Iturned on The Civil Wars, an indie duo whose music we both enjoyed, and we covered the walls with primer. The repetition of my roller-brush striking the wall was soothing, and I could feel myself relaxing with each passing minute, finding comfort in the monotony and mindlessness.
Finnbegan to sing along with the male vocal part and before long, I’d unconsciously picked up the female versus. We sang and painted until there were no more walls left to prime and the CD player had fallen silent after the final track.
“I didn’t know you could sing until I saw you up there on stage last night. I thought I was hallucinating at first,”Finn laughed, breaking the silence that had descended on us.
“I don’t really,” I replied, turningin a slow circle to see if we’d missed any spots with the primer. We’d have to wait awhile for it to dry before we could start covering it with the blue shades I’d picked out.
“That’s not what it sounded like last night, or just now,”Finn noted skeptically. “You’ve got talent. Why not use it?”
“Singing is something I do just for myself. I don’tdo it for the applause, or the audience, or the spotlight,” I tried to explain. “It’s an outlet for me, I guess.”
Finnnodded. This, he could understand.
“Why were you there?” I asked. It hadn’t escaped my notice that he had his own band, with real fans and scheduled performances; he didn’t need to be singing at an open mic night. “It’s not exactly Styx.”
“Styx is great for when I’m playing with the guys,blowing off steam,” Finn said, walking over to lean against my draped bedframe. “But sometimes, when I need a reminder of what’s important in my life, I need to play alone and reground myself. Music’s one of the only things that can clear my mind. ”
“One of? What else works?” I asked, genuinely curious.
“Sex.” One side of his mouth curled up in a dark smirk, and he waggled his eyebrows at me playfully.“Don’t suppose you want to help me out with that method?”
I glared at him, but there was no heat behind it. His smile became a full-fledged grin, complete with dimple.
“What’s all this about? The sudden urge to paint?”he asked, switching topics abruptly and gesturing at the whitewashed walls.
“I needed a change,” I said, shrugging. “I looked around this morning and realized how bare my walls were – how empty it made my life seem.”
Finnset down his brush and pulled off the paint-spackled plastic gloves covering his hands. Making his way over to my desk, which sat in the hallway just outside my bedroom door, he gently lifted up one of the canvases I’d had printed earlier – the photo of Lexi and I in costume – and examined it.
“You look happy here,” he said, smiling as he looked at the photo. Picking up the second canvas, the oneof my mom on their pier, he stilled and his face grew serious. “This is your mom?” he asked quietly.
“How’d you know?”
“You look like her,” he said. “The eyes, the smile – on the rare occasion you show yours – even the hair. They’re the same.”
Warmth erupted in my chest at the thought that I might look a little like my mother. I wasn’t like her in other ways – not artistic, or forgiving, or kind. I didn’t possess her open heart or her capacity for love. But if I looked like her on the outside, maybe it meant that buried deep down beneath my cynicism, trust issues, and jaded bitchiness, I had a little of her within me after all. Maybe, if I looked for hard enough, I could find pieces of her inside myself.
Finnhad moved on to examine the third picture, and he looked sad as he took in the sight of the little girl I’d once been, wrapped in my mother’s arms. His eyes shifted to me, where I leaned against my bedframe watching him.
“You don’t talk about her.” It wasn’t a question.
“No.”
“I didn’t talk about my parents for a long time.”
“What changed?” I asked, genuinely curious.
“I met you.”
That threw me for a loop. “What do you mean,you met me?”
“You were the first person I ever reallytalked to about my parents’ death.”
My mind was reeling. How could it be thatFinn had never discussed his parents before the other night on my rooftop? Granted, I never really talked about my mother either, but he seemed far more adjusted and normal than I ever hoped to be.
“Do you want to– need to? Talk, that is?” I asked, taking a hard swallow to calm my breathing. Jeeze, I was terrible at this. I didn’t know the first thing about properly dealing with my own grief, let alone other peoples’.
“Do you?” He turned my own question around on me, pinning me in place with the weight of his intense stare.