It’d been the first time Walker and I had spent proper time together. I remembered it vividly, because instead of being afraid that I’d been caught, I’d just smirked over at him, held out my hand, and said, If you’re going to stand there and gawk, why don’t you paint with me?
Today, the alley had been pre-set up with a small portable table and a few canisters of spray paint. There was a large white canvas covering the ground. Alex had certainly carried off his part of this little surprise well; I’d have to thank him later.
I stepped deeper into the alley, kicking my heels off only when I reached the thick canvas. My feet were perfectly protected from the pavement of the alley. Back when we were in school, this had been the prime place to smoke and drink near campus, and it looked like the next generations of students had kept up the tradition.
Bending quickly, I grabbed my first can of paint and looked down the alley like I had all those years ago. Walker had agreed to a date, so we were doing the date my way. As he stood at the mouth of the alley, looking at me with a bemused look on his face, I gave him the same line I had when we were teenagers.
“Hey…” I cocked an eyebrow. “If you’re gonna stand there and gawk why don’t you come paint with me?”
Walker laughed and honest-to-god trotted down the alleyway, joining me. He shrugged off his suit jacket and tossed it where I’d tossed my heels, grabbed his own can of spray paint before he went to work himself.
Walker wasn’t an artist. Never had been. But we could flow well together. His work was more like doodles beside mine, but he added little extras and details to the nautical piece that I started, bumping into me with his hip or pressing his body to mine as he reached for a high spot on the wall. He chuckled as he swiped dripping bits of paint from the aged brick to draw little lines on me here and there. I did the same for him—neither of us cared about the state of our clothing anymore.
We were just having fun.
This was the kind of date that reminded me most of why I loved Walker. No pretenses. Just the two of us together—me in an element I was all too familiar with, and Walker being Walker, having no idea what he was doing but so confident in himself that he could roll with it anyway.
It was the best fucking date I’d ever been on.
After we painted for a while, I turned to Walker, laying my hand on his forearm. I could feel the muscles bunch under my touch, and I realized that despite his confidence, he was still nervous. I hadn’t given him an answer to his question yet.
“So, now that I’ve got you unawares and nice and vulnerable—”
Walker laughed. “This is your idea of vulnerable?”
“Well, I have you in a situation where you’d never suspect a single diddly thing happening, so yeah,” I said matter-of-factly.
He snorted. “Okay, so what’s the big twist here? When you said date, I wasn’t expecting this, though I’m not complaining one bit. But somehow, I get the feeling you’re not done yet. You’re up to something.”
“Not up to anything!” I batted my eyelashes innocently as a smirk twitched on my mouth. “You remember the first time we were here?”
“Yeah. You were a young, hot as fuck hoodlum tagging someone’s property—”
I sprayed him a little with a shock of bright green paint. He jumped back, and my aim went wild. The spray that had been meant for his chest went low, leaving a big bullseye dot right on his dick. He looked down, his brow shooting up when he saw where the spray paint had ended up. When his eyes flicked back up to me, he snorted and then burst out in laughter.
“Well, I guess if it needs a marker on it for people to know where to go…”
I stuck my tongue out at him. “Maybe it’s there for people to see what a dick you are,” I suggested cheekily.
“Aw, come on, you don’t believe that.”
I smiled. “Nope. I really, really don’t.”
We returned to painting, and as we stood close to each other, I nudged him with my hip.
“So, back to why we’re here… I thought it was a good place to start. I mean, this alley is the first place we hung out properly. It was the first time we exchanged numbers. It was the first moment that set everything that came after it in motion. If there was ever going to be a ‘real’ date for us to start over with, it had to be this.” I smiled up at him. “I wanted to have this again, before talking about the other night.”
Walker froze immediately, his can of paint still poised near the wall. Slowly, he turned and looked down at me.
“What about it?” he asked in a low voice.
I raised my brow. “You’ve gotten bad at nonchalance.”
“Only with you; harder to be distant over.”
Yeah. I knew that feeling well.
“Walker, I just wanted you to know that… the other night, I was very dead set on moving on,” I told him honestly. “I did that painting, and I thought it was my closure. I thought it meant things were over. Done. I accepted it. New page to turn over and all that. But then you showed up, and I think I took it as a sign.”