Page 53 of Painted

“Posing nude for Rhys is one thing,” they said coyly. “Posing for an entire class of mostly retired people was something else entirely.”

Rebecca laughed. “I could never do it. Violet, Avril, and Leslie would never let me hear the end of it.”

“It wasn’t as scary as I thought it would be, once I settled in,” Early said with a thoughtful smile. “I stopped worrying about my body once I could feel that people weren’t judging me, they were just rendering me.”

“Huh. I never thought of it that way,” Rebecca said, pausing her typing to look up at the ceiling, like she was thinking about it now.

She breathed in then sighed and smiled at Early. “You’re far braver than I am,” she said.

Early’s brow went up. “I am not brave,” they said. “I’m afraid of everything.”

“No, you aren’t,” Rebecca laughed. “Someone who is afraid of everything would be sitting in some beige office, dressed in a suit, their hair cut short, talking about the latest Ealing Eels footy match with the rest of the blokes in the office, even though they hate football. They wouldn’t be working for an arts center, wearing heels and a skirt, and dating my brother.”

Early’s face heated even more at Rebecca’s assessment. It was true. The giddy joy of the weekend had translated into them putting the sensible heels they liked back on and wearing a calf-length, pinstripe pencil skirt that was probably leftover from the nineties, along with a white button-down shirt with a Peter Pan collar and a flouncy scarf tied to vaguely resemble a necktie.

Better still, the outfit just felt right instead of filling them with awkwardness and the feeling they were impersonating someone else.

“I’ve never thought of myself as brave,” they said, tilting their head to the side and blinking. “But I guess you have to be when you’re so radically different from the majority of people around you.”

“You do if you want to live as your authentic self and not as someone else’s version of who they think you’re supposed to be,” Rebecca agreed with a sage nod.

The conversation was cut short by work, but it stayed in Early’s mind and gave them the motivation to listen to their dad’s voice message when they went to make a cup of tea halfway through the morning.

“Earl, this is your father,” his dad said, trying to sound dominant but with too much uncertainty in his tone. “Your mum and I have had a talk, and we’ve decided that bygones should be bygones. A lot of things were said the other day when you left here that shouldn’t have been said. You’re our son, our only child, and we realize we shouldn’t have chucked you tothe curb the way we did. We’d like you to come home now and everything will be forgotten.”

Early winced as they pulled their phone from their ear and closed the screen. Their dad probably thought he was being gracious and forgiving. From his point of view, he was growing and becoming a better man. But he was still so far off the mark that it made their throat close up and put them off the tea they’d just made entirely.

The problem with being brave and living as your authentic self was that all of the courage and boldness in the world couldn’t change the minds of people who thought they knew who you were and had a vested interest in keeping you in the box where they felt comfortable with you being.

“Did you listen to your dad’s message?” Rebecca asked cautiously when Early returned to their desk.

“Yep,” they said, fiddling with the mouse to get their computer to wake up.

“And is there anything I can do?” Rebecca asked on with deep concern.

Early sighed and looked at her. “There’s nothing anyone can do.”

Rebecca reached across to squeeze their hand. “Well, you know if you need anything, we’re all here to?—”

“Excuse me, are you part of the Hawthorne family?”

The tender moment of friendship was shattered as a grey-haired woman radiating anger marched into the office. The fury she projected was so potent that Early and Rebecca snapped straight in their chairs and just looked at her for a moment. A sense of alarm began to spread in Early’s gut.

“I’m Rebecca Hawthorne,” Rebecca said, standing and moving around the side of her desk. “Can I help you?”

“Are you responsible for this travesty of a fundraiser that’s supposed to happen this Friday?” the woman demanded.

Early’s sense of dread grew, and they stood slowly, ready to defend Rebecca if they needed to.

“I’m not part of the planning committee personally,” Rebecca said carefully, “but I’m part of the family, and we’re all helping out.”

“Well, I demand you stop at once,” the woman said. “Call the whole thing off. My brother should never have gone ahead with this catastrophe of amemorial.” She said the last word like it was something shady or disreputable.

Early sucked in a breath. “Are you Mariel and Martin Flint’s sister?” they asked. The only thing they knew about the sister was that she was against holding the fundraiser.

The woman turned her furious look on them. “I’m Nancy Flint,” she said. “Mariel was my sister, and I refuse to allow you lot to profit off of her death.”

Early was stunned speechless at that confirmation. The pain that radiated from Nancy Flint was so close to what they’d felt from Rhys when he’d shouted at them for wearing Raina’s sweater the other day that it nearly bowled them over.

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