Say Yes (Nostalgic Summer Romance)

I wasn’t working on anything in particular, not an assignment or something due to turn in. Instead, I painted the tunnel of a wave, mixing shades of deep turquoise and brilliant teal and deep, navy blue. But assignment or not, I was locked in. That’s how I always was when I painted. Lost. Surrendered. Completely consumed.

I was bringing a tiny surfer to life in the middle of the wave when suddenly, a cool, thick paint was brushed along my cheek.

I blinked, coming back to the present moment to find Liam smirking beside me, the offending weapon in his hand. “Hi,” he said.

I laughed. “Hi.” I reached up and wiped the paint with my fingers, holding them in front of me to see the bright golden yellow. “You painted me.”

“I did,” he agreed, and then he angled his canvas a bit, showing me the start of something that did look a lot like me, except the lines were dragged this way and that, creating a blur. But I still saw me there — the depths of my blue eyes, the mole on my lip, the curtain of blonde hair falling over my ears.

I swallowed, staring for a long while as if I could stare long enough to not feel anything, to not be filled with warmth at the fact that I was his subject.

And then suddenly, there was a flash.

I blinked, turning to find Liam holding the disposable camera from yes night.

He shrugged, winding the knob at the top so the next picture was loaded and ready. “We had a few left,” he said before setting it aside.

I smiled and looked back at the painting, marveling at the way he saw me. When I met his gaze again, his eyes were darker, heated, and laced with something akin to mischief, or perhaps desire.

He reached forward to tap the tip of his wet brush to my bottom lip. Slowly, he dragged it down, over my chin and along the line of my neck, down my chest until it dipped below the V of my t-shirt.

I was in his arms in the next instant, wrapping him up as much as I could as he did the same. Even a centimeter of distance between us was too much. I wanted every piece of me touching every piece of him.

Our clothes were shed in a rush, and the only time we broke from our kiss was to strip. And while I expected him to take me in my bed, he lifted my ass and sat me on top of the dresser, shoving me back until my spine hit the fresh paint of his canvas. He grabbed my hips and yanked, then, until my ass hung just enough off the dresser for him to enter me. And after a quick condom application, that’s exactly what he did.

He filled me to the brim, covering my mouth to mute the cry that came with the feel of him stretching me open.

It was quick and hot, my racing heart barely able to keep pace before we were both spent and clinging to each other, our foreheads slick, roots damp with sweat.

We both laughed a little before tiptoeing our way down the hall to the shower, and as the water fell through his hair and over his eyes, I asked, “How did you get into painting?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you told me you don’t really want to make a career of it, that you’re doing it just because, right now, you like to,” I reminded him. “But… you’re too talented to have just randomly picked up painting on a whim recently.”

He smirked, lathering up shampoo in his hands before he ran them through my hair, his fingers massaging my scalp. I closed my eyes and hummed at the pleasant feeling, waiting for his answer.

“I used to go to my grandma’s every summer — my dad’s mom. She lived in the middle of nowhere, a small town in northern Connecticut, rather than the coast where we were, but she was always the highlight of my year because whether she had us for two weeks or four, she filled every minute of our time with something new and exciting. The town was small, but it had a lot going on for kids — probably because everyone had them, and the parents were dying to figure out ways to keep them busy.”

I smiled, letting him guide me back until I was under the showerhead and the warm water was raining over me.

“She put us in church camp and swim lessons, pottery classes and karate. We’d go to the little theater in town to watch a movie every Friday night, and we’d spend every Saturday morning hitting every garage sale we could find.”

When my hair was rinsed, I ran my fingers over my eyes to clear the water so I could see him again.