Page 37 of The Jilted Lovers Club
Jordy glances at me. I glance back. Her mouth opens, but no sound comes.
“No,” I say. “I’m just showing her the town.”
“I’m at a standstill until the construction crew starts on the shop,” Jordy adds. “Ashton offered to take me on a tour.”
Grace leans in conspiratorially. “Between you and me, Bernie was kind of a bitch about the whole reservation thing.”
“Between me and the whole world, Bernie was atotalbitch.” Jordy grins. “Not just kind of.”
Grace’s eyes go wide, but then she cracks up. “Don’t let her hear you say that.”
“Why? She going to blackball me? Already been there. I’ve got the t-shirt to prove it. Actually,Sashadoes. That girl had the weirdest sense of style.”
“Oh my god. Hert-shirts?” Grace laughs. “My favorite one of hers is Thicculous Cage.”
Jordy blinks at me. I sigh. “It’s a thick Nicholas Cage next to a literal cage. You had to be there.”
Jordy doubles over laughing. “Okay, that’s amazing. I’m officially a fan.”
Grace points to a small corner of the gallery. “Anyway, that’s why I’m here. Those are my pieces.”
“Grace, you paint?” Jordy’s eyes widen as she steps closer. “These are incredible.”
And they are. I’ve seen her sketch in her notebook at Lock & Key, and occasionally in ceramics class. But these? These are next level.
Each of the four paintings are unique: a strangely elegant frog with an umbrella, a girl floating in a pond, an old woman with a storm of stories in her eyes, and a yellow umbrella abandoned on a rainy sidewalk.
They’re vibrant. Emotional.Alive.
“Why aren’t you doing this full time?” Jordy asks. “Why work for Bernie?”
“And go to school,” Grace adds. “I’m one semester away from a business degree.”
Jordy stares at her. “You should be doing an art internship. These belong in a New York gallery.”
Grace laughs. “Yeah, and make what, a hundred dollars a month? These took forever to paint. It’s not sustainable.”
Jordy looks at the price tags. “You have them listed forseventy-fivedollars?”
Grace shrugs. “And they haven’t sold.”
“Wrong.”
Before either of us can react, Jordy marches to the front desk. “I’d like to purchase all four of the Grace Dalton paintings,” she says. “But I’d like to negotiate the price.”
The woman at the desk blinks. “Uh, the listed prices are final.”
“I’d like to paya thousand dollars each,” Jordy says, pulling out her wallet.
Grace rushes forward. “Jordy, no—”
Jordy holds up a hand. “You’re not my charity case. You’re my artist.”
The gallery woman looks flustered. “We could … arrange that.”
Jordy doesn’t budge. “And if Grace’s work ever shows up here again, it doesn’t go in a dark corner, and it doesn’t get listed for less than five hundred dollars—or I’ll have her pull every piece and we’ll go straight to a private collector.”
The woman nods, nervously ringing her up.
