Free The Art of My Life by Ann Lee Miller

them. “Isn’t this
cozy. Seven-thirty a.m. Yesterday’s clothes.”
     

Chapter 7
     
    October 16
    Why did Monet choose mood
over exact representation? Was Georges Seurat OCD or did he just
like dots? What if Picasso had spent his life painting portraits or
landscapes? How do you make a decision?
    Aly at www.The-Art-Of-My-Life.blogspot.com
     
     
    Cal sat on the deck, his legs dangling
over the word Escape on the transom. He glanced at the
thick, plum-colored sky churning overhead and breathed in the scent
of rain. He’d been an idiot to think Aly would help. Freaking
coincidence that he’d blurted out a prayer, then realized he was
doodling Aly’s face on the pad in front of him.
    She said it was the bank that shut him
down, but he couldn’t help thinking Aly wanted nothing to do with
him. And he knew why.
    No amount of explaining would erase
the day Aly saw him making out with Evie on the beach more than two
years ago. That he’d been trying to protect Aly in his own skewed
way made no difference.
    His mind wandered back to the summer
he got caught smoking weed on New Smyrna Beach Surf and Sailing
Camp property. He didn’t know who had hurt worse—him getting fired
from his annual art teaching gig and losing Raine or Jesse firing
his own brother. Or maybe it had been Aly who thought she was
pregnant with cheating asshole Garner Fritz’s baby.
    Aly had found him in Cody’s garage,
Kurt Cobain blaring from the boom box, staring at Raine’s portrait,
halfway between a hangover and getting lit. They tangled in each
other’s arms on the bare sleeper-sofa mattress, her tears smeared
against his.
    Aly filled her lungs and released a
shuddering breath. “We could, you know….” She drew circles on his
chest with her finger. “…comfort each other.” Her words were
muffled against the neck of his two-day-old T-shirt.
    Even with his emotions fogged with
Raine and days of chemical comfort, the heat of Aly’s suggestion
fisted in his groin, flushing outward all the way to his
fingertips, toes, the skin of his scalp.
    He didn’t say anything, didn’t move.
Didn’t breathe. Didn’t dare.
    “ It was a dumb idea.
Forget I said it.” She started to roll away.
    Cal held on. “Stay here. Let me hold
you. You don’t need another guy to use you right now.”
    She relaxed against him, and he
thought about changing his brake pads, estimating how much
turpentine he had left in the can against the wall—anything to keep
his hands from touring her body.
    “ I told Raine you and I
were like siblings, but—” He pulled away a little so he could see
her face. “That’s not quite right, is it?”
    Not even close.
    The wind whipped the river into tiny
whitecaps, bobbing the Escape on her anchor line.
    He yanked up his sweatshirt
hood.
    He’d let Aly think he took her offer
of sex and the I love you she blurted out later as
friendship. And two days later when Evie thrust her breasts in his
face at Stoney’s—he touched.
    Getting some after twenty-three years
of nada clouded his brain longer than it should have. Instead of
messing with Evie, he wished he’d kept his bong lit till he smoked
Raine out of his gut.
    Aly would have pulled him out of his
Raine tail-spin, set him on his feet, and cheered for his success.
Maybe he’d be graduating from college now, getting a real job,
planning forever with Aly.
    Instead, next week, the boat would go
up for sale. He’d move back into Henna’s, beg Stoney for his job
back at the Ink Slab. Without a prayer of winning Aly.
    He pulled the joint out of his pocket
he’d rolled earlier, ran it under his nose. He wanted to go back to
how he felt with Aly in his arms filling his senses—full of hope,
desire, the future. Marijuana couldn’t take him there, but it
could, for a few hours, make him not care.
     
     
    Starr stood on the dock and stared
across the water at the Escape . Angry clouds boiled and spit
mist from the sky.
    Cal hunched over the back of the boat,
his cupped