Say Yes: A Nostalgic Summer Romance Read online

  It was the first time I’d shown promising use of my small hand.

  My parents had celebrated the victory, hoping it would mean more activity from my underdeveloped hand. And sure enough, I started using it to play, to hold things, and to explore the world as a three-year-old does.

  Painting was the first thing to ever inspire me.

  It had been the only thing to ever inspire me.

  And if I were being honest, it was the only thing I had that made me feel worthwhile.

  It was a strange thing, to be born with a deformity, because I didn’t know anything else. Sure, it was easy enough to imagine what it would be like to have a fully developed right hand. But I never felt like I was lacking. As a kid, I never knew I had something wrong with me, that I had fallen short in some way. I did everything I wanted to. I did everything other kids did.

  But as I aged, as I became the impressionable child we all become, I began to adopt thoughts from those around me.

  I heard kids call me weird, saw them point at my hand with disgusted faces, and felt the shame of being purposely avoided in group projects. I heard their parents soften their voices and explain to their child how I was different, special, and that they shouldn’t point at my hand or talk about it. I heard my own parents whispering to each other in the kitchen, worrying over how I would type, or if I’d play sports, or if I’d ever be in pain as I grew older. I watched TV shows and movies in search of someone like me, but came up empty handed every time. I couldn’t even find a book that had someone like me in it.

  Slowly, bit by bit, those realizations stacked on top of each other like a bad game of Tetris in my heart.

  And I woke up one day and saw it — that I was less than, that I was different, that I fell short.

  I was never able to unsee it after that.

  Still, it never hindered me. If anything, I felt even more determined to live life despite my disability, and that determination quadrupled when it came to painting.

  I didn’t just want to be an artist.

  I wanted to be one of the best artists.

  And I didn’t want my hand to have anything to do with my story.

  Of course, that was nearly impossible. Every time I won an award at an art festival, or secured a medal for my school at the state competitions, my hand was just as famous in the news coverage as the art I created.

  Disabled Teen Wins State with Stunning Fresco.

  Girl Wins Art Festival Gold Medal with Underdeveloped Hand

  No Hand? No Problem for This Year’s Leonardo da Vinci Award Winner.

  No matter what I did, no matter what I created, I couldn’t escape the asterisk that followed every achievement.

  I traced my index finger of my left hand along each barstool as I circled the room, and on purpose, I made Liam’s painting my last stop.

  When I caught sight of it, I stopped dead in my tracks, my breath hitching in my throat.

  It couldn’t have been more different from what I’d painted.

  Where I’d filled my blank canvas with color and light, he’d painted his dark and dreary, harsh black oil against slightly softer shades of gray. The juxtaposition of the colors and lines made me uncomfortable, the hair standing on the back of my neck, but in the same breath, the curves and softness of the shapes within the black brought out an entirely different reaction.

  Almost akin to arousal.

  Though to the naked, untrained eye, the canvas was nothing but blobs of black and white and gray, oil thick and messy from not having proper time to dry, I could see a whole world on that canvas. I saw dozens of women, their curvy shapes filling every inch, thighs spread and chests arching, breasts pushed to the sky. I saw lips opened in ecstasy, and lashes splayed out against freckled cheeks.

  It was all so secretive, and the more I looked, the more I found. It was like the painting on the surface was nothing, but if you just took even one moment to pause and stare, it would reveal its entirety to you bit by bit and keep you captivated.

  So many emotions swirled inside me staring at that painting. Each new breath came shallower and shallower. My heart raced in my chest. My lips parted. My eyelids became heavy.

  Before I could think to stop myself, I reached for the painting with the thumb of my right hand. I couldn’t explain it, but I was desperate to touch the oil, to feel the painting as if it were alive and breathing right alongside me.

  “Like what you see?”

  I nearly jumped out of my skin at the sound of a deep voice barreling from the classroom door, stumbling backward and barely catching myself before I toppled over the mess of barstools.

  When I looked at the intruder, I found a smirking Liam Benson.

  “Careful,” he said, shoving his hands in his pockets and leaning against the doorframe. “Paint’s not quite dry yet.”

  I zipped my lips together, standing straight and smoothing my left hand over my overalls while the other slid quietly into my pocket. “I wasn’t going to touch it.”

  Liam arched a brow. “Weren’t you? Because it sure looked like—”

  “I wasn’t,” I insisted, tucking my hair behind my ear. “I was just… there was a fly, and I was waving it away.”

  “Ah,” he answered.

  An uncomfortable silence fell between us, and I felt the weight of his eyes on me like they were strong hands pinning me to the very spot where I stood.

  I cleared my throat, making my way across the room to grab my purse. “I was just leaving, so you can have the place to yourself.”

  “I liked your piece.”

  I stopped mid-step at that, frowning when I met his gaze.

  “I’ve never seen someone capture light with oil like that — not in this century, anyway. And the detail of the buildings, the people in the streets… even the tiny lemons and oranges at the fruit stand had exquisite detail.”

  My heart thumped hard in my chest, so loud and furious I heard it reverberate in my ears. “Are you making fun of me?”

  “What?” he asked incredulously, pushing off where he was leaning against the doorframe. “Of course not.”

