What A Secret Looks Like | ✓

24: grayson

"Can you just tell me what the surprise is?" She asks, still allowing me to keep my hands over her eyes with the purpose of me being her eyes for her. I'm honestly surprised she hasn't figured it out due to how cold it is in here.

"Just a few more steps," I promise, turning us down another hallway after following a sign. It leads us to the new exhibit not available to the public yet, but I had a client that owed me a favor.

I drop my hands from her face, stepping back as she takes in the Monet exhibit. Tessa gasps, recognizing the paintings immediately, but she walks quickly to a specific one on the wall that I don't recognize. "I've only seen this one in photos. It's always been in private collections, but I think it's one of his better works because of his brushwork. Like look at how particular he is with the clouds and the level of detail on land." Tessa runs her hand over the gold plaque beneath the painting, "La Pointe de la Hève," She murmurs to herself before looking back at me with her face lit up, "How did you know about this?"

The version of Tessa I'm seeing right now is so drastically different to the one that was sitting on the floor in the middle of the night two days ago. "You seem like you've had something on your mind the past few days, and I thought it would cheer you up."

"I think this is the best surprise anyone's ever done for me," She says smiling widely as she kisses my cheek before pulling me along to look at another one.

I don't understand them the way she does, but I wish I could see them through her eyes after the way Tessa's eyes widen a little more with each painting because she can't believe that she's actually seeing it. She tells me facts about all of them without looking at the fact sheet I have in my hand that only confirms everything she's saying.

"This one was painted with oils, but this is really where he started experimenting with impressionism. That is basically the use of very small strokes of paint but are big enough you can see where the stroke was." Tessa rambles pointing at one, but they're all starting to blend together in my head. What matters is that she's happy here.

I eventually sit down in the middle of the room to watch her observe them more slowly, taking in all the details she didn't get the first time she went through all the paintings. A lot of these came from private collections from families that donated, but through all of the paintings in the exhibit, she keeps going back to the first one she looked at. 

The only one I recognized as something that Monet painted was the water lilies, even though he painted all of these.

I could get used to this version of Tessa; the version where she's happy, and she's not afraid of whatever she can't talk about.

It's hard to admit that I'm afraid she's going to leave again out of nowhere, but that next time she wouldn't come back. It almost seems like as much as she hates modeling, it allows her to run away from her problems, never staying in one area for too long.

Tessa is in front of the one by the shore again when she sighs and turns back to look at me with her eyes bright, "You're ready to go aren't you?"

I shake my head, not really sure how to answer this. "Only when you're ready to leave."

She comes and sits next to me, "Thank you for this. I really appreciate it. Seeing these paintings is just- it's just unreal because they've only been in private collections before now. I know you didn't understand anything that I was saying, but thank you."

I reach forward and tuck a strand of her hair out of her face, "Of course. I just thought it'd be a nice thing to do for you."

Tessa leans forward to kiss me briefly, "It means a lot. I don't think I'll ever be able to leave, but I also know that we've spent enough time here that you'll probably never want to step foot in another art exhibit for a while so we can go now."