One More Time (With Feeling)

5

You pass your days silk screening and painting. You manage at least one painting a day, using the in-between drying time to meet your t-shirt quota. You still often wake up at four or five in the morning, you still don't get to bed until after midnight. But at least now you have plenty of things to keep you busy while you're not sleeping. You didn't realize how much you missed this garage, this house, while you were still living with your ex-girlfriend, but the space feels like home more than the apartment with her ever did. Communal meals around the brick and door coffee table, shared workspaces in the garage, fresh herbs in the backyard, even the sparseness of your room is nice compared to how much crap was always lying around at your old place.

Chayton takes you around to all sorts of places you should have already known about but somehow didn't, coffee shops and restaurants and indie bookstores. You get closer, both physically and emotionally, closer than you should allow yourself to, because your crush isn't going anywhere. If anything it's getting bigger.

August ends, like everything ends. You won't miss it while you wait for it to come around next year. September is unusually cold and rainy, almost November weather, so you wait for Chayton inside the café with a cup of coffee to warm your hands. Every time the door chime rings, you look up, and every time it's someone else. Finally, you look up and it is him. He offers you a wave, then points at the line. You nod. He pulls off his gloves as he steps up to wait.

"Can you believe it's only supposed to be fifty degrees out?"

You look up as he drops his backpack at his feet and sits down across from you.

"That's it?" That's impossible. "Fifties is t-shirt weather. This is scarf and gloves weather!"

"It's the wind," he says. "It's gotta be." He unzips his hoodie halfway, revealing the top of a red t-shirt with some kind of black print you can't make out. He pops the lid off his drink to let out some of the steam, and when he looks up at you, he pauses. He gently takes a few strands of your hair between his fingers, and as he lets them slide away, he says, "You're almost more silver than brown, now."

He's been touching you like that more and more frequently, and you're not sure what it means. There's nothing about it that's not platonic, but he doesn't touch Cricket or Kyle or Lola like this. He keeps his distance. But there is no distance when it comes to you. It's nice. It's comforting. It makes you feel like you're special. Important. Even if it is confusing as hell.

You shrug.

"Have you thought about dyeing it?"

"I don't see why I should," you say. "Silver is a perfectly respectable color."

"Yeah," Chayton says. "Was just wondering. A lot of people would."

"Meh!" You give him an exaggerated shrug. You glance over his shoulder at the painting behind him.

"They put up one of my pieces this morning," you say, nodding in the painting's direction, trying not to smile too proudly. Chayton halfway turns in his chair.

"Which one?" he asks.

"The farthest one from us, right up at the foot of the stairs," you say. "The bust of the woman with the flowers in her hair."

"You painted that?" He swivels back at you, his face wide open with surprise.

You nod. "I figured something like that would sell better than something abstract or cubist. I can do realism, too. You've seen my sketches."

"Yeah." He takes a tentative sip of his coffee to check the temperature. It must be too hot, because he puts it back down. "I guess it just never ceases to surprise me how versatile you are."