The Hundred Lies of Lizzie Lovett(58)

But Enzo said she hadn’t. He left his current work-in-progress for the first time that night and crossed to his desk. He sifted through one of the drawers for a moment before handing me a stack of photographs.

The top photo was similar to the painting on Enzo’s wall, taken in the same field. Except in it, Lizzie had her pretty, blue eyes open and was looking straight at the camera. The next picture looked to be the one the painting was based on. I quickly flipped through the rest of the photos, Lizzie in different outfits and different poses, sometimes serious, sometimes grinning, always gorgeous.

“I wanted to turn them all into portraits eventually,” Enzo said. “You know. Before.”

Before what? Before she disappeared? Before he thought she was a werewolf? Before he met me? There were so many befores.

“I had this idea for a series that would compare paintings to the photos they were based on. Like, which one seems more real?”

“Isn’t a photo always more real?” I asked.

“That’s the question. How much truth does an artist bring to a painting? Beyond what a photograph can capture?”

“I guess that is a good question.”

Enzo went back to his canvas, and I looked through the photos a second time, starting at the beginning and studying each one. Lizzie on a tire swing. Lizzie at the lake. Lizzie leaning up against a rusted old car. Lizzie, Lizzie, Lizzie. Everywhere. Commanding attention, no matter what the location. No matter how beautiful or ugly the setting, Lizzie was always shining.

Then there was Lizzie sitting in a ratty armchair, her feet tucked under her, her shirt unbuttoned to reveal the curves of her perfect breasts, an eyebrow arched suggestively at the person taking the picture—at Enzo. He was the one she was looking at.

Suddenly, my chest felt tight. Looking at the next picture didn’t help either. Lizzie was fully clothed, but she was sprawled out on a bed, laughing like someone had just told the best joke ever. Not on a bed. On the bed. Enzo’s bed. Right where I was sitting.

It was sort of a jolt, a revelation, even though I’d known they’d been together from the start. I set the two pictures on the bed, the bed where Lizzie once threw back her head in laughter, and looked from one to the other. Lizzie on the bed. The bedspread was the same; the room was the same; the boy who lived there was the same. Then there was the photo of Lizzie with her shirt open. The look on her face said she knew she looked good; she knew how much the boy behind the camera wanted her. What had happened after he took the photo? Did she grab his shirt and pull him toward her? Did he kiss her deeply, pick her up, and carry her to bed?

How many times had Lizzie sat in the exact same spot I was in? How many times did they have sex right there, right where Enzo and I lounged around, watching stupid horror movies?

Lizzie and Enzo. Enzo and Lizzie. They were together. Like, really together.

It probably seems stupid that I’d never all-the-way thought about it. I’d thought about it before I met Enzo. But then we talked, and I got to know him, and he became real to me. He wasn’t the same Enzo I’d read about in the paper. Sure, we were searching for his missing girlfriend, but Lizzie was more of an idea than a reality. I never thought of them together in that way, in a suggestive-look-leading-to-removed-clothing-leading-to-him-on-the-bed-on-top-of-her-right-in-the-spot-where-I-was-sitting kind of way. Not even a him-reaching-out-to-hold-her-hand way. I felt like someone was squeezing my insides, turning my organs to mush.

“Did you have sex a lot?” I asked.

“What?” Enzo looked up from his painting.

“You and Lizzie. Did you have sex a lot?” I repeated.

“I guess. I don’t know. What’s a lot?”

Anything was a lot to me. I looked down at the pictures again. Lizzie was perfect. She was beautiful. I had envied her and hated her for so many years. And Enzo was the person she ended up with. He was across the room, covered in paint, looking at me quizzically. He knew me. In the recent weeks, he’d gotten to know me better than anyone else, and I knew him too, but once upon a time, not that long ago, he had belonged to Lizzie Lovett.

“What was it like?”

“What was what like?” Enzo asked.

“Being with her. Being intimate, I mean.”

“Jesus, Hawthorn.”

He sounded annoyed, but he put down his paints. He wiped his hands on his jeans and crossed the room and sat on the bed next to me. My heart started pounding like it did when he held my hand in the abandoned house.

Enzo looked down at the two pictures. For a moment, I thought he would get weird or annoyed or something. But he didn’t. He looked back and forth between the photos like I had.

“Well?”

“Well. It was good. Great. Lizzie liked sex.”

“Doesn’t everyone?”

“Not everyone. Do you?”

What I wanted to do was smirk the way Lizzie would have. Tilt my head back a little, arch an eyebrow. I wanted to say something like Do you want to find out? And I wanted to say it in a way that left him wondering if I was joking or not.

Instead, I said pretty much the worst possible thing, which was, “Uh, I don’t know. I guess. I mean, I don’t really have that much experience. Not that I have no experience. Just not the same as Lizzie or whatever. Not that I’m saying she was a slut or anything. I didn’t mean it that way.”