Artifice

Ouch

"What's your name?" I could see from the corner of my eye, he was staring straight at me while we walked down a corridor.

"Eva." My lips pressed into a straight line.

"I'm Harry." He reached out his hand in front of me and I took it, giving it a weak hand shake.

I couldn't help but notice how large his hand was compared to mine.

"So is Eva short for something?"

"Evangeline. My mom saw it in a book or something and thought it was a beautiful name." I couldn't put a finger of where it was from, though my mom made it a point to remind me at least once a year. "It's something about an uncle and anti-slavery."

"Uncle Tom's Cabin, maybe?"

"That's it." I snapped my fingers, and relaxed again feeling I embarrassingly overreacted. "It has some deep meaning to her, I can't recall why."

"That's random for sure, you're mom must really love reading." I nodded in response knowing he was watching. "Yourself?" He asked.

"Reading never appealed to me like it did to her." I shrugged.

My mother always wanted me to follow her footsteps and pursue a career in writing or focus my study on classical literature but I refused. Art was all I really cared about.

"Are you here by yourself?" I asked him, curious as to why he was spending this time with me.

"Uh, yeah." He sounded unsure, but I didn't question it.

We walked around, I pointed out a few paintings and sculptors to him, pulling out any knowledge I had of them but mostly reading the captions underneath them to him.

"How about you?" We sort of switched places in where we were looking. I was staring up at him, he had his hands behind his back and his eyebrows scrunched as he looked around. "Do you like reading?"

"I love reading" his face lit up with a smirk.

"What brings you here? If you don't mind me asking, you don't particularly seem too interested in the pieces." He hardly looked at a piece for more than a second, nevertheless his comment back at the Gilded age exhibition.

"I had a day off," I looked down to my feet as I took steps. "and I've seen nearly every monumental thing about this city except for this famous museum, until now of course."

"What do you do?" I asked feeling as if I was overstepping my boundaries.

"Marketing,"

"You look a bit young." I interrupted.

"Yeah," he chuckled. "My dad owns this business, he was convinced I had a knack for manipulation and working with others and I was kind of thrown into the job." He scratched his head nervously.

"That's interesting, I'm guessing you must be around twenty two, twenty three and already have a stable job. I wish that was the case for me."

"Twenty two," he smiled. "And let me guess, starving artist?" He said and I tensed with the comment.

I choose to ignore his words and continue unbothered by his growing pretentious attitude.

I showed him more pieces and his attention always seemed to drift away as if there was something more important walking through the halls.

The more time I spent with him the more I began despising him, regardless of his good looks he's made it perfectly clear he was a typical asshole that was only pretending to be nice to get into my pants.

"You should at least try to appreciate the art." I said and noticed we had passed by the exhibits I was looking forward to seeing. Instead we ended up in a room with countless paintings.

"You should try to appreciate books." He said and I frowned almost literally feeling my mother's presence over my shoulder.

"I have to go." I pushed my bag up my shoulder and walked away.

"Christ, I didn't mean to offend you... Again." He walked behind me, mumbling the last part.

"If all you're going to do is mock what I'm passionate about, I rather not be around you. Go find some other girl to work up, there's plenty here." I wouldn't usually be so rude to a stranger but there was something about him that irked me.

"Wait" he pleaded still following me. "I have nowhere to be, I'll just keep chasing after you."

"If I would of known you were a stalker I would've never let you join me today, now please leave me alone before I get the security here."

"Ouch." I could hear his footsteps come to a halt and a weight lifted off my shoulders.