  Liam watched me like I had three heads, his brows bent in concentration. I didn’t know him, and yet my annoyance for him was palpable. It shouldn’t have mattered to me that he showed up last minute and created something I never would have even thought of, but jealousy flickered like a candle in my gut, anyway.

  “I mean, look, do I understand why Professor B wasn’t impressed?” he continued after a second, tilting his head this way and that. “Yeah. He sees your talent, though. He knows you’ve got something. He’s just challenging you to do more with it.”

  “What, like paint pornography the way you did?”

  He smirked. “Pornography, huh? Is that what you see when you look at it?”

  “It’s what you painted.”

  “Are you offended by female bodies?”

  “No,” I scoffed. “I just… I don’t see how it relates to the assignment. He said to paint our first week in Florence. He said—”

  All the blood drained from my face when it dawned on me that all those supple breasts and lush bottoms and thick thighs were exactly what filled his first week in Italy.

  When my eyes flicked to his, he wore an amused smile, but didn’t offer any assistance in helping me put the pieces together.

  “We just approached the assignment differently, that’s all,” he said after a moment with a shrug. “But no, I’m not making fun of you. What you painted is beautiful.”

  I shook my head, adjusting my purse on my shoulder before I started for the door. “It’s nothing compared to yours,” I mumbled under my breath.

  But before I could snake past him and retreat out the door, that stupid boy hooked his hand gently in the crook of my elbow, pulling me to a stop.

  My breath caught, chest squeezing, and I could feel the warmth of his hand on my arm, could smell the peppermint on the wave of his breath where it swept over me.

  If I turned my head just a quarter inch, I could see the scruff on his jaw up close, I could note the true color of his eyes, I could commit every shape of his face to memory and paint it later.

  But I didn’t dare.

  “I didn’t realize we were in competition,” he said, his voice low and melty like a stick of butter in a hot skillet.

  I swallowed, but still didn’t lift my gaze to his. Instead, I shrugged him off and shoved through the door, back out into the warm summer evening.

  This time, I went home.

  But sleep never found me.

  The Art of Frustration

  I spent the weekend trying to forget about our first project.

  Angela and I took a day trip to Rome to explore, doing a tour of the Colosseum and having lunch in the courtyard of the Vatican. We got back to Florence late and spent most of Sunday lounging around the dorm room. By the time Monday rolled back around, I felt marginally better, and at the very least, I was ready to let go and “forge ahead,” as my roommate had said, to the next assignment.

  “La Nascita di Venere,” Professor Beneventi said when he rolled in Monday morning, haphazardly slinging his briefcase onto his desk before he turned to face us. “The Birth of Venus. Tell me what you know about this painting.”

  “It was painted by Sandro Botticelli during the Italian Renaissance,” I blurted out without thinking, without realizing that no one else was volunteering themselves to lay on the professor’s chopping block.

  He nodded at me. “Indeed. What else?”

  I swallowed, looking around the classroom at all the other eyes on me. I tucked my hands under my thighs before I met the professor’s gaze again. “It captures the birth of the goddess when she first emerged from the sea fully-grown,” I said.

  “Is that all
it captures?”

  I frowned, mouth tugging to one side as I considered the question. “No. There are many interpretations, of course, but… I think Botticelli wanted the viewer to be inspired by the goddess, by her beauty and how she grew from the earth. Or rather, the sea.”

  “I think it’s meant to arouse.”

  All heads snapped in the opposite direction of where I sat.

  To Liam Benson.

  Professor Beneventi arched a brow. “Go on, Mr. Benson.”

  Liam shrugged, running a hand back through his messy hair. “Well, she’s naked, for one.”

  That earned him a chuckle from the class and a glare from me. I folded my arms over my chest, fighting the urge to scoff at the simple view of such a historically significant masterpiece.

  “And you think the artist painted her nude to arouse his audience?” Professor asked.

  “Not necessarily, but I think it’s naïve to think he had this…” Liam waved his hand in the air. “Hoity-toity, nose in the air, it’s about her earthly beauty intention.” He paused. “It was the Renaissance. Artists all over were pulling away from the Christian focus of the centuries before and returning to classical literature for their inspiration. I think Botticelli picked the goddess of love because that’s what he wanted to inspire. Love. And sure, that could mean romance or commitment, but at the very base of it, at the primal level — love is sex.”

  More laughter filled the room, and I shook my head, unable to hold off any longer. “That’s a rather crude way to look at it,” I said.

  Liam tilted his head. “How so?”

  “To think that all love is is…” I swallowed, my cheeks aflame. “Sex.”

  Liam smirked at that. “I didn’t say that was all it is.”

  “She’s literally covering herself, a modest thing to do, not a sexual one,” I pointed out. “And the Hora of spring waits for her with a shawl to cover her up even more.”

  “That’s one way to interpret,” Liam said.

  I fumed. “That’s the way to interpret.”

  “Look, I get that you’re versed in what scholars have come to say about it. But when I think about how I would feel painting that, I don’t think I’d be painting a nipple or curvy hips of a beautiful woman and thinking, ‘Wow, this is so divine!’”

