“Um, what?”
He jutted a chin toward the pretty ride. The thing was a pearl white, immaculate. He tapped a hand on the front. “We’re going to paint the car. This is the canvas.”
My mouth parted as he walked behind it, pulling another tarp. This one had been over a plain canvas that was about the size of the actual wall. Actually, the canvas itself traveled the entire length of the car.
“And this too,” he said, my eyes flashing. He laughed. “Intimidated yet?”
Getting there.
I guess now I know why he needed the help.
“We’re going to paint the car,” he continued. He put a hand out. “Then blend it into the canvas behind it. It’ll create an interesting perspective and be perfect for my design school applications. It’ll show I’m multifaceted.”
I’ll say.
“What are we painting on them?” This actually sounded fun, real fun.
Ares dropped the tarp, then I followed him over to a sketchpad he had on the back of the car’s trunk. The ride was completely sweet and easily a hundred-thousand-dollar car.
The fact that we were going to be painting on it was something else, and opening his sketchpad, Ares showed me what we were going to do.
I couldn’t have been more shocked. He’d told me he did geometric work.
But he’d never said he did constellations.
The pages were filled with them, gorgeous and reminded me so much of my galaxy work it gave me chills. It was like the opposite of what I did. He was all hard lines and tough edges, and I was exploded chaos.
But it worked together. It definitely did.
Ares studied me. “What do you think?”
“Did you just do these?”
“I’d been working on it, but after seeing what you do, I realized your work fit into mine. I’ve always done constellations.”
Crazy that he’d always been into that, the stars. I obviously focused on that.
His eyebrows narrowed. “Anyway, I was able to finish it up this morning.” He pointed to the paper. “I figured your stuff would go behind it. You do a little of you, and I do a little of me. It’ll be a learning process, and you’ll have to keep up…”
I rolled my eyes.
He laughed. “We’ll both learn, and I’m not going to bullshit. This is going to be time-consuming. I’m going to need your one hundred percent.”
I admit, I wasn’t dreading this now. It really could be fun.
He waited patiently beside me, but he fidgeted. His hands slid into his pockets. “So this is your chance. The contract says you can leave after our initial session after seeing the game plan.”
It did, and that was the only part of it that I thought was fair. I could bow out if I thought things would be too much.
“This actually sounds like fun,” I said, and his eyes twitched. I chuckled. “I don’t back down from a challenge, Mallick. And like you said, what we both do will work well together.”
“You’ll have to sketch your part.” He frowned. “I’ll have to approve it.”
It was like he was trying to convince me out of this, and maybe he was. It couldn’t have been easy asking for my help. Especially since he didn’t trust me.
&nbs
p; That only made me want to say yes more.