The Hearts We Sold(38)

A HALF-LIVED LIFE said the plaque beneath it.

“It’s a very interesting piece,” drawled James. There was a middle-aged man eyeing the painting critically.

“Yes,” replied the man. “A deliberate statement about regret in old age. It’s very well done.”

“I don’t know,” said James, grinning. “It looks like the artist was trying a little too hard. You can see where he left off the brushstrokes—like he got bored and gave up.”

“It’s a metaphor,” said the man. “Didn’t you see the title?”

“Right.” James nodded as the man trundled away.

“For the record,” said James, “I did get bored.”

Dee gazed at him. “Do you do this often? Show up at places with your art and pretend not to be… well, you?”

He grinned, unrepentant. “I’m a ghost,” he said, leaning into her ear. “I drift in and out of these functions, unseen and unheard.” He gestured at the gallery and Dee followed his gaze.

A woman strode by; her heels clinked against the hardwood floor, and the sound was muffled, swallowed up by the swaths of fabric. The twinkle lights sparkled off someone’s champagne glass, and she imagined for a moment that she felt as he did. An observer, as untouchable as one of these paintings.

“No one really sees me here,” said James. “They don’t have to—they’re all staring at my work. I like seeing how people react to it, seeing how it affects them.” James smiled at her, the lights catching his white teeth. “Haven’t you ever wanted to change someone’s day? Alter the universe just a tiny bit? See if you could leave a mark on the world?”

Dee thought of the times she had tried watering down her parents’ bottles, of learning how to unscrew a cork when she was eight, her small hands strangling the neck of a wine bottle, dribbling in white grape juice, all the while hoping that if the drinks weren’t drinks at all, things might change.

They never did, though. People didn’t want to change.

But maybe a person could.

Dee swirled the champagne around in her glass. All the bubbles were nearly gone. “So, what were you thinking?” she asked, and nodded at the half-finished painting. “If it wasn’t a metaphor for a half-lived life.”

“Oh, it was definitely a metaphor,” he said. “Just because I got bored halfway through doesn’t take away from that. But I mean…” His eyes slid over the painting, brows drawn and mouth pulled up to one side. It was a focused look, one she had never seen him wear. Perhaps, she thought, this was what he looked like when something truly mattered to him.

“I saw an old woman on a curb that day,” he said. He spoke the words slowly, as if sorting them out while he said them. “She looked… well, she looked like that. Sad, somehow. She was waiting for a bus and she was all alone and I just kept thinking, I don’t want to end up like that. I don’t want to be old and sad and alone.”

Dee frowned. “So what’s the alternative? Party it up in a retirement home?”

He laughed. “Somehow, I don’t think that’s the kind of life I’ll lead.” He tilted his head back, smiling at the painting. “I figure I’ll live for now, as much as I can. And if I crash and burn before I’m old, then I won’t regret it. There are worse things than living hard and dying young. Byron certainly recommended it.”

Her stomach twisted in on itself. “There’s nothing romantic about dying young,” she said firmly. “A life is not diminished by the fact that it wasn’t romantic or short-lived.”

He looked taken aback. “Ah. That’s… one way of looking at it.”

Gremma found them by another one of James’s paintings—one depicting a teenage girl stepping into a river. The angle was from the back, the sunlight pouring around the girl so she was nearly all silhouette.

It took Dee a good thirty seconds to recognize the frizzy hair, the cardigan, and the flip-flops.

It didn’t take Gremma nearly so long.

“Oh my god,” she said, mouth gawping open. She had a miniature sandwich in one hand and a champagne flute in the other. “That’s Dee.”

James swallowed the last of his champagne. “It… might be.”

“It totally is,” said Gremma.

James slid Dee an anxious glance.

“All right,” he said. “Tell me now. Is it nice or creepy?”

Dee studied the painting again. It was a gorgeous depiction of the river: She could see the little flows and eddies of the current. The girl looked beautiful from the back—strong and carefree. And it wasn’t like the painting was perverted or anything. The most visible skin on the Dee in the painting was of her ankles and calves, her jeans rolled around her knees.

She found herself catching smaller details, as well. The way the girl’s curls seemed to catch the sunlight, shining like embers; the play of shadow across the water; and something in the girl’s posture gave the impression of determination, of stepping into freezing cold water. She would have been lying if she had said having an attractive boy paint her wasn’t flattering. She’d never had anyone pay attention to her like this, and it made her feel too warm.

For the first time, she wondered if that trip to collect river rocks had really been about having another pair of hands. Perhaps it had been an excuse, a way to talk to her without the awkwardness of asking her to coffee. But her mind shut down at the idea.