Truth in Watercolors (Truth Series Book 2) (9 page)

My parents had always been avid travelers, but after we had lost Ella, they chose to spend their trips volunteering rather than sightseeing. Losing her had changed all of us, and I suppose for them, giving back became a way to honor her. For this trip, they flew to South Carolina to help build a house with Habitat for Humanity for a family that had a little girl about Ella’s age. They’d just returned last night and had invited August and Kensie over to have breakfast with us.

“I didn’t buy that many, Steve.” My mom was now brewing a fresh pot of coffee and handing out mugs to each of us.

“They’re lovely, Mom.” I took my mug from her and sat down at the small breakfast table. “I don’t see how anyone could choose just one, and I’m sure the weavers appreciated your support.”

My mom flashed my dad a cheeky grin and brought over the full pot of coffee, making him chuckle. “Help yourselves, kids,” she announced just barely taking her seat before August started shoveling eggs onto his plate. How could men eat so much, yet stay so fit? It was just not fair. If I ate the same amount he did, I’d wake up tomorrow with another ass.

“She’ll always agree with you, Mom,” August mumbled around his mouth full of food. I stuck my tongue out at him.

“Mature,” he mumbled, shoveling another heaping fork full.

“About as mature as talking with your mouth full of eggs,” I smirked at him.

“Kensie loves me,” he said sitting up straight.

“Hmmm.” She sighed, eyeing him pitifully.

I laughed filling my mug with coffee. “Thank goodness for that. We have a no return policy in this house, Kens. You can’t give him back,” my dad joked with her.

“Make sure you run that by Wes before you hand over Capri,” August said wiping his mouth with a napkin. I was just setting my mug back down on the table when he spoke those words. Each word loosened my grip, letting the mug drop onto the table and slosh coffee in little splatters around it.

My mom’s head snapped up from where she was cutting her pancakes. She smiled brightly and dropped her fork and knife clasping her hands to her chest. “Finally.”

“What?” I said horrified and strangely curious about her response.

“We’ve been dreaming of this day for so long, haven’t we, Steven,” my mom asked my dad who sighed and shook his head.

“Okay, I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I don’t like it.” I did, however, find it interesting. I didn’t think my parents had ever approved of any of the guys I’d dated, not that they’d even met any of them. Wes and I would never happen, though.

“There is no Wes and me,” I stated firmly, gripping my mug in both hands.

August stood up from the quiet table and collected the empty plates. He patted me on the shoulder as he walked by on his way to the sink. “What time are you meeting him today?” his obnoxious voice asked, laced with amusement.

“You’re meeting him? Where? What time?” My mom’s eyes sparkled with hope.

“Does he need help tying his shoes?” my dad mumbled from behind the steaming cup pulled up to his lips. So I guess only my mom was a fan of Wes.

“He’s painting a mural for me on the gym wall,” August said retaking his seat next to Kensie but not before kissing her on the temple. She smiled sweetly at him, reminding me of what I wanted in my next relationship. I wanted someone who loved me so completely that they kissed me no matter who was around. I wanted someone to look at me and see me, adoring every placating piece.

“And I’m helping him out. That’s it,” I said directly to my mom. “And you know we aren’t painting today because you’ve got the boys running drills in the gym this afternoon,” I said straight to August who let out a muffled grunt when Kensie kicked him under the table. I air high fived her and smirked at my brother. He might be her husband soon, but I was still one of her best friends.

“Calm down about the boy, Donna. Capri has a date with Dan tonight, remember?” I slumped into my chair and purposefully avoided my brother. Dan was a guy my age who worked at the woman’s shelter with us every Thanksgiving. He had been trying to get me to go out with him for years, and I had been avoiding him for years.

“Wait, you’re going out with Dan the Man?” August asked sounding more amused than bewildered. Dan had a habit, or more of an obsession if you will, of talking about himself. A Lot. He was one of those guys who could do everything, had seen everything, and knew everything. He also had a habit of referring to himself as “the man,” hence the nickname.

