“I can’t do this!”
“Yes, you can,” Gardner said sternly, “unless you don’t want anyone to take your art seriously. If that’s the case, and you want to go back into ‘hobby mode,’ you’re going to have to change your major.”
“I graduate in three months!”
“Well then, you’d better get yourself together!”
Warm arms wrapped around my middle, and as soon as her scent hit my nostrils, I could feel the rest of my body calm down. I felt Nicole’s hands spread out along my stomach as she pulled me back into her and rested her cheek against my back.
“Have you come to kidnap me and save me from this?”
“Nope,” Nicole said. “What happened to the guy who loved to be the center of attention?”
“Not the same,” I said with a shake of my head.
It wasn’t either. When I played soccer, people looked at my body and what my body could do. They focused on my hands as my fingers plucked balls out of the air or my feet as they pelted the muddy ground to fight for possession. When people looking at my drawings though—it just felt so…so raw. It was personal. Soccer was strictly external, and when people watched me play, they were just staring at my outsides, not seeing who I was.
Now they were all going to peek at what was inside of me.
“Are you sure I shouldn’t take those two down?” I looked to Nicole in earnest, which meant I had to turn most of the way around and crane my neck to one side. She had talked me into putting them up, and though Greg had nearly choked out his beer, Gardner said they absolutely had to be included in the show even if they did feature Nicole’s tits.
It didn’t show her face or anything. No one would know who it was. Nicole even told Greg there were nude models at the university all the time, and it could be any of them. I think he decided to believe her lies even though it was pretty damn obvious exactly who it was.
Well, I thought so, anyway.
“Of course not,” Nicole said. I turned my head back to glare at Gardner for talking me into all of this, and Nicole held me a little tighter, placing her chin on my shoulder. “Everyone is going to love all of your work. Those are two of your best.”
“I’m not selling them,” I said for the hundredth time.
“You can put them up in the piano room at home after the show is over.”
“Okay.”
Her presence relaxed me a little, and when Kathrine opened up the gallery doors, I managed not to run and hide in the bathroom.
Well, not exactly.
A back door led to the alley behind the building, and I did go and hide out there for a little while when the people and the questions became too much. By then, I had already gone through three rounds of media interviews, asking more about the accident and my father’s suicide rather than art, but Kathrine said whatever got my name out there would help.
Greg was already outside. When I opened the door, he coughed and hid his hand behind his back.
“Oh…um…Thomas! How’s it going in there?”
“Don’t bullshit me,” I snapped. “Give me one of those.”
He narrowed his eyes, and I glared right back at him until he pulled a cigarette out of his pocket and handed it to me.
“She’s gonna smell it on you.”
“And I’m going to blame you!”
“Fine! Fine!” He held his hands up in the air, palms out. “All of this getting to you?”
“Yeah, it is,” I said as I took a deep drag. It was the third cigarette I had had since Nicole caught me and Greg smoking behind her house so long ago. I had one after the first month of rehab and another one when they told me about the nerve damage to my leg, that no amount of PT would ever heal it completely.
Nicole knew about the other smokes, and I’d eventually tell her about this one, too—just not today.
“It feels like they’re all looking at my guts,” I told him, “or like I’m lying on a table in there with all my skin peeled off or something.”