“My mom and dad are still happily married, living in Thousand Oaks, where I grew up. I have a little brother, Chucky, who’s in school studying to be a dentist, just like my dad. Total golden boy. He’s kind of a dick. I’m close to my mom because she gets me, but my dad has always been hypercritical, at least of me. He calls me Paper Doll.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means he thinks I’m fickle. Like I’ll float away in a gust of wind.”
“Wow. That’s kinda harsh.”
“Well, I guess I am a bit scattered.”
“You don’t seem like that to me.”
“You don’t know me that well.”
He smiled like he thought that had no bearing on the situation.
“Boyfriend?” he asked.
“No. You?”
“I’m straight.”
I punched him in the shoulder. “I mean, do you have a girlfriend?”
He smiled. God, those dimples. Those lips. I couldn’t look away from him; it was as if we were inhabiting our own little vignette, separate from the rest of the bar. He squinted and then shook his head.
“What?” I asked.
“You’re really beautiful, Charlotte. And . . . I want to kiss you.”
“This is moving really fast, Adam,” I stammered.
“Life’s short,” he said again, looking intently into my eyes, entranced.
I held up my palm. “Not mine.”
“Braggart,” he whispered as he leaned in, watching my mouth.
We met halfway and suddenly we were kissing. Slowly, delicately. No other body parts touching but our lips.
He pulled away and opened his eyes. “Do you want to come to my house and have a sleepover?”
“You asked me already.”
“What was your answer again?”
“My answer was yes, absolutely, without a doubt. Let’s go back to your place.”
He pulled out his wallet and threw some money on the bar before holding up the bottle of wine to the bartender. “Can we take this?”
The bartender pushed the cork back into the half-empty bottle and then placed it in a paper bag and handed it to Adam. “See you soon, Adam,” he said.
“Yeah, you too, man.”
“Do you know him?” I asked.
“Sure. He’s the bartender here.” He held out his hand to help me off the stool. “Come on, kid, let’s have a pajama party.”
We walked hand in hand toward Adam’s apartment building. “You don’t seem lawyerly,” I said.
“What’s lawyerly? Like, douche-y?”
“No, like . . . disciplined. Tightly wound. High-strung. You were roaming the streets in the middle of the night, wearing flip-flops and offering Chinese food to strangers.”
“You must not know very many lawyers. Anyway, now I’m roaming the streets in the middle of the night, wearing flip-flops, carrying Chinese food, and holding your hand. I win. And there’s nothing more lawyerly than winning.”
I laughed. “Should I prepare myself for a ridiculously clean and organized loft? Like, will I have to take my shoes off?”
“It’s a total mess. I’m actually a little embarrassed,” he said, but I don’t think he was truly embarrassed. He just seemed too confident to be embarrassed about anything.
Adam stopped suddenly when he spotted a BMW parked crookedly in a space on the street in front of his building. It was decorated with several orange envelopes, which I recognized as parking tickets. “Shit, I didn’t even notice those earlier.” He began pulling the envelopes off one by one until he was holding a healthy stack.
“Is that your car?”
“No, I’m going to pay this poor fool’s parking tickets. Yes, it’s my car, silly.”
“Are you going to pay those?”
“No. I’m going to throw them away.”
“You’re not serious.”
“I am. I’ve learned lately that I only have so many fucks to give. I’ll move my car tomorrow, but tonight, I don’t give a fuck about these parking tickets, or the car.”
“What do you give a fuck about?”
“Getting to know you.” He squinted. “Maybe even painting you.” I didn’t believe for one second he was going to throw the tickets away, but I was getting the sense that Adam was undergoing some sort of change in his life. People who become lawyers aren’t the type to forget their phone at home and amass a ton of parking tickets. I wondered what happened at his job that had turned him into the person in front of me at that moment.
When we got to the top of the stairs, he stared at his keys for a while. “Here we go,” he said, but the first one didn’t work. The second one opened the door. “You know the bartender at that bar we were just at, but you don’t know which key opens your front door?” I teased. He just winked at me.
It was a traditional high-beamed, open loft space with big floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the street. The other walls were exposed brick. There were canvases, tarps, and paint supplies everywhere—literally hundreds of paintings just leaning in stacks against the walls. Other than a few kitchen appliances, a dresser, and a small table with two chairs, there was only a bed. No other furniture. The bed was unmade. I noticed the first four paintings I saw were of women. One in a park, one in a taxi, one lying across a bed in a flowing orange dress, and one looking out onto the ocean.
The loft was, in fact, a mess. It wasn’t filthy—it was actually quite clean—but there were items strewn about everywhere. I spotted a bra hanging over the chair near the table. I spun around and glared at Adam.
“You never answered me. Do you have a girlfriend?”
“No, that’s my friend’s. She models for me.”
“It looks like you have a lot of friends who model for you,” I shot back.
He looked at me curiously. “Does that bother you?”
“No,” I said lightly, suddenly feeling insecure.
“Are you hungry? I’m starving. And we need to finish this.” He held up the bottle of wine. “Plus, this is the best Chinese food ever.”
I had a feeling I was heading straight for bedpost-notch town. I’d never been there and frankly never wanted to go down that road. Until I met Adam.
“Okay,” I said. So what if he slept with a bunch of girls and then painted pictures of them? He was an artist. Isn’t that what artists were known for? Weren’t they so romantic that they’d cut their own ears off and mail them to the women they loved?
Wait, that’s not romantic; that’s insane.
Helen’s dumb bucket list had all kinds of things wrong with it, including being someone’s muse. If I became Adam’s muse, just for one night, would I get an ear in the mail the next day?
I banished my crazy thoughts and continued to walk around Adam’s apartment. His paintings were gorgeous—truly stunning. They were current but also felt classic, in the way that figurative paintings sometimes are. Some of the portraits were photorealistic, and others were intentionally out of proportion, like a Picasso. I wondered if my image would ever get lost in a stack somewhere in his cluttered loft.
I followed him into the kitchen area. He dished the food out onto two plates and then stuck them in the microwave. When I leaned against the counter near the microwave, he took my hands and spun me around to lean against the counter on the other side. “You shouldn’t stand near the microwave when it’s on.”
“Why?”
“It’ll cook your brains.”
“You don’t actually believe that.”
He opened his eyes wide. “Yeah, I do.”
I chuckled. “So, what’s the plan?”
“We’re chilling. We’re hanging out,” he said with his back toward me.
“This feels way too comfortable for two people who don’t know each other at all.”
He looked back at me. “We don’t know each other?”
I laughed, but it didn’t seem like he was kidding. He smiled, finally. “It does seem like that, doesn’t it? Let’s embrace it. We’re getting to know each other. What else would you be doing right now?”