She tips her wrist so she can glance at her watch. “Almost nine. I thought you’d have slept longer.”
I cover a yawn with my palm. “I probably would have if you were there when I reached for you.” I look at her tablet, but she still has it tipped away from me. “What are you doodling?”
Her cheeks turn a rosy shade of pink. “Nothing.”
“It’s not nothing. What is it?” I nod toward the tablet, but she still tips it away from me.
“Nothing,” she says again dismissively.
“You do a lot of drawing on that thing.” I’ve seen her use it a lot. “Is that better than paper?”
She rocks her head from side to side. “Not better. Just different.”
“Can I see?”
She rolls her eyes. “You don’t want to see this.”
I roll mine back at her. “I do too.” I want to know everything about her. I look at her hair, which is all over the place. “Nice hair,” I comment with a grin.
She tries to pat it down but fails miserably. “I fell asleep with it wet,” she says, like I would have forgotten.
I rub my chest, remembering the feel of her weight against me as I fell asleep. Her hair had been cool and wet but not unpleasant. “I remember. It was cold.”
She glares at me. “The complaint department is currently closed.”
“That wasn’t a complaint.” I reach over and gently pry her tablet from her hand. “Can I look? Please? Do you mind?” I ask, because I do respect her right to say no.
“If you insist,” she says, as she straightens her spine.
I open her tablet and see the line drawing she’d been working on. “Wait… Is that me?” I ask, as I tip it to the side.
“Well, I wasn’t in bed with anybody else,” she says.
The drawing is done like one you would see on paper, made with pencil. It’s all lights and shadows, deep depressions of pencil and small shading, like she smudged it with her fingertip. And it’s clearly me. It’s me from the back, my naked head and shoulders sticking out of the covers as I lay in bed sleeping. It’s me. It’s nothing but me.
“This is really good,” I tell her, because it’s the first thing that comes to mind. Then I add, “And a little creepy,” because it’s the second thing that com
es to mind. “It looks like I could get up and walk off the page, it’s so real.” I tilt it so I can look at it from a different direction. “How did you learn to do this?”
“I don’t know,” she says shyly. “I just always could.”
I lift my eyes and look into hers. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you’re in love with me.” It’s right there in black and white. The tenderness with which she drew the lines, the realistic yet fond quality of my features, the sheer reverence of the effort and representation—it’s all right there.
“I don’t know how you could gather that from a drawing.”
I rub my finger across the screen, thinking it will show me more drawings. Nothing happens, though. “Can I see more?”
She takes the tablet from me and shows me how to get to the gallery view. She has drawn flowers, trees, landscapes, the front of her house both before and after I did her landscaping. In each drawing, it looks like the objects will leap off the page.
“If you can do this, why are you in advertising?” I ask, and I grin at her as I remember her asking me the same thing about my yards.
She gives me the same type of answer I gave her. “I like advertising.” She reaches over and takes the tablet back from me, holding the stylus that goes with it in her other hand. “And I like you,” she says quietly as she stares down at the picture of me in the bed. “You’re a good friend, Grady.”
A good friend. I am in love with her and she considers me a good friend. It almost feels like she’s shoved a knife in my gut. And twisted it.
“I don’t know many men who would jump in a car at midnight and drive straight through to Florida just to help a girl out.”
I let my eyes slide over her body. She’s wearing my t-shirt and not much else.