“It’s just a date,” I said not wanting to elaborate on the specifics. Mainly, the fact that I had answered my phone before checking caller ID because I was busy sketching the tail of a marlin.

“Yeah, but a date?” August asked for clarification. I nodded because, again, I didn’t want to elaborate. Not on the fact that I had said yes to a quick drink at Tommy’s with Dan to purge the person who donned the marlin on his bicep from my mind.

“So, are you interested in him, or…what is this?” Kensie asked.

“This, is just a drink. I figure if I go out with him this one time, he will see how incompatible we are and leave me alone once and for all.”

“Or you could just not go out with him,” August said earning himself another kick in the shin from his beloved.

“Why don’t you give Wes a call and go out with him instead?”

“Give it up, Mom,” I said to her and stood up from the table. I looked around at my parents, August, and Kensie “And stop prying into my dating life. It’s just a drink.”

Okay, it wasn’t just a drink. Dan and I had plans to meet each other at Tommy’s at eight, and he showed up at my house at seven-thirty decked out in a pair of Dockers with a button up shirt and a blazer. A
blazer
. To a bar. If that and his old man pants weren’t enough, he had doused himself in a pungent odor that I could only describe as a teenage boy after gym class. So Dan showed up dressed like my dad’s fifty-year-old golf buddy reeking of Axe.

Thanks to his odor, I had to roll down my window to keep my migraine at bay, which allowed me to simply nod my head in understanding while Dan’s lips moved to the glorious sound of only wind in my ears. I didn’t even mind the tangled mess my hair had become and simply pulled it into a side braid before exiting the car to go into Tommy’s.

One drink with a guy like Dan in actuality meant one Cosmo, followed by a glass and a half of water with lemon, and two restroom breaks. Each time I returned from the ladies’ room, I’d remain standing and reach for my purse, but he’d continue right where he left off with his monologue about wanting to start his own clothing line.

“My buddy knows a guy who can do the silk screening for half cost.”

“Mmhmm.”

“So that gives me a larger budget to advertise on campus.”

‘Cause I was sure college-aged men wanted to look like Bill Gates on the bottom and Miami Vice on the top. “Mmhmm.”

“And then a guy I met on an entrepreneur Facebook group is going to help me patent my logo.”

“Mmhmm.”

“And what’s that gonna say. Douche Pricks R Us?” I jumped from my fog of boredom, spilling my water all over the table.

“Sorry, C.” Wes leaned over my back grabbing loose napkins and laying them across the stream of water. His arms were propped on either side of the table encasing me under him, and somehow leaving me more open than I’d felt all night. After successfully covering the table with layers of brown napkins, Wes moved back only to leave faint wisps of his cologne pulling lazily away from me. I fought the urge to grab onto one and reel him back in.

“And you are?” Dan asked, reminding me of what I was doing here. Wes pulled the chair that sat between Dan and me out and spun it around before sitting down with his arms draped over the back.

“Wes,” he answered sitting up proudly with a grin stretching clear across his face dimple to dimple. A smile paired with an odd garbled half-laugh escaped my mouth.
What the crap was that?
Thankfully the two were more focused on each other than me and didn’t notice my giggle vomit.

“Wes, this is Dan.” I nodded across the table at my date.

“Her date,” Dan said sizing Wes up.

“Uh-huh. And by date what do you mean exactly?” Wes asked, and I groaned inwardly.
Here he goes
.

“By date, I mean she and I are here together. Just she and I.” Dan sat up and buttoned the top button of his jacket.

“Nice blazer,” Wes commented, and I giggle vomited again.

“Nice beanie,” Dan said.

Nice beanie, indeed. Wes had the thick cotton pulled down to his eyebrows. Something about a man in a beanie, or maybe just Wes in a beanie, was utterly and completely hot. Maybe it was the way a beanie highlighted the sharp, defined edges of his jawline. Or maybe it was the way it cast a dark, rebellious shadow onto his otherwise mischievous and playful expressions. Or maybe I should stop staring at Wes in a beanie, and instead chastise him for crashing my date.

