to the game, though.”

“No. And I should've thought of that. I figured we'd be okay since you and I aren't . . . I mean, we're friends. It's not like I'd ask my new boyfriend to hang out with my ex. But Frankie's Frankie.”

“I had fun anyway.” He held the exterior door open for her.

“You did?”

“Yeah.” It was true. “I didn't think I would, but watching you create a story on the fly like that was pretty amazing.”

Her cheeks were pink and he didn't know if it was the cold or if she was blushing, but it was cute.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Shoot,” she said.

“Lyrid's origin, well, Alexis's story. How much of that is autobiographical?”

They'd walked past his car and were nearly at hers. She bit her lip, but when her eyes met his, they were clear and sure.

“If you want to talk, get in the car. It takes forever for this beast to warm up.” She unlocked the doors and climbed in. He got in on the other side and waited.

She started the engine and stared out the windshield at the brick building in front of them. “How'd you know?”

“There was a lot of emotion when Alexis heard her parents fighting. The fear she felt came across the page too realistically.”

“Maybe I'm just that good of a writer.”

He chuckled. “I wasn't implying that you're not. It was a lucky guess then.”

“My dad beat my mom. I used to hear them fighting. He always had certain expectations for the house, my mom, me. If something wasn't just right, she paid the price. So that part was real. Being struck by a meteorite and having the power to kill my dad? Not so much. When I was ten, my mom left him and took me with her. I haven't seen him since.”

Adam was speechless. Although he'd suspected, he hadn't really thought about what having this conversation would be like. He went with his gut. “That's really shitty.”

She turned to look at him with a slight smile on her face. “Yeah, it was.”

He reached out and brushed her hair back over her shoulder away from her face. He needed to touch her, make sure she was okay now. Her smile widened, but her eyes were still sad. The air around them charged with tension.

Something in her car made a loud rattling noise. He stared at the dash like it might explode.

“Don't worry. That's just the heater letting me know it's okay to drive now.”

“Thanks for telling me about your dad.”

“Thanks for asking.”

As if that took any effort. Pulling away from her now, though, did take effort. He popped the door open and stepped out. “See you this weekend? We can work at my apartment if you want. My roommate will be working late.”

“Sure. See you then.”

He closed the door and jogged back to his car, unsure of what he was thinking. Hanging out with her friends, making her ex jealous and getting off on it, and asking personal details was not a way to steer clear of complicated relationships. But something about Reese kept drawing him in. He just didn't know what to do about it.

R
eese had spent the last few days working furiously on rewriting her first comic so that she and Adam would have something to work on Saturday night. She'd been uneasy since their last conversation in her car. While she didn't keep it a secret, she rarely talked about her dad.

Knowing that Adam had figured it out based on the comic should've made her feel better. It meant that she'd done something right with the story. However, there was always the fear that Adam would look at her differently now. They'd become friends and she didn't want to strain that.

Of course, inviting him to hang out with her ex-boyfriend hadn't been the smartest move. Frankie had been an asshole all night. Maybe it was time for her to move on and find a new group to play with, but she really hated the idea of walking away from Lee, Chris, and Kim. They'd become her friends as much as they were Frankie's. That was probably the worst part of a breakup—deciding who got the friends. And with Frankie, so much of their lives had been intertwined: school, work, play.

Finishing the anthology and publishing it would be a definite sign of moving on. It was something that was completely separate from anything she'd done with Frankie. Adam's ability to handle all the artwork made it that much sweeter.

She listened to her phone give her directions to Adam's house. As she drove through the residential neighborhood, she immediately felt out of place. This was the kind of neighborhood she'd dreamed of living in when she was younger. After a string of crappy one-bedroom apartments with her mom, anything started to look good, but this neighborhood held a mix of single-family homes and two- and three-flat apartments. A light dusting of snow that had fallen earlier that day coated the lawns, making everything more picturesque.

This was a different kind of jealousy than she had when she went to visit Lee. His apartment was young, urban professional. It was about being part of city life, walking to the store and easy access to the beach. Adam's neighborhood was more family-oriented, as evidenced by the number of minivans lining the street. She could imagine the trees being full of leaves in the summer, providing shade as kids ran through sprinklers.

She then wondered why Adam and his friend chose to live here. He'd said his friend was a musician. It seemed like an odd choice. She found some parking down the block from the two-flat that Adam lived in. She raced up the sidewalk because the wind had picked up and slashed against her cheeks. Stomping her feet for warmth, she rang the bell. Adam met her at the door.

