Page 42 of Sawyer
She put a finger to her mouth. “I’m a Gemini, so I bore easily. Not that I get bored if I’m in charge, which is why I like to be. Let’s see. I love Paris because she’s beautiful. The people here worship art, and the French truly don’t care much about who you are or what your parents did. Their insouciance is a balm to my soul after London and New York.”
The way her mouth twisted told the story of how much people’s shallowness toward her still stung, and he had another glimpse of the vulnerable young girl she’d been.
“Their diffidence makes me want to skip down the streets sometimes. When they are rude to me, I know it isn’t personal.”
“I love that too,” he confessed. “They’re so unconcerned about catering to other people.”
“Right! Whereas in some circles in London and New York, people either smiled through their teeth or kissed my ass. There was little honesty. It’s one of my favorite values in people. That’s why I liked you so much from the start and was delighted you liked me before you knew who I was. You, Dr. Jackson, are an honest soul.”
He leaned forward and gave a little bow. “Thank you.”
“No,thank you!” She lifted her glass and they toasted each other. “Lying would be a moral conundrum for you, and in the end, your sense of reason as much as your goodness would win out.”
She had him down. “A Voltaire quote I love comes to mind.Everything you say should be true, but not everything true should be said.”
“Yes!” She beamed at him as she lifted her glass again. “Oh, I must remember that. You’ll have to text it to me. I should have that embroidered on a bath towel and sent to my mother.”
He reached for some bread, wondering if he’d ever laughed so much with anyone other than Dean. “Why a bath towel?”
“Because she’d have to use it every day, and perhaps running it over her body would force the sentiment in. A girl can hope. As you have inferred, we don’t get along. Mostly. We both love art and artists. Believe it can be a force of good in the world. Something that should be cultivated and nurtured.”
The passion in her voice was so strong he would have painted it scarlet red.
“It’s that shared love I go back to,” she continued, “when I wonder whether she and I can continue to have a relationship. This new gallery is either going to make us or break us.”
Again, the hurt was evident under her passion.
“Which is why I didn’t strike out on my own despite much moral agony.” She toyed with her napkin, glancing away. “I’m prepared to, but I…dammit, I’d like to hope that the woman who gave birth to me could retain at least one positive function in my life besides the initial act of creation. Because mothers like mine are like Shiva. Inside them is some driving force to destroy what they’ve created, and I don’t want to go down that way.”
His heart started to pulse in thick, heavy beats—for her and for him. “I have the same kind of mother.”
When she met his gaze, her green eyes were luminous pools of empathy. “I suspected as much. The kind of torture you suffer about your art wouldn’t be there otherwise. When I lived in New York a couple of years ago, I decided to volunteer at an after-school program helping out in the arts. The location was in a rough borough you might say. I’d hoped to do something useful. Give back. Meet new people. Working at Doray, I only met a certain kind of people, and I was becoming jaded.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. I know I’ve had a privileged life, and I’m not telling you my sorry story to make you feel bad for me. But until I went to that school, I’d never seen kids so happy and free while drawing or painting or coloring. They simply did it, and it made them feel good inside. Because no one was comparing them to someone else. Or telling them it needed to be better. They were just given tools to express. God, it blew my mind. Changed my whole life.”
He extended his hand across the white linen, and she clasped it in a tight grip. “It would have blown my mind too.”
“I knew you’d understand.” Her eyes glistened with tears for a moment before she blinked rapidly. “You were sent to high-pressure schools at a young age, right? Art tutors? The whole nine yards, yes?”
He nodded, feeling his chest constrict at the mere mention.
“Me too.” She drank her champagne pensively. “Sometimes I wonder what it would have been like without any of the expectations. To simply have been given a coloring book and some crayons and left alone. I think I could have been happy.”
His heart was breaking for her. Such a simple request. One they’d both been denied. “If you gave me a crayon drawing,even a page from a Disney coloring book, I’d put it up on my fridge.”
Those luminous eyes glistened again as she achingly smiled. “I know you would.”
She raised his hand to her cheek gently, and God, was it the most beautiful gesture he’d ever experienced. Its beauty was like a shooting star.
“I’d obviously do the same for you,” she said, shaking her head as if clearing bad memories. “Well, that’s a pretty goodget to know youopening. Now you…”
He knew his mouth twisted as he lifted a shoulder. “This isn’t my favorite part of dating. Sometimes it’s easier for me to convey how I feel through other people’s language. That’s why I love quotes. They may not be original, but there’s some distance in the telling. I also figure one of the great thinkers can summarize what I’m thinking or feeling better than I can.”
“Thank you for sharing that,” she only said, watching him intently.
So, she wasn’t going to tease him about it. His throat suddenly was knotted up. “I’m not really into astrology, but I trust it has its place because of people like Nostradamus, who were believers in both science—astronomy and astrology being closely related back then—and the mystical realms. I’m an Aquarius.”
