Rear View Mirror

11.1 - Magazines

 The end of the school year is on the horizon, which is bad news for Will. His one flaw is that he procrastinates anything that'll take longer than five minutes, so things aren't looking good for his painting portfolio which is due in two weeks.

The portfolio is all portraits and body parts, and even though he's only just started, I've seen what he's got so far. It's a whole board in reds and pinks and yellows, and his skin tones are sickly peaches and too warm browns, but it's so incredible, he knows what he's doing. Most of the subjects are the broad frames of Greek statues, it's all close ups on pretty much any body part you could think of.

He's too passive about himself to talk about it, but I've watched him work, and he smears paint down so fast it's like he's not even thinking. The canvases don't come out looking like something some 17-year-old came up with just to pass, either, they come just like sophisticated prints in a coffee table book in an upper-class dentist's office.

He's a lot more adventurous than everybody else in his class, too. Everyone else is just painting onto paper or a canvas, but Will's about the definition of atypical, and he's fixated on painting on somebody's skin and photographing it. Obviously, I have skin and I go feral whenever Will gets within 30 centimetres of me, so under the guise of just being a really good friend, this is where I come in.

Right now, I'm sitting on his bed with my back to the wall, my legs stretched out, the door to his bedroom shut with Arctic Monkeys playing quietly from his laptop on his desk. He's sitting cross legged just by my side, my forearm resting just across his legs. There's a towel down on his bed, too, with a palette of acrylic paints sitting on top of it. The curtains long since having been drawn, we're sitting in the warm yellow light from his desktop lamp.

"Just tell me if it starts burning or anything," he says, and by this point, he's already painted all over my skin. "I'm still not really sure if this is meant to go on a person."

"Oh, I thought it was supposed to hurt," I say, and he glances up, a momentary shock suspended in his expression before he eventually realises I'm grinning.

"You're so annoying," he says, but he can't fight off that he's smiling back as he puts the cold and wet tip of the brush back on my forearm.

I don't actually know what he's up to anymore, he's kind of just mixing colours on my skin at this point, but I couldn't give less of a shit. I'm so preoccupied with how his long fingers are softly holding my wrist, turning my arm from side to side. He's so gentle in the same way people touch open wounds, and he's holding his breath every time he gets close.

When he paints, he leans right forward so he can see what he's doing, but it's just like he's coming in to kiss me as his face ends up right next to mine. It's driving me crazy. Every time he does it, I freeze up and hope that this is it, but then he sinks back onto the bed without once looking up. I'm half convinced he doesn't realise he's doing it, because he never really seems that nervous.

"Calum," he says softly to my arm, "do you wish you'd been having more sex?"

I glance up at the same time he does, and I have no idea what I'm expecting, but he's just sort of giving me this genuinely curious stare. "More sex?" I repeat, my voice equally quiet. "Sorry, how much sex do you think I'm having?"

"More than me," he says, looking back down to my wrist like this is a standard conversation. "I guess that isn't difficult."

"Not by much," I say back, watching as he leans back, setting the paintbrush down on the towel. "I don't think I miss it. Am I supposed to?"

"I couldn't tell you," he says, picking up the palette and the towel to set it on the floor. "You can't miss something you never had, eh?" I let out a short snicker.