Intaglio: The Snake and the Coins (7 page)

BOOK: Intaglio: The Snake and the Coins
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He muttered a
curse under his breath and then turned away.  “Just forget it.  I
gotta go.”  He headed toward the far side of the campus, stomping down the
sidewalk, his back stiff. 

“Hey!” she
called, but he didn’t turn back, just kept walking away. 

For a moment she
was annoyed… he was the one who’d been pursuing
her
.  As Cole’s
silhouette moved further off, she felt her irritation slipping.  She
understood the feeling of things not quite working.  She had been fighting
with her own painting lately… hoping for the dream to come back so she could
catch her flow again. 
‘Maybe I just need a break too...’
she
thought.  She bit her bottom lip. 

When he reached
the corner of the Health Sciences building, she broke into a jog. 
Reaching his side, she slouched the bag to her other arm, not looking up.

“Don’t think
you’re getting out of your end of the bargain,” she said to him, her strides
matching his.  “I’m thinking you now owe me some serious posing for this…
and I get to choose the
when
and
how
.”

“How?” Cole
asked, raising his eyebrows.

She gave him a
hard stare, then provocatively dropped her eyes down his body, letting her gaze
linger.  When her eyes rose back up, Cole’s face was flushed.

“Oh, I know how
to paint nudes too,” Ava said with a snort.

Cole laughed and
Ava shoved his shoulder, happy with the sound of his laughter, and the two of
them continued down the sidewalk, side by side.

 

 

Chapter 7:  Roughing Out

Ava had been
standing in Cole’s studio space for hours and her back now ached.  She had
a sudden, immense respect for the models they hired for figure drawing
classes.  Holding a pose was far harder than she’d ever thought!

Cole had started
their session by sketching her.  Shapes and forms – bits and pieces of her
neck and shoulders, face and arms – now surrounded her on the white walls of
his studio.  She was amazed at his ability to draw; though it made sense
that his artistic skills would translate elsewhere, too.  Ava needed to
stay motionless, but Cole could talk, so she asked him questions and he told
her stories about his childhood, pausing now and then as he drew. 

By the time the
light disappeared from the windows, and they ran down to the Students’ Union
building for subs, she knew that his father was ex-military and that his
stepmother was a retired journalist, now a freelance writer for several small
magazines.  He didn’t talk about his mother and she didn’t push. 
(Ava didn’t talk about her mother either.)

When they had
eaten, they headed back to the studio.  Cole drew like an architect, with
simple, controlled lines and measured distances, not at all like Ava did. 
Her scribbled searching lines wandered here and there on a page, shading as
much as following the shape of an object, roughing things out in bold
splashes.  She asked him more questions, discovering a passion for school
and a three-generation background in the Army.  His father was a retired
Sergeant Major.

“So why didn’t
you go into the military then?” Ava asked, laughing.

Cole looked up
from his sketch pad and shrugged, a half-smile on his lips.

“It’s a family thing,
but not mine.  My sister did.” 

Ava smiled,
dropping her chin to look at him, but his gaze was back on his page, his body
hunched over the drawing board.

“I didn’t know
you had a sister.  What’s her name?” she asked.

Watching him,
she saw Cole’s face close off like a slammed door, flipping into
something  painful.  There was something about that brief but violent
reaction that left her heart pounding.  Something
more
to this
story.

“Her name was
Hanna,” Cole said carefully, not looking up.  “She was four years older
than me.  She died when I was fourteen.”  His words were measured,
taut.

“Oh my god, I’m
sorry,” Ava mumbled.  She wasn’t sure what to say other than that, so she
stood and waited while Cole continued to draw.  There was a tension in his
shoulders now – and between the two of them – that worried her.

When the
sketching was done, Cole snapped a few pictures at different angles, then began
to work away at the stone, knapping off chips with a mallet.  He gave Ava
safety glasses to wear even though he was working with small tools and she
smiled his caution for her.  She blushed as he helped her to fix her
pose:  his hands on the back of her arms, fingers tipping up her
chin.  Her skin buzzed where he touched her. 

Ava was amazed
by how much he’d already sculpted.  (Couldn’t help but think that it
looked more than half-finished to her.)  The back was still the
square-formed shape of the quarried stone, but the front had been completely
carved down into a woman’s face, torso and legs.  They were rough and
loose, but the forms were still clearly recognizable.  Stranger than that,
Ava found them
familiar.
 

Taking a moment
to shake the feeling back into her limbs, she came to stand next to the stone,
where Cole waited, staring at his rough work.  With a gasp, Ava realized
he’d already “caught” some element of who she was within the coarse
shape.  It was both gratifying and disturbing.  By his own admission,
Cole was struggling with the arms.  He’d reworked them a number of times
so that they were now pushed back slightly, as if the woman in the stone was
leaning forward.  Cole frowned and began to explain about the permanence
of mistakes when sculpting. 

‘Sometimes there
are things that can’t be fixed...
’ an internal voice
prompted.   Ava didn’t share the thought, just nodded and watched him
work.  It fascinated her.  In a minute, he glanced back up.  He
smiled, reaching out to touch her arm.

“Thanks for
coming,” he said quietly.  “I shouldn’t have taken off last weekend, but
there was some stuff going on at home.”

“It’s no
problem,” Ava said, shrugging.  “I needed a break anyhow.  I’ve been
going full tilt for a while and my big piece is at a bit of a standstill. 
Really sucks when that happens.”

He laughed, and
she took her pose again as Cole went back to work.  The two of them talked
as the hammer and chisel chinked again and again, revisiting their teen
years.  Ava admitted that she was a bit of a handful for her dad. 
She told him how she and Marcus had become friends – the two of them hanging
out together non-stop from the time they hit high school, though they’d known
each other much longer.  She hinted about her parents’ divorce, mentioning
that her mother was no longer part of her life, that she hadn’t even seen her
since her father got full custody when she was six.  Ava stopped for a
half-second, her voice swallowed up in her throat.  But then the moment
passed and her tone lightened again.

