The Girl in the Painting

My hand shakes in my lap, and for some unknown reason, he reaches out and interlocks our fingers. His sturdy hold quells the earthquake of nerves beneath my fingertips.

I should pull away, but I don’t. I can’t.

Instead, I savor the feel and relief of it.

With two long fingers, he brushes against my cheek and slips one earbud out of my ear. “I want to show you something,” he whispers, and I watch the way his long, dark lashes swipe gently over his eyes.

Show me something?

I blink. “Right now?”

He nods but doesn’t say anything else.

God, this is insane.

I hardly know this man, yet I feel like I do. And I should probably be concerned about him being some kind of secret serial killer or something, but before I know it, I’m whispering “Okay” back to him.

Okay. Simple as that. No questions. No concerns. Just okay.

What is wrong with me?

I nod toward the phone in his hands. “Can I see?”

He tilts his head to the side as he follows my line of sight. “My phone?”

“Your music.”

You can find out so much about someone just by hearing their favorite songs.

Their fears. Their ambitions. What moves them.

And there is something inside of me that wants to know everything about him.

Something that is pulling me toward him.

He obliges, but before I let my curious mind have at it, I pull my phone and my earbuds out of my purse. I slip my earbuds into his ears and scroll through my favorite playlist until I find the perfect song.

“You’re playing me a song?” he asks and I nod.

“Yes, but this one needs to be played as loud as your ears can tolerate.” I turn up the volume, and with one tap to the screen, I watch his eyes as he reacts to the opening piano notes of “Comptine d’un autre été.”

To my surprise, he takes the phone from my hands and turns up the volume even more. He closes his eyes and drifts away, straight into the music.

No questions asked.

Ansel

I’ve never stalked anyone in my life.

A statement, ladies and gentlemen, I could only candidly make until today.

Truthfully, I’ve never even had the urge to track someone down. I’m more of a people-avoider than a people-tracker, but everything I’ve ever known seems upside down when Indy’s around.

I feel a bit like a creep. Like an evil bastard. But here I am, sitting beside her on the subway, and I have no one to blame but myself.

I ignored the fact that she has a boyfriend, completely put the bastard named Matt out of my head, and took a day-trip to her school—after finding said school on Google Maps. And I might have also timed said trip to have me arriving near the end of the school day and hung out inside the closest subway station that would take someone—Indy—in the direction of Brooklyn.

I was seconds away from scrapping the whole thing, finally having found a little morsel of morals at the bare bottom of my conscience jar, but when I saw her step into the station, I was powerless to stop myself from doing something about it. Seeing her, talking to her again, being fucking near her—all things I now feel like I need.

She’s a red string tied to my finger, and I can’t forget her. Can’t shake her. It doesn’t matter what I’m doing, what I’m focused on, she’s always in the back of my mind, her name is always on the tip of my tongue.

It’s crazy.

I’m probably fucking crazy.

But here I am, and I can’t stop looking at her.

Her petite hand grips my phone, and I watch with rapt attention as she scrolls through my library. Her teeth sneak out to scrape across her bottom lip as she pauses mid-scroll to tap on a song called “I See You.”

I nearly laugh at the irony of it.

These days, she’s all I fucking see. Hell, I haven’t stopped seeing her since the day I opened my new eyes.

Her tongue sneaks out and licks across her pretty little lips, and I watch the tiniest hints of a smile crest her mouth up at the corners.

I wonder if she even knows just how beautiful she is.

The way she moves, the way she breathes, and her perfect blue eyes. I could swim in them.

Her long lashes brush across her cheeks as she blinks once, twice, and three more times before averting her gaze from my phone across the aisle of the subway.

I wonder if she even remembers she’s given me her phone. Or that it’s my phone gripped between her fingers.

With one tap of my index finger, I open up her message inbox and proceed to pull up a blank text and type in my phone number as the recipient. It doesn’t take long before I’m hitting send, and the phone in her hands vibrates with a new message.