“We’re on a date, Wes,” I said reflecting how bored I’d felt before Wes showed up. So maybe chastise was the wrong verb to use.

“Right on.” He nodded toward the waitress at a neighboring table. “Leinenkuegal, Jess.”
Psh. Jess.

“Seriously?” Dan said more to himself than to either of us, but I was too busy watching Jess prance away in her way too tight True Religions.

“So, how’s the date going?” Wes’ eyes skipped back and forth between the two of us. He either didn’t hear Dan or chose to ignore him as I had.

“It’s great,” I said pushing my martini glass away and sitting forward toward him, placing my elbows on the table. Manners shmanners.

“Oh, yeah?” Wes countered looking only at me.

“Yeah. Wonderful.” I looked just as hard back.

“Wow, wonderful, huh?”

“Yeah. Perfect, even.” I sat back and crossed one leg over the other not even worrying about adjusting my black canvas shorts that had pulled up a little too high.

Wes’ eyes left mine and darted down toward my legs where they froze. Then widened. Then he cleared his throat. “Perfect.” Scratch that. Canvas short length was just right.

I shifted under his stare, and his eyes jumped back up to mine. They narrowed in determination and the corner of his mouth pulled up into a tiny smirk. So tiny, that most wouldn’t notice it, but I was well versed in Wes’ smiles, and this one didn’t escape me.

“So,” Wes’ smirk morphed into a full-scale facetious grin. Crap. “What’s her favorite color?”

“What?” Dan clipped, and Wes swung his head back toward him.

“Capri’s favorite color. What is it?” He nodded at Jess, who had leaned over far more than necessary to place his beer on the table, but Wes kept his challenging stare on Dan.

“Um, blue?” Dan said sitting up straighter and lifting his chin a smidgen more in the air. To be fair, he was really destined for failure on that question

“Nope. White.” Whoa. I didn’t expect Wes to nail that, although, to be fair, I wore it almost exclusively. Still, Wes noticing that was surprising to me.

“What’s her favorite movie?”

“
The Notebook
?” Dan wiggled in his chair.

“
Ten Things I Hate About You
.” Wes tipped back his beer and thumped it back down on the table. “Okay, what about her favorite band?”

“No, you know what. No. This is stupid. None of this really matters anyway.” Dan crossed his arms over his tiny chest.

“The Civil Wars, but okay, how about something more meaningful. Something you should be interested in asking your date instead of talking about yourself the whole time.” Wes leaned forward as Dan leaned back.

“Wha-what?” Dan stuttered.

“Because from where I was standing,” Wes tossed his head back toward an empty seat at the bar, “you did nothing but talk your ass off the whole time while Capri sat here looking bored as fuck.”

“She’s not bored.” Dan sat forward and looked at me expectantly.

I shrugged my shoulders. I was bored. As fuck.

“And I can’t understand why a guy who is lucky enough to score a date with a girl like C wouldn’t want to know every damn thing there is to know about her. What her favorite color is, what movies she likes, or what music she chills to. How could you not want to know that she wears glasses at night and looks fuckin’ hot as sin in ‘em, or that she likes to eat peanut butter and banana toast just before bed? C’mon, dude. You don’t care about knowing Capri.”

Wes shook his head and tilted back to take another sip of his beer. At least, I thought that was what he did. I was having a hard time seeing through the beat of my pulse clear up to my eyeballs. I’d spent so much of my life trying to blend into the walls around me, and somehow Wes had been watching closely enough to know what I ate before I went to sleep at night. I couldn’t discern if the helix of nerves twisting in my stomach was from being watched or from being seen.

“This is our first date. Of course, I wouldn’t know those things,” Dan said standing from the table and making a show of tossing down a few twenties. “And I’d like to continue it. Are you ready, Capri?” Dan asked me, but instead of replying, I looked at Wes.

With my anxious haze retreating, I could see Wes more clearly now. He tapped his fingers on the edge of his bottle, almost nervously. Then he released his hand from the bottle and stretched his arm up to pull the beanie off his head and run his hand through the tufted mess of hair atop it. I giggle vomited. Wes winked.