Free Indigo [Try Pink Act Two] by Max Ellendale Page A

of
color.
    "What…are you doing?" Jilly said suddenly, startling me.
I chuckled a bit nervously and set the palette down.
    "Just mixing," I said, wiping my paint-covered hand on
my shirt.
    "Aw, honey, you made a blob." She hugged me from behind
a bit roughly and I laughed as I leaned into her. "Good job."
    "It's an interpretive abstract. What do you see?" I held
on to her arms and she rested her chin on my shoulder, swaying side to side a
little.
    "I see… purpley-blue. And you naked in bed, and me waking you
up with orgasms." I felt her cheeks lift into a smile.
    "What else?" I continued to laugh softly while I
listened to her.
    "An indigo sky and we're under it."
    "Where?"
    "Right…" She reached toward the canvas and poked her
finger in the middle of the paint. "There," she said, swiping at it
and making a streak. I squeaked a second later when she smeared it on my face.
    "Jilly!" I swatted at her but it was no use. By the time
I broke free, she had a hand covered in paint and mashed it all over me. Her
face was red with raucous laughter but I wasn't far behind. I made for the
palette and globbed a good handful of paint. She shrieked and bolted around the
easel. I gave chase, both of us in hysterics by the time we hit the floor.
    In that moment, I knew that our togetherness was no longer
bruised, but a cosmic mix of blues and purples that shaded our past and
informed our present. It swirled and morphed together like a melty Rorschach on
a hot day, turning our white, voided lives into a perfect indigo. The kind
that, even in the brightest rainbow, is hard to see. But when you do see it,
when you look close enough and hard enough and long enough, the indigo is the
most vibrant of all. It outshines the yellows and the pinks any day and I take
comfort in knowing that, even when I can't see it, it's always there.