  The class laughed, and I pressed my tongue into my cheek to keep from saying a word.

  “What I’m saying is that as a man or a woman, you see a naked person and whether you want to or not, your brain fires up all the chemicals that come with lust,” Liam continued, snapping his fingers to illustrate. “And I think Botticelli knew that when he painted this. He knew the women would wonder what it was like to have such full breasts, what they would feel like to squeeze, what the weight of them would be in each palm. What would it be like to be the goddess? And he knew the men would imagine themselves between her thighs, above her or behind her, the goddess of love crying out in their honor.”

  I flushed even harder, but found my throat so dry I couldn’t argue with him this time.

  “Okay, easy, Mr. Benson,” Professor Beneventi said with a smirk. “It’s an interesting viewpoint, but I challenge both of you,” he said, looking between me and Liam. “All of you,” he continued, addressing the class. “To really study the painting and think about the time in which it was created. Remember that it was rumored to have been commissioned by the Medici, so, is there a connection between the Christian ideology, as well as the myth of the goddess’s birth?”

  He tapped the top of Liam’s easel as he walked past, and they shared a grin that made me fume even more. Again, it was as if they had this inside joke, as if Liam could do no wrong. We’d only completed one assignment, and already Professor Beneventi had decided Liam was a worthy student.

  And I was predictable.

  The professor went on to explain our next assignment, how he wanted us to go to the Uffizi and spend time with the painting, to feel it, and then to re-create our own interpretation of it.

  I was too distracted to hear all of the instructions, however, because Liam was watching me with that stupid smirk on his face, like he’d won.

  I glared back at him with the unspoken promise that he had not.

  “Remember, this is your interpretation of the piece,” the professor said, leaning down into my line of vision as he walked by. He arched a brow. “So don’t get caught up in the urge to recreate Botticelli’s work. Make it your own.” He stood, then. “Trust me, it’s impossible to recreate, anyway. I’ve tried.”

  The class was a chorus of chuckles, and then with the assignment given, we moved on to the day’s study.

  I found myself strolling past The Birth of Venus even more than usual during my shifts at the Uffizi. I volunteered to stand next to it and answer questions from tourists, to give unprompted tours to those who were open to it, and the more I did, the more solid I felt in my interpretation of the artwork and what it meant.

  What Botticelli intended for it to mean.

  I read countless studies on the work, historic documents as well as modern analyses. Then, every night when I went back to the dorm room, I’d have a quick dinner with Angela before locking myself in my room for the night to work.

  I decided to work privately this time, instead of in the classroom.

  I wanted zero distractions.

  And zero interaction with Liam Benson.

  The week flew by in a blur of class, working at the museum, and painting until my eyes burned and my body ached for sleep. But when the following Monday morning rolled around, and I carried my canvas carefully across campus into the classroom, I felt as confident as I did tired.

  I made sure to get to class early, ensuring I had enough time to set up the canvas and touch up anything that might have been affected by the cloth cover or me carrying it. My parents had always emphasized that if you were fifteen minutes early, you were on time. And if you were on time, you were late.

  With that mindset, I figured I’d be alone, but there hard at work at his easel was Liam.

  Working until the very last minute, yet again.

  I rolled my eyes when I saw him, but didn’t pay him any mind after. I focused all my energy on setting up my station and preparing for the professor.

  “How’d it go, Chambers?”

  I stilled at the question, rolling my lips together before I rolled my shoulders back and down. “Fantastic. And you?”

  Liam laughed. “I’ll let you know in about…” He checked his watch. “Twenty-seven minutes.”

  I shook my head. “I see you took the assignment seriously.”

  “I didn’t realize art was meant to be taken seriously. I thought it was meant to be felt, to be lived.”

  I didn’t even entertain him with a response, especially when a few more students joined us in the room with their own canvases. I said my greetings and then unveiled my painting, sitting back in my stool to admire it.

  Although the original painting was in oil, I chose acrylic for mine, mostly to capture the bright colors and fine brush strokes I wanted. Since my interpretation of the original had a strong foundation in Venus’s earthly beauty, I focused my painting on just that — her tie to the earth.

  The sea raged behind her, a storm receding in the distance as the waters closer to the shore were calm and glistening in the sunlight peeking through the clouds. Footprints marked the sand and led to where Venus stood in the center of the painting, still wet, her hair dripping over her breasts and cascading waterfalls down the lines of her abdomen. She stared directly at the viewer with hypnotic blue-green eyes, and vines and flowers wrapped around her feet, ankles, and up her shins, as if the earth was already claiming her as its own now that she’d been born from the ocean.

  There were no other humans or divine creatures in my piece, just her and the earth around her — a dense forest to her left, the calming beach behind her, and the storm that she was born of rolling away off the right side of the canvas.

  The entire piece glowed, bright oranges and pinks and golds playing off the softer, deeper colors of blue and violet. And I spent most of my effort on the goddess herself, on the curves of her magnificent body and the exquisite detail of her face. She was smiling just a bit, just at the corner of her lips, her brow slightly arched. She watched the viewer with her entire body exposed, save for the wet hair covering her nipples, and the flowers and vines shielding her most private areas from view.