3 Sides to a Circle (9 page)

“Anything else you want me to fill you in on?
I think she’s interrogated half the art department.” He sounds more amused than anything, and I wonder if the interviewees’ reactions would have been the same if I’d been the girl asking and not Libby.

I shake my head.

“Nothing? Because there are probably an infinite number of things I want to know about you.” His blue eyes are bright, even in the dark, and more filled with sincerity than I’d expect from him.

“I want to see your paintin
gs,” I say before I can change my mind.

“
Like we could get together tomorrow…?”

We take a few more steps and a smile starts to spread across his face.

“Or…now…?” He sounds so hopeful.

I can practically
hear Libby screaming in my ear,
Just do it.
And I’m going to
.
Because if she can survive saying exactly what she thinks
all
of the time, I can survive saying exactly what I want at least
some
of the time. “Now.”

Toby

I’m two seconds from leaving Blue Light House when Libby plows back in and makes a beeline for me.

“Honor’s out. You
gotta be my date.”

“Libby, half this place
thinks you’re together with Honor.”

She shakes her head. “No, they don’t. Come on. It’s Honor. Who would ever believe she could be into girls? They all get that I was just protecting her.”

“I’m not pretending I’m your date. I don’t even want to be here.”

She bats her eyelashes and sticks out her bottom lip. “
Puh-lease, Toby. Stay with me. I’ll be your best friend.”

“No way. I know you. You’ll ditch me in five seconds.”

She grabs my hand and pulls me toward the makeshift dance floor. “I will not. See? I’m going to dance with you.”

I drag my feet. I suck at dancing. All through high school, I was one of those guys who just put their arms around girls and shifted from foot to foot during the slow s
ongs. I never even attempted the fast songs. “I don’t want to.”

“Sure you do. Trust me. I’ll lead.”

I find myself in the middle of a sea of people with Libby’s ass backed up into my hips. She’s grinding and then flitting away, twirling, and then coming back to grind some more. I have no idea what to do. I grip her hips and try to shift with her, but there’s no holding on to Libby. One second she’s on me, all over me, really, then the next she’s gone, grinding up against another guy. Dancing with Libby is like everything else. Untethered.

Two more twirls away from me and I bail. I feel like an asshole by myself on the dance floor. I head out the front door and I don’t even know if Libby’s noticed until I feel her arm wrap around me from behind in this strange Libby hug.

“You can’t leave.”

“Let go, Libby.”

She snakes her other hand in and now she’s sort of reverse bear hugging me, only it feels more like when you see those parents trying to leave kindergarten on the first day and their kids are clinging to them.

“Don’t go.”

I swivel around and she releases me. It’s starting to get really cold outside, but Libby doesn’t seem to notice. People pass us and say hi to Libby on their way in. She waves but then keeps returning her gaze to mine.

“This isn’t my scene,” I finally say.

Her eyes dart to the side and then a giant smile lights up her face. “I know. Look.” She points to the stoplight half a block down. “Let’s climb that.”

“Um, no.”

She nods her head and claps her hands. “Yes. Do you see the rungs? It’s meant to be climbed.”

“Those rungs are probably for workers when they need to fix it.”

“No. There’s even a platform. It’s for college students who need to climb it.”

Before I can respond to this, she darts out into the street. The street. Not the sidewalk. She’s running in the middle of the street like no cars will come when she’s on the road. And part of me thinks that, of course, cars wouldn’t dare take up the space meant for Libby.

I tear after her, but by the time I get there, she’s already up, standing on the platform with her arms spread like in
Titanic
. I grab the bottom rung and follow her up. There’s barely enough room for the two of us on the platform, and she teeters as she makes space for me. What the hell am I doing?

She’s super close. To the point that I can smell everything about her: sweat, and chocolate-covered espresso breath, and beer, and Libby-
ness. She wraps her arms around me and squeezes me in a hug.

“You’re here with me.
On top of the world. At college. With everything ahead of us.”

I wrap an arm around her, the other hand still clinging to the stoplight. “Yes. I am. Can we get down now?”

“I sort of wish I could kiss you. But I think it would fuck up this magic.”

“Libby…”

“Shh…we’re on top of the world. Quiet. Look around you.”

We’re not on top of the world. We’re twenty feet in the air on a stoplight, but Libby makes it feel like
its Mount Everest. I close my eyes for a second and feel her. I want something, but I’m not sure what. I’m almost overwhelmed with possibility and fear. This girl, this moment, it doesn’t belong to me. It’s not mine to have yet.

“You can go now,” she says and releases me.

“Are you staying up here?”

She nods. “For a few more minutes.” Her voice is strange and quiet and worries me.

“I’ll wait with you,” I say, holding tighter to the stoplight post.

“I didn’t ask you to wait. I told you to go.”

Her words hit me hard in the gut. I don’t even know what to say to them. “But…”

“Go, Toby. I’ll be fine.”

Her dismissal scrapes at me, and I start moving too fast down the rungs. I slip on one of them and I hear Libby gasp from above, but I’m too angry to look up. The whole night has been too much, and I’m not up for the challenge of deciphering Libby’s world.

Honor

Sawyer and I walk up his apartment steps, and he stops before pushing open the door. “Okay. So I was dragged to that party by the other people who live on my floor, and never intended to bring a girl home because I never thought I’d see you there…” He cringes. “Not as though I would have
planned
to bring you back… I’m screwing this up. Shit.”

