"Paint him like a lioness, please."
"A lioness?" she glances at him where he's seated on a small stool, looking miserable.
"Don't. This is a hostage situation."
"Oh, I'll believe it when I see it, love. The only reason I'm not kicking you out is that, against better judgement, I've decided to believe you're both sober."
"And because we're paying...or he is."
"It's ten quid per person."
"You hear that?" He flips you off and you pull your lips into a line, trying not to laugh from how much you're enjoying this.
"You know, most people say lion," she says. "By people, I mean parents accompanying their small children, must say though, quite nice hearing lioness for a change."
"Thank you. I thought he could use the bravery. He's too concerned with what others think of him." She raises an eyebrow but doesn't say anything as she continues to blend out paint on a wooden plank.
"For twenty quid could you please draw a massive dick on his face?" he asks her.
"Don't make me regret this." She takes her paintbrush and starts in on his face.
"That's right, let him know. Money can't buy everything, Mr Richie-Rich." You take a step forward to watch her work without the tresses of her bleach-blond hair obscuring your view.
"Know what it could buy me, though?" he asks, eyes closed, head slightly tilted. "Assassins on the dark web."
"So much machismo from someone getting kiddie paint on their face."
"You know what?" His eyes flash open, the shadows over his face nearly non-existent. He stares for so long that whatever he was about to say forks on a different path, taking the heat with it. In the end, he simply swallows and closes his eyes again.
"What?"
"Nothing."
You want to say something snarky like, 'you know you get really red when you're embarrassed?' but you can't bring yourself to say it. Can't bring yourself to look away either. His hands are in his lap, loosely intertwined. His foot taps out a quick rhythm that reverberates through his thigh and arm. You should look away, but your eyes are stuck, oscillating back and forth between the spots on the back of his hands where his bulging veins originate and the hollow of his throat.
Look away. But your gaze is only climbing. To his jaw. Face. Look away. You tell yourself you're checking for shadows, but there are no shadows. He looks normal. And then you're convincing yourself of how rare that is, and that you ought to get to know what he looks like when he's like this—bare—so that you can clock the change in the future. As if sensing the intensity of your stare, he sticks out his tongue, drawing you back to your senses.
"I take it you're feeling better?" you ask. The noises have grown so faint they're indistinguishable from the kids playing outside the tent. He nods. "Are you really not gonna look at me?"
You're teasing, of course, only because he's kept his eyes shut for so long. You don't expect him to be so intense with it. Don't expect his eyes on you to stir awake the electric eels in your stomach. How did it get to this point? You don't even know if he's dead or alive, so why then have you already imagined a million possibilities that would take you from where you're standing to having your nose buried in the trunk of his throat? Feeling the bulk of him? Having the entirety of him pressed against you, his arms around your waist?
You break eye contact first. "So, are you an actor like your sister?"
"You're joking, right?" You scuff your feet against the grass, dragging them back and forth next to his stool, still not quite ready to meet his gaze.
"Are you serious?" His tone tears your gaze back to his face.
"Oh fuck." The mortification as it dawns on you. "I've asked you this before, haven't I? To be fair," you hurriedly add, "I suck at remembering these things. I'm serious, birthdays, pet names, what people do for a living..." you wince hearing how much worse it sounds out in the open.
"This might be your third time actually," he says calmly.
"You're joking. I know you're not but please say you are."
"Guess I'm not that interesting." You laugh, not being able to fully process the absurdity of that statement, but he doesn't know that. The briefest flash of hurt crosses his features. Whatever shallow mirth was there crumbles, replaced by growing anger—at yourself, at him for interpreting it all wrong.
"You are," you insist. "I'm the one with the goldfish memory. There's a lot of things I'm regretting right now. I thought...I thought you'd be different."
"How?"
You try not to laugh from the shock of the knife that twists deeper into your stomach. His expression is hardening and time is not waiting around for you to decide whether to be truthful or not. "Less..." You don't know how to finish. "More..." Everything is wrong. Even Sunny has stopped colouring to look at you. "Not as lovely." It hangs there between you, so flimsy and inadequate it makes you want to scream.
Not for the last time, you'll wish you could just tell him the truth. That the first time you saw him, you didn't think he'd make it to the end of the week, but then he kept showing up, looking radiant and healthy with the stain of death on him, and you'd convinced yourself someone was fucking with you. That maybe you were the one about to die and not the other way around. That he'd been sent as a sign to you. You want to tell him you're still not sure. That every time you try calling your grandmother—the few times she answers the phone—she never utters a word to you, and you've taken her silence as rejection. And she would reject you, wouldn't she, if you were badly cursed? Maybe you are because that would sure as hell explain why you can't seem to stay away from him.
"Guess."
"Please don't make me." Unsurprisingly you sound as miserable as you feel.
"It'll be fun. Lola, have a go," he glances at Sunny who's real name is Lola apparently. To you, he says, "Do your worst. What have you been thinking I was all this time? If you say actor or dancer I will cut your legs off."
"I—
"I won't lie," Lola says, "you look like a rugby lad, something athletic, I reckon." He coos appreciatively at that, leaving your already jumbled mind doing a 180. Sports? Does he actually expect you to name one?
"I played rugby in school," he volunteers.
"What's wrong with being a dancer?" you ask.
"Matilda."
"Okay, fair. But I swear I thought..." you thought he was an actor. "So you didn't go to the same school, the three of you?"
"No, I was sent away to a monastery." At your bewildered look, he insists. "True story. Behavioural problems, that's what they called undiagnosed dyslexia in the Stone Age by the way. I was sent to this school in Wales with real monks."
"Oh, I know the one. Is it still running?" Lola asks.
"Think so. They still invite me to alumni banquets. I don't go though."
"Take it you didn't like it there." She changes positions, tilting his head away from you to get the last of the whiskers.
"I did." You smile because it doesn't sound like it at all, but then he says, "I learned how to horseback ride there," and your heart plummets so violently it pulls you smile with it.
"I bet it was really green. Lots of woods," you hear yourself saying. Your fingers have grown numb. He merely 'mmhms' with closed eyes. "Meadows," you continue, "loads of greenery."
Squinting with one eye, he asks, "Have you been to Wales?" Lola hums in agreement.
"No, but I would love to."
He must be halfway sedated by the brushstrokes because he says, "Let's make it a date then."
You laugh seeing him regret it just as instantly. "Sure, if you're paying for the horse riding lessons."
"Ouch. He only wants me for my money."
Leaning back, admiring her work, Lola says, "Sounds like a keeper, love." She hands him a mirror and dries off excess paint from her fingertips on a wet towel next to her row of paint bottles.
"You look cute." He looks like a backup dancer in Cats.
"Now," he says, turning to her all serious. "Can you at least turn him into a cockroach?"
***
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