I'm Not in Love

Remi

His tongue… soft and delicate… pale pink velvet… licking strawberry ice cream from the cone… emerald eyes closed loosely… dark lashes resting on pale cheeks… authentic and guileless and…

I’m never going to get to sleep if I carry on with these wayward thoughts. For a few moments tonight at the ice cream parlor, though, Tristan let his guard down. He stopped being so perfectly composed and let me observe his uninhibited pleasure as he enjoyed the ice cream.

It’s an image I can’t let go of, and it’s not just about sex. It was… rewarding… to be allowed to witness Tristan’s delight in something so simple.

I wipe the perspiration from my forehead with the edge of the sheet. There’s no reason for me to be getting so worked up.Tristan is simply one more man in an endless, meaningless line of them. Just another pretty face to momentarily distract me. So maybe he happens to have a sweet pink tongue he apparently knows how to use.

This is of no concern to me—at least, not until next Friday when his work at LCC is complete and the ethical conflict of pursuing a classroom life model is over.

I kick off the covers and slide from the bed. If I’m not going to sleep, I should do something useful. Fold laundry? Hit the rowing machine? Clean the bathrooms?

I shake away these less than enticing options, already knowing what I’m going to do.

Last night at Scoop of Heaven Ice Cream Parlor, I snapped a picture on my cell phone of Tristan and Jared, both gazing across the table at me. Tristan’s head was tilted toward Jared, but he was peering at me with puzzled eyes, taken aback by the evening’s turn of events. And Jared’s O-shaped lips suggested he was wondering how he got so lucky. “I won my soccer game and I get a banana split before dinner!” I’m sure my expression also reflected, “how the hell did I end up in an ice cream parlor with a nude model and his eight-year-old nephew?” We’re poster boys for group perplexity.

I snatch my phone from the nightstand and find the photo—I need to see it. To see him.

Studying the picture on my phone—likely wearing the dreamy smile of a star-crossed lover—I slide the metal panel that separates the bedroom from the living room to the side and stride with purpose across the loft.

The antique French easel set up by the wall of windows is a foundation of my sparse living room décor. It’s massive in size, constructed in solid oak, probably at least a century old, and would be suitable to display art at a world-class museum. This easel is a prized possession and quite useful—I’m called to draw and paint at the most unlikely of times. Phone still in hand, I snatch a pencil from the tray and sketch on the waiting watercolor canvas.

I don’t always sketch my subject before I paint, but tonight, the need to quickly commit my vision to paper is urgent enough to increase my pulse. I can’t stop myself from sketching him to life.

Jared is an amazing kid, but his “Uncle Tris” is why I can’t sleep… and the reason I can’t wait until this Friday—a full week before I can set my plan to take him to bed into motion. I know the angles of Tristan’s face from hours of observation in life drawing class, but still, I study the picture on my phone. I pledge that I’ll capture the essence of his expression, rather than recreate the stunning quality of his beauty, which will require discipline.

I map out his head with a simple circle and then adjust the angle with a brow and hair line. His perceptive eyes… I draw these first. Never have narrow, cautious, dark-green eyes spoken to me as Tristan’s do. They’re intensely aware and keenly intelligent—without being showy in their brightness or width.

Clad only in boxer briefs, I shudder in the draftiness of the enormous room as I commit the essence of Tristan’s eyes to the canvas. I shiver again as I consider the various shades of paint I will one day blend to express their vivid color.

I move on to his nose—straight and slender, unturned in either direction. And the lips I observed with such rapt attention earlier tonight at the ice cream parlor—not full lips, but slim and precise, matching the sleekness of his other features. Then I sketch a finely chiseled brow and jawline.

Before I know it, Tristan is gazing back at me… and though I’m the one who has spent hours this week creating his likeness on paper, it’s as if he is the one sizing me up. Assessing me, discovering what I’m made of.

What am I made of?

Unfortunately for both of us, I don’t think I’m made of much. And certainly not enough.