For 100 Nights (100 2)

Matt pivots to look at me. “I used to split costs on chemicals with the other artist who worked here before you. If you want to go in halves with me on anything, just so you know, I’d be cool with that.”

I nod, grateful for his warm welcome. “All right. That sounds good.”

He and Lita both go back to their work while I unpack my things and try to get comfortable with the new work setting. Once my paints and brushes are arranged the way I like them, I retrieve my portfolio and unzip the protective sleeve that holds my most recent work in progress.

The canvas is only partially painted. Just the initial strokes on a piece I was experimenting with before I ended up moving in with Nick. I haven’t worked on it since. Now, as I take it out and set it on the easel, I can’t resist tracing my fingers over the lines. The memory of what inspired it tugs my mouth into a small, private smile.

“You into religious symbolism?” I glance up and find Lita staring at me from across the room. “Angels and demons, that kind of stuff?”

“What? Oh. No, this is something else.” I look at the abstract image that’s not quite realized on the canvas yet. Just the suggestion of sky and water and a large white wing with falling feathers, their tips singed and blackened with soot. “It’s Icarus.”

“Cool,” Lita says, turning back to her own work.

This piece isn’t anything like the other paintings I’ve done. My early work was comprised of cityscapes, architectural painting, even some portraiture—none of it particularly good. Nick was right when he said my work was inhibited, throttled before it had a chance to become something real on the canvas.

But this piece is different. It is my first step away from realism and toward the abstract, inspired by my getaway to the Florida Keys a couple of months ago on Nick’s sailboat, the Icarus.

Even though my vision for this piece is far from finished, I like what I see.

I like the freedom it conveys. I like the passion this painting stirs in me when I look at it and think about everything Nick and I shared on that boat.

I mix some paint and prepare to get reacquainted with my canvas, but don’t know where to start. I’m afraid I’ll mess it up.

Just like I’m afraid of messing things up with Nick.

When I sigh and set my brush down for the fourth or fifth time without touching the canvas, Matt slowly pivots on his stool to face me. “How long has it been?”

“Since I painted?” I shrug. “A few weeks. But before then, it had been even longer.”

He nods soberly, looking both innocent and wise. “My boyfriend died a year and a half ago. It was eight months before I picked up a paintbrush again. Took another three before I remembered how to move paint around on a canvas.”

“God,” I murmur, sympathy tight in my throat. “I’m so sorry, Matt.”

His expression softens, then he gives me a faint shrug. “The point is, you show up at the canvas. And then you start again.”

He motions for me to get up and follow him to the back corner of the studio. Leaning up against the wall is a stack of used canvases in assorted sizes. Whatever had been painted on them is now covered with a thick coat of primer. “This is my recycle pile. If you want to warm up on something else, help yourself to any of these.”

“Thank you.”

I select a rectangular one of medium size and bring it back to my easel, switching out Icarus for this fresh canvas. I have no idea what I should paint, so I tell myself to mix some new colors without any expectation and simply see where it takes me.

With the heavy bass and slow, sensual tempo of the song pouring out of the speakers across the room, my thoughts drift back to Nick. No surprise, considering how shamelessly he had me screaming in pleasure this morning. For the past two weeks, we’ve begun every day with an orgasm—or three—and today was no exception. My sex is still tender from having him inside me, and each little shift I make on my stool creates a delicious friction that is equal parts pleasure and pain.

A shiver of arousal rushes through me, making me think of the other night with Nick. Of thin leather tails and blue velvet skies.

Swept up in the memories, I add more paint to my palette, turning the small swirl of azure into a darkening pool of fathomless blue and an indigo so deep it’s almost black. When the colors feel right I dip my brush, then bring it to the canvas and give my hand free rein to move wherever and however it wants to.

It’s liberating, exhilarating.

I’m entranced by the sensuality of my brush as it licks the pristine field of the canvas. Color explodes in the wake of each stroke, some of it dark and brutal, some of it sublime.

I’m so caught up in my work, I don’t even realize I’m being observed until another song on the boom box ends and the studio plunges into silence for a moment. I sit back on my stool and startle to find Lita standing behind me with Matt and Travis, who’s now dressed in loose jeans and a white T-shirt that somehow makes him look even more gorgeous.

“Earth to the new girl. You didn’t hear a damn word I said, did you?”

“Um . . . “ I can’t even pretend she hasn’t just busted me, so I shake my head.

“It’s noon, so we’re all heading out for a bite to eat. Wanna come?”