And then it hits me—he’
s nervous. Maybe almost as nervous as me, which is crazy since he seems impossibly perfect. I don’t say anything, wanting to hear what he’s thinking.

“My place might be messy. I get distracted when I paint, and my living room is my bedroom because the light in this apartment is good, and I’ve lived here since I started school three years ago, and I paint a lot, so…” I love how his words sort of tumble over each other.

“Let me in,
” I tease as I bump him with my elbow. The charge of energy between us fuels my confidence.

He pushes open the door and flips on the light, and I was not at all prepared for canvasses to be stacked agains
t the walls, and hanging on every inch of wall space, which must be ten feet high because he’s on the top story. Tarps cover the floor except in the corner where his bed is. I’m frozen, staring at how personal it all is. His space. His room. His art. His mess.

It would be a
cool apartment without the art supplies stacked everywhere, a little dated with the light fixtures and cabinets in his miniature kitchen, but with the art? It feels almost sacred. Special.

“
We could go in anytime.” He chuckles.

I step in
, a bit overwhelmed with color and the stifling sense of artistic passion and of Sawyer.

They’re all portraits, but…

His paintings make me feel something. They’re not precise pictures. They’re emotion with shape that hit me so hard I have to know what he feels when he paints them. Does the canvas magnify what he feels? Or does he feel so deeply that I’m just seeing the leftovers? Do people behind the camera lens feel this much? Maybe that would help me relax and understand that what they do is art, just like what Sawyer does is art.

“Okay. Now I
might have a million questions for you,” I say as I glance over my shoulder at him.

Our eyes meet
, and it takes a moment for his expression to turn from strained to a little more relaxed.

“Good.” His smile is wide. “Because I
still have a million for you too.”

I’m sure people come in here and scan the walls and make polite comments, but right now just absorbing the paintings seems so much safer, so I do.
I’m guessing that he won’t mind if I take my time. It
is
the reason I asked to come back here.

Reds and oranges are s
pread together in what seems like a big mess, but as I look closer, I can see a person behind them. An eye, a nose, half a face on the four-foot tall canvas. In the thinnest lines separating this person’s face from the shocking colors, he’s captured something so intense that I don’t have words. I’m not sure what he used to put the paint on the canvas, but even the idea that this emotion came from him, and that I can see the strokes of paint, lays him more bare than I’ve probably ever felt. Now I just hope people recognize what a genius he is when they see what he’s created.

I
glance back at Sawyer with wide eyes.

His body is rigid, and his hands are
in his pockets as he watches, making me wonder how long I’ve been standing here staring. His jacket is off, and his trendy plaid shirt is rolled to the elbows giving him a sort of funky vibe that I don’t even think he tries for.

I continue to take in each painting, and
I’ve been standing long enough that my feet hurt. I can’t believe this night is still happening. I can’t believe I asked to come here and that he brought me and that I don’t feel terrified to be alone with him. And the longer I look at his paintings, I start to realize that these people posed for him, just like I do in front of the camera, but not one of these feels impersonal. My perception of being the object begins to shift.

“These are…” I’m not completely positive how to continue. “Really, really incredible.”

It’s the first time I’ve seen confidence fade from his face. I finally let my coat slide off and I set it on a chair, and my eyes focus on each one again. On the mess of shelves with buckets of paint and small bottles of paint and brushes.

I tilt my head to the side and sigh as I see a blue-green and a couple outlined with foreheads together. The comfort, love
, and passion, even in blues and greens, squeeze my chest and sort of rocket Sawyer into maybe the most amazing person I’ve ever met—even though I know so little about him. It’s that I feel like I know him deeper than all the checklist stuff of where he grew up and how many siblings he has and what he eats for breakfast, because I’m looking at his artwork and I’m getting it. For real.

“No one actually looks. Or
very few people do,” he says quietly.

“How can they not?” A
s soon as the words are out, and he smiles, I realize it’s the perfect compliment for him.

I’m not sucking at this.
Finally
. And a little part of me wishes Libby could see because I know she’d be proud.

“Let me show you my favorite.” He reaches out his hand and I take it, even though the room isn’t all that large
and I probably don’t need him to lead me anywhere.

Just like when we brush against each other, that delightful warm, electric feeling runs through my hand and up my arm, and it’s almost as if I’m really liking someone for the first time ever, rather than being with someone because I’m lonely or because it’s convenient
, which has been my experience until now. Again, I
chose
this. To come here. And then the more unbelievable thing—he seems to want me here too.

We walk next to his bed, nav
y blue sheets in a tangled mess and a tan comforter in a heap at the bottom. He snatches the comforter up over the sheets and I start to wonder what he wants from me. If this was all just something to get me here…

“What…?” I stop
, ready to back away.

“No.” He points to the ceiling. “Up there, but to really see it, you have to be here.” He jumps into his bed and scoots against the wall, staring up at the ceiling.

“So. This is how you get girls in your bed?” I tease as I take a step closer, but there’s some truth to my question as well. He could just be really good at the ‘getting to know you’ phase of dating.

“It’s not like that.” He
frowns a little, almost like I’ve offended him. “I painted this a few years ago. My dad was diagnosed with cancer my first year here, and I painted this to help me calm down enough to sleep at the end of the day. He’s fine now, but it was still scary being away when he and my mom were going through that.”