“I would hate to call you a coward, Elle, but a person who does not pursue their own happiness is definitely that.”
“I am happy.” When his eyebrows rose coolly as I had known they would, I shrugged gracefully. “I really am. Right here, right now with you, I am happy.”
“And when I go home to Elena?” he countered.
It was my turn to look off into the distance, at the hundreds of people passing under the colored lights of Times Square.
Finally, I pursed my lips and faced him. “Will you be?”
“You’ve asked me before not to answer that question.”
“You’re right. You are still with her though, so I guess I have my answer, don’t I?”
He frowned at me but I smiled softly at him and linked my arm through his to pull him through the crowd. I was done with heaviness and despair. The regret and the shame would surely visit me in the morning, when I woke up heavy with my separation from him. For now, I was content to fool myself into a friendship with him, this man I loved.
“Want a pretzel?”
There was only a slight hesitation before he said, “Only if they have Dijon mustard.”
I hid my sigh under a smile and fell just a little bit more in love with him for going along with my charade.
Chapter Nine.
“You seem to be spending a lot of time with Daniel.”
I paused, my hand hovering over the canvas precariously. I could see my hard heartbeat shake my hand.
“Huh?”
Cosima’s gold eyes swiveled my way but she didn’t move a hair out of position. “I said, you seem to be spending a lot of time with Daniel.”
I focused carefully on adding a dab of burnt umber to the mixture on my palette, darkening the shadow beneath Cosima’s round breasts and between her proudly braced legs. The painted woman that stared out from the shadows of the canvas peered at me with the exact same expression as her real life counter part, unerringly direct and more than a little disconcerting.
I exhaled a breath I hadn’t known I was holding when she shrugged and said, “It’s nice that you get along. He has been part of my life, of the family, for so many years it is weird to think you two only just met.”
Only just met… Well, we had only met two months ago almost to the day, but it felt like so much longer. And we had been spending a lot of time together, too much really if we wanted to fly under the radar. Sinclair had assured me that Elena worked too much to notice and that he often spent his free time with Cosima. Luckily, Cosima had been wrapped up in her own world for the last ten days, probably with the dangerous-eyed Dante.
“Yeah.” I forced my voice to be casual. “He is a nice guy, if a little stuffy.”
She ignored my attempt at criticism and broke her pose to open the door behind her. We were in her kitchen/dining area again, which had lately served more as my studio than anything else. Canvases were stacked against the island and sketches were taped to the wall beside the door. In the last two weeks I had finalized sketches of Cosima, Sebastian, Cage and even one of Mama, hovering over the stove in a damp robe with the sheen of sweat on her soft skin. She hadn’t blushed at all when I suggested the idea. I wanted to explore the tried and true roles of older women and exploit the sensuality they still retained despite the domestication. Mama had laughed joyfully at the suggestion.
“I have to admit, I’m a little surprised. You are my favorite human on the planet.” Her smile poured over me like sunshine. “But Daniel doesn’t like change. I think the last friend he made was Elena.”
My skin itched. I was always careful not to ask too many questions about their relationship but this was just too good an opportunity to pass up.
“How did they meet?”
“Why don’t you ask Elena? She should be here in ten minutes or so and I have to get ready to leave for Miami.”
She slipped on the translucent black robe laying on one of the stools but something in my face made her hesitate on the way to her bedroom.
She sighed and came over to cup my face in her warm hands. “We have all been apart for a long time, Gigi, and we are all used to keeping ourselves to ourselves, yes? So, if you want to know something, you must not be afraid to ask it or else you will never really know.”
I nodded but didn’t meet her eye as I moved away to clean my brushes before Elena arrived. Cosima’s signature sigh punctuated her exit and I was grateful for the few minutes alone I had before my older sister arrived.
I hadn’t seen her since the day Sinclair had invited me fishing but we had spoken over the phone about her appointment today. Though we hadn’t talked yet about her sexual hang ups, I was already picturing her standing tense and rigid before a background of wood planks, naked but for the magazines, something like Playboy or Sports Illustrated, held tight to her private areas. It wasn’t an unusual feeling, the inferiority complex that could make a woman as stiff as a board, but I knew my sister had it in spades. I wasn’t judging; before Sinclair, I had been very much like that too.
After washing my brushes gently in solution, I set them out to dry and moved my easel to face the wall, so that it would remain private until its completion. I grabbed my large sketchbook and my tin of charcoal before settling on a stool at the counter to do some preliminary drawings.