Page 37 of Café Diablo

She’s got that right.

“Who knew big fancy court lawyers could be so shy?” she continues to jab. “Okay, let’s all give Edwin and the rest of our new painters some advice. Again, what’s rule number one?”

“Drink more alcohol!”

“And what are the others?” she asks, and in unison they chant.

“Have fun!”

“Make a mess!”

“And remember that creativity is a process!”

“Exactly!” Olivia praises, and suddenly her hand is on the side of my face, cupping my jaw softly, even though she’s still addressing the room. “Have fun! Make a mess! And remember that creativity is a process. And when in doubt, drink more alcohol.”

Her gaze turns to me and for the briefest of seconds her thumb runs hotly over the bottom of my mouth. I look at her, not sure what to think about the overtness of the gesture. I hate that the room is looking at us, but her hand on my jaw claims me in a way I don’t even know how to process. She claims me publicly, and in front of everyone she’s teaching this class to. Her eyes narrow with amusement, before she drops her hand from my jaw and turns to wave at the bartenders in the back.

Laughing as she calls out to the waitstaff, “I’m going to need a whole bottle of whiskey for my friend in the front. It turns out messes and fun are against his nature.”

The room laughs and she looks at me kindly as if she’s trying to say this isn’t about embarrassing you. Except, all of my skin is tight and if I was anywhere near the back of the room, I’d be performing my own disappearing act. Yet, something else in her eyes pleads for me to stay and try this. And like the spell she has on the rest of the crowd, she’s freaking hypnotic.

She softly runs her thumb against the corner of her mouth, and it may be unconscious, but it reminds me of that almost kiss before she walked up onto that stage. I can’t explain why I like this woman so damn much. If anyone else was doing this, I’d be walking out.

Olivia turns to the crowd and walks back on stage again. She coaches the group through all of the materials on the table and gives an overview of the painting process. I’m only half-listening as she explains about water solvents and color theory, because I’m pissed and turned on and still completely mesmerized. I hate everything that’s happening right now, and yet, I’m glued to my seat, especially when she makes a lame art joke and it actually makes me laugh like an idiot.

After we’ve practiced several styles of brush strokes, and yes, the bartender has left an entire bottle of Four Roses Whiskey on my table, Olivia starts passing out color copies of master paintings that we’ll be using as reference. They’re classics like Van Gogh’sStarry Nightand Monet’sLily Pads.That impressionist joke earlier may have been for amusement, but honestly, if you drink enough, one’s going to need to be painting something that allows for some mishaps.

Once she’s passed out her images to the rest of the room, she walks up to me and leans against the booth. She reaches down and turns off her headset before leafing through the few printouts she has left.

“Just give me the one with the bowl of apples,” I say, having already seen most of the images she’s been distributing.

“The Gauguin, huh?” she shuffles through the papers for it. “That seems rather uninspired, yet at the same time completely expected. Always picking thesafestchoice when you’re concerned.”

“I’m drinking, aren’t I?” I ask, nodding to my whiskey glass to point out I’m playing by the rules. “Isn’t that enough for inspiration, per your painting philosophy.”

“True,” she concedes, still half-smiling as she flips through the remaining papers. “Are you at leastattemptingto have fun?”

“‘Attempting’ and ‘having’ are two very different words,” I point out, my argumentative tendencies starting to surface. “You can’t actuallyattemptandhavesomething at the same time. If you attempt you are aspiring toward, whereas—”

Olivia reaches out and touches my ear, stroking the lobe softly as her fingers tell me to calm down. It makes my damn head dizzy. “I stand corrected,” she concedes, without any ire or gleam in her eye, telling me that she’s about to eviscerate me in the world of word fencing. “However—”

Or, she’s got something else up her sleeve—typical.

“I’m going to veto the Gauguin apple painting and give you this instead.” Olivia plucks the paper out of her stack dramatically. “It’s a classic Georgia O’Keeffe. She’s a fabulous abstract painter from New Mexico whose work I think you’ll find … let me find the right word Mr. Dictionary …” She places the printout on the table next to my elbow and drops the word with it. “Provocative.”

Provocative is an understatement.

The painting is a layering of pink and orange folds unfurling. They’re abstract petals. And yes, I know it’s an orchid or a lily or some kind of flower, but that’s not why Olivia gave it to me. She wants me to paint this because it looks distinctly like something else I saw earlier this week, covered in frosting.

“Inappropriate,” I growl at her, nodding to the fact that we are surrounded by people. “There are children present!”

“Twenty-one-year-old’s aren’t children.”

“Close enough!”

“It’s a flower, Edwin!” Olivia leans in closer to my ear, lowering her voice as she says, “If it reminds you of something else, then I advise you to get your head out of the gutter, Mr. Lawyer man, and put on that brilliant poker face I know you’ve mastered.”

“Is this what you meant by ‘finish what we started’?” I ask, referencing her letter and the last position we found ourselves in before we were interrupted. A tiny flush runs up her neck and seeing it is far more satisfying than I expect.

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