He held out a little piece of paper. “You need to put this on your dash. Permit parking.”

She groaned. “Here.” She handed him her bag. “I'll be right back.” She jogged back down the block and put the permit in the window and ran back. By the time she got inside, her lungs were burning both from being out of breath and from the cold.

“Sorry. I just remembered about the permit.”

“Permit parking is stupid.”

“Yeah, well, that's the city. Come on in and warm up.” He led the way into the first-floor apartment.

The door opened into a huge living room–dining room combination. What should've been the living room looked more like a music studio, with instruments lined up everywhere, along with amps and speakers. The dining room space was being used as the living room with a single comfy-looking couch and TV unit. They had milk crates for a coffee table.

“Where are we going to work?”

“I have drafting tables in my bedroom.” He stopped mid-stride, as if realizing what he'd just said. “Unless that makes you uncomfortable. Then we can work in here on the floor.”

“I'm fine wherever. I think I can trust you to behave yourself. Or have you been secretly doing all of this work on my comic as a ploy to get me to your bedroom all along? Maybe it's not even a bedroom, but a dungeon and you plan to chain me up.”

He laughed, but it was one of those uncomfortable, you-sound-crazy kinds of laughs. He shoved a door open. “Totally normal bedroom.”

She sighed. “I'm a little disappointed.”

“You're weird.”

She couldn't stop the smile. “I know. And you like me anyway.”

“Yeah, I do.”

She stepped into his bedroom and he hadn't lied. His bed was pushed into a corner to make room for two drafting tables on the opposite wall. A cheap nightstand stood beside the bed. A small bookcase sat behind the door, but that was it for furniture.

Reese dropped her bag beside one of the tables.

“Oh, shit. Hang on.” Adam left the room and returned with a chair. “It was either this or the little stool Hunter uses for his drums.”

“That's fine.” It was a battered, old dining room chair and looked far from comfortable, but she could always sit on his bed and talk. He needed the desk more than she did.

Adam sat on his stool, one that spun in circles and sat on rollers, but didn't appear much more comfortable than the chair she had. She pulled her notebook out. “I reworked the story for the first book featuring Lyrid. I wrote in the mentor. It's up to you to decide if I got it right.”

She flipped to the page and handed him the book. Again, she found herself waiting while he read. She should have sent him the story ahead of time to be more efficient. Waiting was painful.

Luckily, Adam was a fast reader. He set the notebook on the desk and spun to face her. “It's missing something. There's not enough action. You've introduced the mentor, who still doesn't have a name, but all he does is watch. He's not a mentor yet. We don't know who he is, and that's all right, but other than Alexis freaking out and doing her mind-control stuff, nothing happens.”

“Stuff happens.” She grabbed the book and scanned for examples. While she reread her work, she tried to imagine it on the page, what each panel would show. Two pages in, she knew she'd messed up. “Damn. How did I screw that up so badly?”

“It's not screwed up. You just cut so much from the earlier draft, the flashbacks, that you lost all action. It's like this is a continuation of her origin story. We don't need that now. What if we just skip to the part where she decides to use her powers for good? Or at least decides to use them at all?”

Even as he spoke, new ideas entered Reese's mind. She saw plot points as pictures. Excitement sparked just like it had when they'd first discussed her writing an origin story for Lyrid. She grabbed her notebook and began to scribble description and dialogue for each panel. As soon as she had a panel written, she ripped the page from the notebook and handed it to Adam to start sketching.

For an hour they worked seamlessly, barely saying more than a few words to each other. They'd reached the climax of the story, where Alexis would meet her mentor. Gunner. That would be his name.

She set the notebook back down and waited for Adam to sketch, but he moved too slowly. Snaking her right hand around his left as his pencil shaded something, she created a text box and wrote, “Gunner watches Alexis from the shadows.”

The sensitive skin on the inside of her arm skimmed along Adam's. His warmth spread across her and she focused on the letters in front of her.

“What are you doing?”

Reese tilted her head and looked at him from under her lashes before going back to her lettering. “You're taking too long. He has a name.”

Adam's hand stopped moving on the page, and she missed the friction against her own skin. They sat shoulder to shoulder and she felt Adam's eyes on her.

“In my defense, sketching people takes longer than writing a few words.”

