I hated how well she knew me. When I came out of the bathroom with a strut to my walk, both she and Mabel congratulated me on the conquest. Mystery man had vanished almost as quickly as he appeared. I had spent the night scrolling through every face, and nowhere did I find somebody that gorgeous.
“Oh. My. God. You haven’t texted him yet, have you?”
Did I say sister I never had? I might need to reconsider our friendship. “Not yet. I will. But I’ve got to clear out all this junk first.” Even I heard the excuses. I hadn’t had a serious relationship in ages. While my parents loved one another with an adorable fierceness, none of my pastboyfriends compared. It was hard for reality to line up with the fantasy I created.
“I’ll do it,” I assured her.
“Right now.” She lunged, trying to shove a hand in my pocket. I spun about, trying to keep it out of her grasp. If she got to my phone, there’d be a good chance she’d say something cute and then follow it up with a dick pic. Amanda might be the worst wingwoman known to mankind.
“I’ll do it! I swear.”
My foot caught on a stuffed teddy bear, and I fell backward. I landed with a thud on an oriental rug. Before I could sit upright, the sneezing took over. Amanda broke down laughing as I fought for air. Death by dust, leave it to me to have the lamest demise.
My phone dinged in between my sixth and seventh sneeze. Lying on my back, album clutched to my chest, I reached into my pocket.
Evie: How are you doing?
Four simple words. I crinkled my nose as I tried to think through the complexity of my answer. Evelyn and I stayed in each other’s orbit because we shared blood, but we were hardly a family. Every year, I offered for her to join Mimi and me to put flowers on our parents’ headstone, and she used her job at a boutique hotel to avoid it. My reply had less to do with our dwindling family and more to do with our strained relationship.
Jon: I’m fine.
“Oh, what’s that?” Amanda had already moved on from meddling in my love life to finding a new treasure stashed away behind an ornate mirror. “You didn’t tell me Mimi had good taste in art.”
“What? She has a velvet picture of dogs playing poker over the fireplace.”
Amanda grunted as she lifted the seven-foot-tall mirror off to the side. “Maybe she kept the good stuff hidden away.”
She held up a square canvas. The light from the rose window to her side let me see the art. Recognition hit like a punch to the gut. Amanda spun about, showing me the portrait.
“It’s not signed.”
“It’s… it’s mine.”
Amanda’s jaw dropped. “Let me get this straight. You. Jon Olsen. Mr. I refuse to help my beautiful best friend work on her comic.” She shot me a death glare. “Can do this?” Amanda drew comics, which were amazing but not something I did well. “Next, you’re going to tell me you went to art school? Are you one of those people creating forgeries of the Mona Lisa?”
“Oh, no. My secret’s out? Jon Olsen, international scourge of the art world.”
Charcoal on canvas. I had sat across the room from Mimi so many times while she knitted slippers. As fast as the loose nail on the stair pulled at her creations, she’dreplace them with another pair. She claimed it quieted her mind, and without it she’d never sleep.
I took the canvas, surprised by the warmth in my chest. “When I visited for the summer, she’d have a blank sketchbook waiting. She always encouraged me to draw the things I love.”
“You love love,” she whispered.
I promised myself I wouldn’t go through her things and walk out with a car full of items that sat in a closet in my apartment. So far, I haven’t come across anything that I needed. Okay, maybe the photo album of my parents, but the rest were her treasures, not mine. If I could only take one item, it’d be a drawing of Mimi doing what she loved.
“Radical love.” I smiled at the thought. “Those secret moments where people engage in their heart’s passion.”
Amanda slapped me on the ass hard enough I yelped. “You want radical love? Call him.”
Yes, I loved love. My parents had set the bar high, and so far, nobody had come close. I smiled at Mimi, looking over her glasses, catching me drawing her. Her lips curled into a knowing smirk. There was a warmth in her gaze, a quiet pride that would eventually turn into her cracking a joke. I could hear her pushing me forward. “Do the things that scare you.”
A shiver rippled along my skin. “I get the message,” I mumbled. Mimi wasn’t done teaching me a lesson or two.
“Tomorrow, I promise.”
“Hey, sexy,” she said in a mock-deep voice. “Since we’ve already violated each other, how about a date?”
I blushed at the thought. If it didn’t turn out to be love, maybe we could do some more violating? “Stop being a pain, and help me with this trunk.” Nice save, even if I was still thinking about the mystery man pinning me against the wall. Yes, I’d definitely text him tomorrow.
