Snip. Snip.
Ten
I shook my head as the dots on my painting moved.
Shit. Was the sun up again? Was that the first time or second since I’d slept?
My freaking wrists were throbbing, which told me probably the second time.
The days were blurring again. Weeks, actually. From the night Ian had spent in my place, to…tonight? I swiveled my head to the large window. Yes, night. Jesus.
I dropped my palette, tossing a piece of wax paper over the colors. I was too weary to do a proper cleanup. The painting was done. Third one I’d done in as many days. I was used to manic sessions. It was just part of my process.
But I usually took a break in between.
Sleep, eat, recharge.
My foot bumped into the gallon-sized pitcher I kept by me. At least if I kept hydrated I could move through the exhaustion. It rolled away, obviously empty.
I stumbled back from the canvas, the eerie sky creeping into the frame, eating up the sunlight and the laughter in the foreground. The smeared spray paint art took on a clownish glow.
The bikini top lay discarded, a switchblade half opened beside it.
Mine.
The one I’d burned after Ian had left.
It was now a pile of ash on my beach.
The last time I’d gone to see the skyline and the surf I’d walked along every day since I’d moved here. The last sunrise I’d photographed. The bikini burned in effigy to a different girl. Funny how meeting someone could do that. Change me so profoundly.
Ian was barely in the painting. Just at the edges.
Though he’d saved me. Though there was still blood on the edges of that skate park where he’d taken care of my attacker.
I even asked around if anyone had known him. The man with the rattlesnake eyes who didn’t know what the word no meant. I hadn’t invited his attention, but I was a woman of a certain look. Being an artist, I knew the shape of me, my face, my wild hair was put together well. Not that I cared about those things.
Pretty was boring.
But he preyed on the pretty. More than one female skater had a story to tell. And I listened. Just a few whispers were met with sharp, toothy grins from others who gleefully told me they’d heard of his accident. Most were eager to tell me what an asshole he was. How he’d been a shitty bully on and off the ramps. And now the asshole was in a cast up to his knee, his skating future in question.
I gave not one single fuck.
Karma was a fickle bitch, but sometimes she got it right.
And while my mom would be horrified at my bloodthirsty thoughts sometimes, I didn’t lose sleep about it. I didn’t even really lose sleep about Whitey.
His name.
As original as his disgusting nature.
No, it was the sea-glass color of his eyes that kept popping up in my work. Ian Kagan—sorry, meteoric rising Ian Kagan.
My YouTube feed was strewn with his videos. I’d watched a few from the show I’d photographed. I’d been determined to prove he couldn’t have been as hypnotic as I’d remembered.
He was.
In fact, the actuality of him was far worse.