“Holy shit, Chris,” I murmured.
“I don’t go by Chris, just FYI. You can call me Christopher, if my full name is just too much of a mouthful.” He grinned at me and added, “And once we leave here and return to your world, you can go back to calling me Austin if you want.”
He turned his attention to painting, and since he was right-handed – the hand that was chained to me – I tried my damndest to concentrate, to follow his movements as I held onto his arm. I also tried to make sure I didn’t clumsily jar him or hinder what he was doing in any way.
“Don’t try to anticipate where I’m going to move my hand,” he said gently at one point. “Just relax your arm, let me guide you.”
“I’m worried that my arm’s too heavy. I was trying to lighten the weight of it on you.”
He smiled at me. “I know, Charlie. And thank you. I’m a lot stronger than I look, though, so you can go ahead and relax.” I tried to do that.
When the class ended an hour and a half later, the teacher came up to us and took a look at Christopher’s canvas. She was positively beaming. To me she said, “This boy is my star pupil. I’d like to pretend I taught him everything he knows, but that’s not true at all. He’s a prodigy. Did you know your friend can do this?”
“I had no idea. He’s a very surprising person.” And wasn’t that the truth.
After he packed up his supplies, Christopher picked up his canvas carefully and took it over to a long, thin shelf along one wall, where all the students were lining up their paintings. “This assignment’s done,” he explained. “We’re turning them in. That’s why I didn’t want to miss school today.”
I took a look at the other paintings. All of them were good, some of them wonderful. But my companion’s was from a different universe. It looked like it had been plucked from a museum, it was so much better than the rest. And apparently I wasn’t the only one who thought so. As soon as his painting went up, a crowd gathered. “Holy shit,” one guy said, “why do I even bother painting?”
“Damn, C.R., you never cease to amaze,” the Goth girl from earlier said.
“Christopher Robin’s gonna go on to rule the art world,” a skinny kid with wild crayon red hair told me with a big smile. “And all of us are gonna get to say ‘I knew him back at the beginning.’ I just hope that in the art school scenes when they make the movie of his life, I’m played by someone hot.”
“You’re gonna be played by a mop dipped in red paint,” someone told him, and everyone laughed.
“But seriously, Christopher Robin,” a petite blonde girl said, “This is mind-blowing.”
My companion looked embarrassed by all of this attention, blushing shyly. “You guys are too sweet,” he murmured. “Well, we gotta run. Charlie’s got to get to work. See you next week.” He grabbed his stuff, and we took off to a chorus of goodbyes and see yas.
We came in through the front door when we finally arrived at Nolan’s, an hour into my shift. It was actually fairly busy. I apologized to Cole as we hurried past, and he raised an eyebrow at us.
At my locker, my companion put away his backpack and art supplies as I picked up a clean work t-shirt from the shelf and said, “Ok, so how am I going to put this on?”
“You could split it down the seam under your chained arm,” he suggested. “Then I could stitch it back up for you.”
“That’d take too long.”
Jamie came out of the kitchen and said, “Hey Charlie. Who’s your friend?”
I turned to the boy in question and asked, “Are you Austin now, or are you Christopher Robin?”
He smiled up at me and said, “That’s your call.”
“Jamie, this is Christopher Robin Andrews. Christopher, this is Jamie Nolan. It’s his bar.”
“Ah. So you must be the ex,” Christopher said, and stuck out his hand to shake Jamie’s. His right hand, the one that was attached to me.
Jamie’s eyes went wide, but he shook his hand and said politely, “It’s nice to meet you.” Then he looked at me and asked, “Is there a reason you two are chained together?”
“It’s a kinky sex thing,” I told him. Jamie already disliked Dante. I wasn’t going to give him more fuel for his argument that the guy was bad for me.
Christopher giggled at that, and Jamie raised an eyebrow at me. “Oh yeah, you’re totally into kinky sex, Charlie. So what’s the real reason? No, never mind, tell me later. Cole needs help out there. Just tell me you’ll unchain yourself long enough to work your shift.”