“Lots of anger
issues,” she admitted, “got in trouble with the law.  Think I must’ve
driven my dad almost crazy.  God, I was such a badass when I was a
kid.  I think he must have wanted to strangle me sometimes.”

 

Giggles broke
into all out cackling, and Ava dropped the pose again.  When her laughter
subsided, she caught Cole watching her, his face intently focused, almost
sad.  It left her feeling self-conscious and awkward.  She smothered
the last of her giggles, standing straighter.

“Sorry,” Ava
said, moving back into the pose, “I’m not making this easy for you to work.”

Cole smiled as
he lifted his mallet, starting again.  His next words surprised her.

“Nah.  It’s
okay… You’re really beautiful when you laugh.”

She blushed and
went silent, so he took over telling stories.  He told her how his parents
got divorced when he was in his early teens.  She asked why, but Cole
didn’t answer, just scowled, working mutely.  She was about to ask him
what was wrong when he stopped working altogether and looked back up at
her. 

“My older
sister, Hanna,” he said tightly, then dropped his face as if the pain was
present once more, “her death…
changed them.”

“Sorry,” she
said quietly, fighting the urge to walk up to him.

Cole nodded and
kept working.  He was using a small chisel, removing the excess from the
face in thin flakes, lowering the planes of the forehead and scoring under the
cheeks.   Ava wanted to see how it was going, but she sensed that
Cole was close to getting something right, so she stayed where she was, closing
her eyes and listening to the repetitive tapping.  It felt comforting.

Nearly an hour
later, Cole finally dropped his tools, rubbing his hands slowly.  It was
close to midnight, the time having disappeared.

“Think I’m done
for now,” he said, nodding to Ava. 

“Thank god,” she
said tiredly, then smiled and stretched, her back popping loudly.

“That’s disgusting,”
Cole said with a horrified laugh.  She grinned, shaking her head in
dismay.

“That’s what you
get for making me pose for...” she glanced at the clock on the wall, “seven
hours!”

He gasped.

“Shit,
Ava.  So sorry!  I didn’t realize it—”

She stepped
forward into his personal space, watching as his gaze dropped from her eyes to
her mouth and back up again.  Her lip curled mischievously as she saw the
flare of lust.  Worry gone, replaced by longing.

“You owe me,
Cole,” she said boldly, poking his chest.  “I’m going to make you pay for
it.”

“So should I…
uh… make it up to you?”  Cole asked, his eyes heavy lidded.

Ava smiled,
stepping closer. Her breasts now brushed against the front of his shirt, eyes
twinkling in anticipation. She could feel his breath starting to race in time
to hers.

“Yeah, you
should...” she purred.

“You want me to
pose for you?” he asked, his fingers running up her arm.  Ava shivered at
his touch, wanting him to keep going.

“No,” she said,
beaming.  “I’ll call you on
that
later.  Tonight I want you to
come paint with me.”

His face
flip-flopped in confusion.  

“Sure...?”

Ava knew he had
been expecting her to say something else (and she certainly had considered it)
but the driving need to paint – ‘
Paint big!’
– was rushing through her
veins.  She was desperate to get out of the studio.

“Great,” Ava
said, grabbing her jacket.  “Let’s head to the train yards.”

 

 

Chapter 8:  Other Side of
the Fence

Ava stood,
grinning up at Cole in excitement, her hair a golden halo under the street
lamp.

“You drive a
fucking
motorcycle!?
” she laughed, her eyes dropping back down to the
black helmet he’d just passed her.

Cole shrugged, a
smirk pulling up the edges of his mouth.  He was so glad it wasn’t snowing
tonight that he could have jumped up and down for happiness.  Something
was transpiring to make things work out and he wasn’t screwing it up this
time. 

He wanted her.

“You’re not the
only one who ever rebelled, you know,” he answered smugly, lifting the spare
helmet above her head, and brushing long strands of hair back from her face as
he did.  She giggled, smiling up at him.

“Really, Cole
Thomas, were you a
naughty boy
in your teens...?

Cole snorted,
adjusting the fit of the helmet down onto her head, his fingers lingering
against her cheek for longer than needed.

“My dad hates
the bike,” he answered dryly, remembering endless arguments.  “Always
has.”

Ava nodded,
pushing forward into his space the same way she had at the studio, the
unfamiliar helmet making her head wobble. 

“But
I like
it
,” she murmured. 

Cole held back
the urge to kiss her. 
This
thing
–  whatever they were
doing tonight –  was important to her, and he intended to make it work. The
last two weeks of being next to her in class, not reaching out to touch her,
had been the longest in his entire life.  He’d picked up the phone and put
it back down a hundred times since that night in the diner. 

Never called.

He swung a leg
over the seat, waiting as Ava took her place behind him.  As her hands
settled around his waist, he kicked the bike to life, revving the engine and
heading into the nighttime streets. 

“Faster!” she
yelled into his ear, the words whipping away as  the air rushed past his
ears, reminding him of the pounding surf near his family’s home. 

Grinning, he
obliged.  In seconds they were moving so swiftly it felt like flying in
the dark, rekindling Cole's childhood memories of being out on the water at
night.  Ava huddled against him as they swerved along poorly-lit supply
roads near the industrial park, heading out toward the train yards on the far
side of the city.  She claimed she had a bunch of “art supplies” in her
backpack, but the familiar swooshing and clicking sounds of the spray cans told
the truth. 

BOOK: Intaglio: The Snake and the Coins
12.14Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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