Page 60 of Vulnerate

If I look in her direction I’ll lose all my thoughts. Even in my periphery she’s stunning. There are flecks of paint on her neck and cheek from whatever she was working on, deep purple and burgundy that make her skin glow. She’s redecorated since I was last here, one side of her apartment in front of the large windows has been cleared out opening up the space with her commission sat on the easel. There are no sculptures but it’s almost like we’re teenagers again and I’m dropping off some random item as an excuse to see her work.

Viktor shouts over to me, forcing my attention to the occupants of the room. “Dad, I forgot my clothes.”

There’s no reason why he’d need a change of clothes and I took them out of his bag. Dani turns away refusing to look at me, and he points to his t-shirt. “I don’t want to get paint on it. Can I have yours?”

Pulling it over my head, I hand it to him despite my argument. “So, it’s okay to fuck mine up?”

Nodding with a smirk, he rips it out of my hand uses it as an apron, covering nearly all of his clothes.

I can feel the hard stare burning my face at my cursing, but Dani doesn’t open her mouth. He spends too much time around Tali and would pick shit up anyway so there’s no reason to censor myself. As long as he uses it in the right context who gives a fuck. Her judgment is unnecessary when he’s never even said damn. She doesn’t voice it as she shows Viktor different painting styles, and he gives her his full attention.

With my family busy, I go through things to get a reaction. Her habits haven’t changed from when we were kids and I find her portfolios stacked against the wall. Picking up the smaller folder, I get to know mylittle artist again by looking at her designs. Some of them are old, the flowers she started making when we were kids and ended up getting commissions on. They’re all her professional work but I know my woman, she has secret projects that portray everything she’s feeling in that one singular moment.

Finding the leather bound journal full of concepts, I lean on the back of the sofa and start flicking through it. Each page is an insight into the years she wasn’t here. They’re filled with eyes, some are hand drawn, some are 3D renders that she made of an eye with different words making up the whites of the eyeball.

Sorry

Thank you

Be happy

Be great

One day

Confessions and wishes are present in every image. The journal is old as fuck, there are sketches from her very first designs and I smile, remembering how she dragged me around to search for the right pigment shades that matched her vision. Flicking to the front, there’s text wrapped around different parts of a face. One I recognize and will never forget because I see it when my eyes close.

It’s all jumbled, Dani’s eye crying in the top right of the page while her lips are further down towards the center. The proportions are right, but features are missing, hidden behind vines that the words scroll out from. They’re all curvy and take too long for my brain to fully fit together to form them.

My mother always looks at me when I speak.

The book is ripped from my hand and Dani looks afraid as she whisper hisses, “Don’t go through my things.”

She didn’t say shit when I was moving around and looking at her portfolio, but whatever is on that page has her scared. Hooking my finger in her pocket, I pull her closer and look over her shoulder, making sure Viktor’s busy. His nose is nearly touching the canvas as he sketches something, and I keep my voice low, so he doesn’t get distracted as I whisper against her ear, “Entertain me and I won’t have to.”

Whatever is within the pages she’s hugging to her chest has my full attention. She doesn’t react to my offer and picks my wrist up, movingmy hand away without loosening her hold on that journal. Dani never spoke about her mom; I knew she was sick, and it was the one topic we’d allow her to bring up only if she felt like discussing it. Even Vlad, the heartless bastard, never mentioned anything to her when he took over her tuition so she wouldn’t be forced to change schools.

She crosses her arms over her chest protecting her innermost feelings and moves away from me. She’s fucked up by getting my attention. The image in front of me is more than a dream, it’s too close to everything I’ve wanted. Watching Dani with her hair thrown up in some messy style, paint on her skin as she leans over Viktor to show him whatever he was asking for help with is going to haunt me. It’s the image of everything, not what I want or need. Just everything. My woman and my kid.

They both smile at each other and my chest aches. It’s warm and weird, not pain but not good. They’re a hologram of what could have been. Picking a random book from Dani’s shelf, I look over the top of the page like a creep. Viktor lights up under her attention, just like me, we both love being under her warm brown gaze.

Dani looks up and blushes, fuck me. She’s killing me with her beauty. The longer I stare at her the more exquisite she becomes. She’s the personification of one of her sculptures, little things hidden in the surface, and you need to study them to understand the importance of what’s in front of you, but you know as a whole how significant she is without having the understanding.

Her cheeks are flushed, and her eyes widen when she sees the cover of the book I’m holding. She stomps over to me and grabs the book out of my hand. I smile having her attention and my voice is lighter like the old me who was owned by her.

“You’re like Mrs. Taylor, confiscating everything I hold.”

She relaxes at the memory of the old bat who hated me. Viktor joins the conversation and wipes his paint covered fingers along my t-shirt not giving two fucks that I’ll have to put it back on.

“Who’s Mrs. Taylor?” Folding the t-shirt up his body, he digs in his pocket, pulling out a piece of licorice he stole from Tali and smacking his gums as he looks at us, waiting for an answer.

I look back to Dani and she’s staring at my chest, her blush deepening to red, and I flex being a little bitch to keep her attention on me. She turns around without meeting my eyes and clears her throatbefore answering, “She was a teacher at our school, your dad always used to argue with her.”

Her throat bobs on the word “dad” like it caused pain.

Viktor starts peppering her with questions and she answers them all easily. He’s my favorite kid, even if there’s only an option of one, because each question forces her to talk about me. It’s all there in her head waiting to be recalled and I lean against the wall getting lost in the melody of her voice.

“What was my dad like when he was my age? Did you know him since he was a baby?”

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