Page 1 of Paint Eater
CHAPTER ONE
JAY
“Find me later,” Nisha instructed, pointing a finger at Jay’s face. Jay smiled and nodded, not bothering to ask, ‘What for?’ Nisha was just like that—bossy and enigmatic and vulnerable, like a clam…if clams were bossy and enigmatic.
Jay knew what he meant.
Nisha flounced off towards the kitchen, and Jay turned towards the mass of people in the living room, spilling out into the garden, strings of fairy lights replacing the stars above them. Who knew New York had so many damn houses big enough to hold more than a few people at a time? Jay wasn’t exactly from this neighbourhood. Or borough. Or lifestyle. But Nisha had invited him, and what the hell, Jay was open to new experiences.
Man, Jay loved the chaos and noise of a party. As soon as he joined the chattering and dancing hive, he felt soothed by the swarming crowd. He didn’t know anybody here except Nisha, but it didn’t matter. Jay was good at making friends. Not great atkeepingthem, ’cause he was annoying and impulsive and couldn’t keep his mouth shut, but his personality was enough to entertain, at least. Or so he’d been told.
He let himself go, buzz-pollinating from person to person, dancing with a girl with box braids swinging down to her waist, chatting with a group of Upper-East guys about salt lamps or something, and how the definition of utopia was a place that didn’t exist. Joined a game of beer pong he was terrible at, but the drinks were weak, and half of them spilt over when Jay jumped around after a score and knocked into the table. No one minded, though—there were only high spirits haunting the place.
By the time he remembered to find Nisha—mostly because she was waving him over from the garden—he was a little sweaty, smiling and humming inside.
He excused-me’d his way over to her, glad he was tall enough to look over most people’s heads. His mom always said he got his ‘good looks’ from her—the smooth brown skin that hadn’t even really broken out in high school, the big brown eyes and long-fingered hands—but his height was from his dad. The only thing he’d given him before bouncing as soon as Jay was born. Not that Jay cared—his mom was worth four normal parents, let alone a deadbeat dad.
“Hey,” he said, trotting over, panting from the heat and the press of bodies he’d had to push through.
Nisha raised her eyebrows. She was still perfectly put together, make-up intact, long dark hair flowing down her back. She’d gone to the wedding of one of her cousins in India and still had the henna she’d worn on her hands, delicate and intricate against her skin.
It took Nisha looking to the side for Jay to notice Logan right there. He looked exactly like the last time Jay had seen him during high school graduation two years ago. Dark, dark skin, closely cropped hair, jaw locked, and eyes piercing, pressed into a frown.
Jay felt his body do something weird—some embarrassed, lurching feeling going through him. Was he blushing? He was pretty sure he was blushing.
“Oh, hey. Hey, hey, hey.”
Smooth, Jay. Real smooth.He bounced a little on the spot to get rid of some of the restless energy that always seemed to be coursing through him. He could feel the wild curls of his afro bouncing with him, sliding in and out of his vision like little brown bursts.
“Man, I miss watching fireworks. My mom used to take me on the Fourth of July, you know, and we’d have a picnic and shit, and one time I knocked over my cup of juice three times, and she wasn’t even mad. She’s cool like that,” Jay babbled.
Logan stared at him rather unblinkingly, and Jay opened his mouth to talk about lizards, but Nisha seemed to see him coming, holding up a hand to stop him. Jay shut his mouth, grateful, because talking quickly and incessantly—about topics that seemed, to others, to bubble up from the deep blue—was a big part of his personality, which he knew Logan didn’t like. They’d done a project together when they were fifteen about inspiring women, and Jay had been so excited ’cause he thought it meant, like,anyinspiring woman, that he’d proposed to write about his mom. Logan had looked at him like he wascrazy. And maybe Jay was, what with being that old and wanting to write a project on his mom instead of, like, Daisy Bates or Sister Rosetta Tharpe, but his momwascool.
And then, when Logan had gone to Jay’s house and they’d settled on Jane Patterson, and they’d talked and he’d made Logan laugh and they’d had dinner together three times—one time stew, one time pizza, and another one fish cakes and salad—Jay’s mom had smiled at him each time Logan left as if saying, ‘I like him.’ Jay had been so, so sure that Logan would be his friend, his first real friend in high school, but it just hadn’t turned out that way. Jay had bounded over to Logan the day after they handed in their project, and even Jay, who sometimes wasn’t the best at reading social cues, although he tried really hard, could interpret the closed-off scowl on Logan’s face.
Until that point, Jay had thought, even though he didn’t have real friends that spent time with him out of school, and the teachers were often exasperated and annoyed with him because the Adderall worked, kind of, but not entirely, and often thoughts and ideas would bounce off the smooth, curved walls of his head and he couldn’t keep them in all the time, and whyshouldhe, why was everybody so stiff and boring? Anyway, Jay had thought high school wasn’tthatbad—it wasn’t like he got bullied, notreally, not anymore, but it turned out that maybe ithadbeen that bad, that maybe, somehow, Jay had managed to ignore all the little cuts done to him over time, delaying their pain until it hit him all at once the moment he looked at Logan’s face.
Because Jay hadhoped. Truly, deeply, that when Logan laughed with him and joked and wasn’t as surly as he seemed at school, when he called his parents to ask if he could stay at Jay’s for dinner, as if hewantedto, it had meant something.
But it hadn’t. And Jay, who had held onto his optimism, had felt it tarnish a little nonetheless and hadn’t approached Logan since, even though he couldn’t help but watch him sometimes.
From afar.
But right then, Logan was in front of Jay with his pretty, lizard eyes, and Jay could feel himself smiling, but his heart was sort of racing in a painful, draining way.
“Hey,” Jay said again, stupidly, as if just for Logan this time.
“Hi,” Logan replied, and Jay wasn’t surprised at how deep his voice was, but at how quiet and soft, and he felt an odd, sort of painful surprise go through him, a nostalgia for something he’d never had in the first place.
“Well, I hadnoidea you two knew each other,” Nisha said gleefully.
Logan looked at her sharply with an expression that would seem mean if it wasn’t so soft and worn at the edges. Jay felt a moment of jealousy at the obvious connection between them, even in the midst of Logan’s annoyance, but the feeling passed through him, leaving only a little residue behind.
Jay grabbed the curls at the nape of his neck, tugging. “Yeah, kind of. Not really. How’ve you been?” Jay asked, genuinely curious.
Logan shrugged. “Fine.”
Nisha tutted at his reticence. “He actually goes to NYU. He’s trying to figure out a photography project or something, aren’t you?”
