Page 26 of Whiskey Throttle
I lean back against the column and take a sip from one flute before setting the second on the ledge beside me. I don’t know why I brought two. For her? For me? Who knows.
I close my eyes and exhale.
The air smells like old stone, spring air, and something floral drifting from one of the hedge rows. I let the glass hang from my fingers, tapping it lightly against my thigh. The bubbles sting a little on the back of my throat.
I’m a gala guy. A tennis guy. Now an art gallery guy. All for her. The ghost of her perfume clings to my jacket, and a growing, painful ache in my chest that has nothing to do with Dom’s punch. Just the way she looked at him and the way she didn’t look back at me. Maybe I’m pushing this thing, wanting something that she doesn’t want. Forcing an agenda that doesn’t work for her beyond harmless flirting when bored or trapped at these types of events. Twice I have sought her out tonight. Twice, she has intentionally walked away. Maybe I’m a fool for thinking this is more than what it is.
A casual and careless flirtationship. I’ve had them before. Used them as a mild distraction when bored, horny, or restless. But Babs is none of those things, so I don’t know why I’m so twisted up over what this is. Which is basically nothing.
I open my eyes, finish the golden bubbly liquid, and set the glass down. No longer interested in drinking the second glass. The cold stone column bites into my back. My head tilts to stare up at the darkening sky above the hedges. Wondering what the hell I’m doing, chasing a woman I shouldn’t be chasing.
I drew her. I shouldn’t have, but I did. That night she cried, and I couldn’t sleep. Too wound up from us and her. The time flew by as I tried to get every line correct until dawn, and I had a finished piece. Not a caricature, but a charcoal sketch.
I reach for my phone in my breast pocket, needing to see her again. In this safe medium. Safe away from wandering eyes and high society whispers. I swipe past texts, emails, all the bullshit notifications waiting to be ignored. Then I pull up the hidden folder. The one nobody knows about. The one I password-protected years ago after a certain nosy friend flipped through a few pages that slipped from my bag. It's my real work. My passion and something I’d love to pursue.
My thumb swipes photo after photo. Shots I took of sketches before I hid them away, or my dad destroyed the originals. Some full sheets, some torn corners of napkins or hotel notepads. Athletes, politicians, celebrities. Faces I grew up watching at fundraisers and benefit dinners, all reduced to lines and exaggeration.
Big teeth.
Bigger egos.
Eyes that always give them away.
There’s one of a senator with a smug face and wild hair that still makes me laugh. A pop star mid-performance, lips cartoonishly oversized and wrapped around a mic. A news anchor with a neck too long, spine too straight. But the eyes, that’s always where I get them right.
Caricatures have never been just comedy to me. It’s a character study. It’s truth. Exaggerated, sure, but stripped down. I pause on a drawing of Dom I snapped in the library two years ago. Something he still doesn’t know about. He was hunched over a stack of science books, helmet on the table next to him, the vape twisted between his fingers.
The scowl. The posture. The exact way he blocks out the world, like it’s too bright to deal with, still makes me grin. I swipe again. More sketches. More ghosts of moments no one ever saw. Hundreds of them, all photographed under shitty dorm lighting or the overhead glare of my apartment kitchen.
There’s something comforting about it, like proof I was there. That I saw them. That I didn’t just pass through those events invisibly.
Until I get to her.
Barbara.
Not Babs.
Not in this drawing. She’s still and stunning. Wrecked and vulnerable in the most beautiful way. For my eyes only that night and now. Forever memorialized. Trying to harness the magic of that night.
It poured out of me that night after the gala, when the house was dark, and her perfume still clung to my skin like some ghost refusing to let go. She’s sitting on the couch, her gown draped perfectly around her. Back slightly curved, one hand limp in her lap, the other bracing the side of her head like her own grief was too much to hold upright.
Hair pinned but slipping softly out, away from the confines of that night. Bare neck that my fingers caressed. But her eyes. That’s where I lost the most hours. Trying to capture the glassy sheen of tears that hadn’t yet fallen. The strength and defiance are buried beneath the heartbreak. The way she stared at the floor, like it might offer a version of her life she could still believe in.
I didn’t rush this one. I shaded every line with care. Used my softest charcoals for the shadows at her jaw and beneath her collarbone, right where the fabric dipped low. Just enough to hint at the inches of silky skin she hides so well. Even the light falls around her like she’s untouched by the world and drowning in it at the same time.
I tried to be honest. More honest than I’ve ever been with her. She looks like a woman someone should have worshipped. Should have chosen. Should have protected. But she stands alone. Steel of spine. A woman who learned too late that none of those things were coming. I stare at the image until my chest burns and my mind races. I shouldn’t have drawn her, but deep down, I’ll never delete it. Never destroy the original. Because with this one sketch, I got it exactly right, even if it tears me apart every damn time.
“Is that me?”
The cadence in her voice is light, airy, almost unheard over the noise of the city around us. I jump, clamoring to lock my phone when her delicate fingers cover mine, trapping the screen open for her to see.
To judge or condemn me for what I’ve done. I study her while she studies herself. Her profile is rendered in soft black and bruised gray. The sweep of her jaw. The haunted slope of her eyes. The elegant devastation of that night, captured in smudged lines I drew at 3 a.m. like a man possessed.
My heart hammers in my chest waiting for her to say something. Instead, she angles the phone down, never taking it fully into her hands. Content to let hers cover mine and burn into my flesh. The same as I had done to her that night.
I hold my breath waiting for her to scold me. Say something cold and cutting, like how dare you or you have to get rid of that. To remind me who she is and who I’m not allowed to be in relation to her. Yet she doesn’t do any of that. Instead, she slides her hand away slowly, leaving a weird void.
“You got the mouth wrong.”
