Free Paint Me True by E.M. Tippetts Page A

They didn’t talk or anything, and she thought he was the most gorgeous-”
    “Okay, really? That really sounds like something that can end up in A&E. She’d never spoken to him before?”
    “Please don’t rain on my parade. I’m trying to learn what I can about the love story so I can paint her a portrait.”
    “Right, sorry. Besides, I shouldn’t give you a hard time about going anywhere with a bloke you’ve barely ever spoken to before.”
    “Yeah,” I said. “Good point.” I wondered if Hattie would get after me if she could see me now for not testing Colin with a few rejections. The thing was, she’d get after me because he wasn’t a member of the Church. Such people were beneath her notice, which was her prerogative. I just wished she wouldn’t declare it so vociferously in public.
    “They must’ve had other dates, other than at the chippy,” said Colin.
    “Yeah, I haven’t gotten that far in the story yet. I just got here.”
    “Do you find that romantic? Seeing a guy and then having him be so... pushy? Would you like to be told where you should eat supper?”
    “Well...”
    He raised an eyebrow.
    “Sorry, you just reminded me of something a, uh, friend of mine once said. He said the only difference between being a stalker and being the most romantic guy ever was whether or not the girl likes you.”
    “Wise words. I mean, there are other differences.”
    “Well, yeah.”
    “But there’s something to that.”
    “Yeah. If my aunt had never seen Paul before, I’m pretty sure him trying to haul her off to a chippy would creep her out. But, I mean, he was being flirty, trying to see if she was interested by asking her to do something little like that with him.”
    Colin nodded. “If you say so. How old were they when they got married, then?”
    “I don’t know. I’m guessing she was about twenty-one-”
    “Twenty-one? That’s child marriage, that is.”
    “Yeah, another thing about Mormons, they – or we, I should say – marry young quite often.”
    “Are you looking to get married?”
    “Eventually.”
    “But you’re young. You’re only thirty.”
    I suppressed the impulse to thank him profusely for saying that. He seemed sincere that I was too young to be worried about marriage, and if I showed him I felt otherwise, it’d probably push him away. Though, if he thought thirty was young, what did he think of his own twenty-seven years? Did he still consider himself to just be in the dating phase of his life? No commitments? It then occurred to me that he’d probably move in with a woman before marriage. That was a completely foreign concept to me.
    He glanced at his watch.
    I hauled my mind back from the tangents it’d raced down. “Think I can get some pictures of the porter’s lodge?”
    “Let’s go see.”
    We hiked back and I snapped a bunch of pictures with my camera phone before we ducked out the little cutaway door in the front gate and stepped onto the pavement outside.
    “I need to get to work in a few,” said Colin.
    “Oh, okay, well thanks for helping me get pictures.”
    “Yeah, this was nice. I can do better though. We should go punting some afternoon. You like punting?”
    “I’ve never been.”
    “You know what it is, right?”
    I had to shrug and shake my head.
    “On the river. Wooden boats that you move by... well, punting is when you use a pole and push off the bottom of the river. Like what the gondoliers do in Venice, I think. I’ve never been there. You fancy going sometime? Punting... not to Venice.”
    “That sounds like fun.”
    “All right, I’ll call you.”
    “Okay, great.” That was the best I could do for a last line. The date wasn’t Nora and Paul kind of fabulous, but it was fabulous enough to make me glow all the way home.

L ater that night, as I checked my email, I saw Hattie log into her account. Nora’s computer was in a little windowed office off the kitchen, though right then the windows were black as it was nighttime.
    I