“I know. I'm impatient.”

Adam flipped his pencil deeper between his fingers and used his tips to push her hand away. “Gunner, huh?”

“It's perfect.”

“Why does he only watch from the shadows?” Adam asked.

His breath whispered across her cheek. Her voice lowered as she spoke. “Because he knows her. He sees her even though she tries to remain invisible.”

“When does he come out of the shadows?”

Reese tilted her head slightly and her eyes rose to meet Adam's. “When he sees she needs him. He likes the shadows. He likes to watch, to keep his distance.”

“Until he can't.”

Her heart thumped in her chest. The dark gray of Adam's eyes was nearly swallowed by his pupils. Oxygen leaked into her lungs. She nodded in understanding—both for the words he said and the action she hoped he'd take.

His movement was infinitesimal as his gaze swept over her face and landed on her lips. Her eyelids fluttered. She wanted this so badly.

Adam said nothing as he closed the remaining distance between their mouths. His full lips caressed hers before opening and interlocking with hers. She sighed with relief and enjoyment. He shifted and tilted to change the angle, but made no other movement to touch her.

She surged forward, dropping her pencil and turning her body to fully face him. Opening her lips, she swiped her tongue against his. Oh man, did he feel good.

A
thunk
at the other end of the house registered in her head, but she didn't move.

“Yo, Adam. I need help.”

At the sound of his name, Adam shot back away from her, his stool sliding against the floor. His chest rose and fell in the same fast succession as hers did.

“I . . . uh . . . sorry. I don't know what that was.”

Reese smirked, but before she could respond, Adam's friend was standing in the doorway.

“Oh, hey. I have the booze for the party. I need help carrying it in.”

“I thought you were working tonight.”

He shrugged. “They canceled the second set. The place was empty. No one wants to go out in the cold.” He stepped forward. “Hi, I'm Hunter.”

Reese extended a hand. “Reese.”

“I've seen you before. The comic shop, right?”

“Yeah.” She stood. “I can help you carry stuff in.”

Adam rushed past her. “We got it.”

“Don't listen to him. I'm double-parked and we can use help.”

Adam ran out the front door without his coat and hoped the frigid air would cool his entire system. He had no idea what had come over him. Reese was just so close and she smelled good and the soft skin of her arms brushed against his. Then she spoke in that whispery, husky voice and he about blew a nut right there.

He pulled the hatch open on Hunter's van and leaned in to grab a box. Behind him he heard, “You drive a minivan? Cute.”

Crap. Why couldn't she have just waited inside?

“Not cute. Practical. It hauls all of my music equipment,” Hunter answered.

Adam hefted a box, glass clinking together inside, and stepped back. “Where'd all this come from?”

“The manager at work got us an excellent deal.”

Hunter's smile told Adam he didn't want to know what the deal was. He walked around Hunter and used the box to shield the half boner he still sported. Behind him, Reese laughed. The sound echoed across the empty block and sent a shiver down his spine. She had a great laugh.

He stomped up the stairs and slid the box onto the floor. When he turned, both Hunter and Reese were right behind him. Hunter handed him a box. “I gotta go park. Take care of this.”

He accepted the box and Reese followed him into the living room, where they both set their boxes against the wall behind the couch. He exhaled a deep breath. “Hey, about . . .” He pointed toward the bedroom.

The smile disappeared from her face. She toed the box of alcohol closer to the wall. “Don't worry about it. We were caught up in the moment. A lot of tension as we created great stuff.”

His shoulders relaxed. Her reaction was a little too easy, which bugged him, even though it was what he'd wanted. He knew it wasn't right, but he'd thought she wanted the kiss, that it was more than being caught up in the moment.

“So . . . I was thinking that for the overall relationship between Gunner and Lyrid . . .” She paused and looked directly into his eyes. “I think they need to hook up.”

“No way. That'll never work.”

“Why not?”

“A ton of reasons.” He ticked them off on his fingers. “He's her mentor. He's older than she is and a felon. He's supposed to protect her.” Adam sighed and gave voice to the biggest reason. “You'll alienate readers with an interracial couple.”

Reese stiffened and then stepped closer, anger blazing in her eyes. “They belong together because they understand each other in ways no one else can. It's our story. If readers don't like it, they don't have to read it.”

Just then, Hunter came back into the apartment with yet another box. “Dude, we are going to be so hammered next week.”