Page 26 of The Painter and His Poet

“I know that, but I also know this is just a season you’re passing through. It won’t always be this way. You will continue to grow, evolve and flourish, and that loneliness you feel will someday be filled with contentment, happiness, and so much love. I know it, as sure as I know that I will never stop loving you.”

And that’s whatIlove the most about my mother, her unwavering positivity. Fuck knows I could use some of it because Iwantto be happy. I want to be this man she sees. I mull over her words, ruminating on them as I sip on my coffee, barely tasting it.

“Do you want to talk about that beautiful woman in your paintings?” she finally asks, filling the silence.

“She’s just someone I passed on the street. I thought she had an interesting face,” I say, the lie slipping from my mouth far too easily.

Fuck, if only Friday were just someone I’d seen in passing and been inspired by, but she isn’t. She plagues my every waking moment, she’s all I dream about at night. Somehow she’s buried herself beneath my skin and settled into every goddamn cell. She’s my utter obsession, and I’ve spent my nights searching every backstreet bar and club just to hear her voice, to see her again, but it’s as though she’s disappeared off the face of the earth. I even returned toSmokey Joe’sto see if they could give me some more information about Friday, but they had nothing. I can’t find her, and as each day passes it’s as though she wasn’t even real, that she was a figment of my imagination.

My mother lifts a brow. “That is not a painting of someone you passed on the street, Sterling.”

I huff out a breath. “There’s no keeping anything from you, is there?”

She grins. “So, are you going to tell me who she is?”

“Will I ever hear the end of it if I don’t?” I counter.

“Absolutely not.”

We both laugh then, but my smile slowly fades as I recall the night I met Friday. “I heard her singing in a club in Brooklyn just over a month ago now. It was late, and I was on my way home when some arsehole bumped into me in the street. Somehow my headphones got knocked off and…” I blow out a breath, even the memory of that night has me itching to head back to my studio to paint.

“And?” she persists softly.

“And I was completely overwhelmed with colour, Mum. It was like I was standing inside a fucking rainbow. Everything was so bright, so vibrant, and my whole body reacted in a way I’ve never experienced before…” I clear my throat, glancing her way, wondering whether she’s picking up on what I’m implying, but she just nods, listening intently. “All I could do was follow the sound of her voice… Fuck, it was incredible, like nothing I’ve heard before or since. I have never reacted so intensely.”

“That good, huh?” she asks, eyeing me with interest.

“Yeah,” I agree, swiping a shaky hand through my hair. She notices me trembling and the interest in her gaze turns to concern.

“Sterling?” she questions. “Did something bad happen?”

“No, I mean, I did pass out, but she helped me.”

“You fainted? That hasn’t happened since–”

“I was a kid, I know,” I reply.

“So you fainted on the street? How did she help you if she was inside the club?”

“Not then, I passed out later,” I explain.

“Okay, go on,” she urges.

“Drawn to her voice, I acted on autopilot,” I continue, “And I ended up stumbling into the club, and sitting at a table right in front of the stage. I couldn’t keep my eyes off her. Every note just exploded into colour, it was like looking through a kaleidoscope, the colour shifting and changing form.”

“That sounds incredibly intense, Sterling.”

“It was,” I agree. “But it was more than that. As she was singing, I felt this connection.”

“A connection?”

“Yes, a physical one that went beyond my synesthesia, I was…” I wince, not sure that I’m comfortable having a conversation with my mother about my sexual attraction to Friday, or whatever her name really is.

“Sterling, I may be a mother, but I’m a woman too, I understand what you’re getting at here,” she says, quirking her lips into a smile.

“She was beautiful, not just because of the colours she conjured within me. Yes, I was initially drawn to her by the sound of her voice, inspired by it, but something abouthercalled to me too. It went deeper than my synesthesia. I can’t even explain it, to be honest.”

“Some things are just unexplainable,” she says, patting my hand. “So what happened next?”

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