The woman glanced Khristos’s way again and gave him a dreamy smile. “Do they get any hotter than that? Is he your boyfriend?”
Khristos shook his head and gave her one of his perfect, toe-tingling smiles. “Nuh-uh. I’m gay.”
The woman’s shoulders slumped. “Of course.”
Quinn was determined to keep it cheerful while she waited on her matchmaking sign. “What are you painting?”
“This idiot’s demise.” She pointed to a man to her immediate left, just two seats down from them, who was neatly dressed in a plaid collared shirt with a knit sweater over top.
Khristos cocked his head to the right as he scanned the woman’s painting. “But what a brilliant use of color. Who knew demise was so neon green?”
“Those are his brains, which I plan to dance in when this ridiculous blind date is done with.” She turned to the man and grinned.
The man, dressed in the absolute antithesis of everything earthy and green, whipped his neon-blue, paint-covered finger in the air. “Not if I get there first.”
Quinn blanched, feeling an odd solidarity with this woman and her failed date. “So, I take it, it’s not going well?”
The woman, maybe forty-five or so, rolled her quite lovely hazel eyes almost to the back of her head. “Are you kidding me? I put out fifty bucks apiece to get into this class and all he’s done is complain.”
The man, sandy-blond with the beginning touches of gray at his temples, arched an eyebrow straight upward. “I thought that was what we were supposed to do in this touchy-feely, overpriced hotbed of neuroses—express our discontent?”
“On the canvas, not with your open mouth, and you can leave at any time.”
The man balked. “And not finish my masterpiece of discontent? Don’t talk crazy like that. It’ll make me question my very reason for getting up this morning. Not on your life.”
The woman shook her long head of hair, hair that almost touched her waist. “I was so hopeful. My girlfriend said we’d be a perfect match, and who knows you better than your best friend? But we’re nothing alike. I’d have more in common with a breast implant salesman,” she whispered from behind the hand she’d cupped over her mouth.
Something inside Quinn clicked at that moment. A connection to this woman’s deeper sadness, one she didn’t always show to the outside world.
“Still in the same room with you! Have ears!” the man yelled out.
Quinn put a hand on the woman’s forearm and nodded. “I totally get it. I was in a relationship like that, too. But you know what? It’s better to know now rather than get in any deeper. Trust me when I tell you, one drastically cut-short trip to Greece where I thought I was going to end up engaged at the Parthenon and my entire life in complete chaos later, and I only wish I’d realized on our first date how wrong he was for me. Phew, was he wronger than wrong. Could’ve saved almost six thousand dollars if I’d just paid attention.”
Khristos nudged her with a light elbow to her still-smarting ribs. “Quinn…” He muttered what sounded like a warning under his breath.
She flapped an absent hand at him. “Hush. Girl time. Bonding over stupid man choices. Go paint some more discontent.” She turned back toward the woman, giving her back to Khristos. “Anyway, I understand and I sympathize. I’ve personally given up on finding the one and decided to focus on me.” Quinn squeezed her arm again and smiled her reassurance.
“Quinn!” Khristos hissed.
The man snorted. “How did you manage to find another granola-loving, tree-hugging woman in a sea of all the women in New York City, right here in this class?”
The woman pushed her stool out and stood up, her rounded body rigid. “You know what? If you’re not careful, I’m going to drown you in that sea, you uptight, pompous, overblown bag of Abercrombie & Fitch!”
Quinn raised a fist in the air, cheering on this brave woman in solidarity. “You tell him, sister! Don’t settle for second best!”
The man almost knocked his easel over when he pushed his stool out, too, and stomped over to them. He glared down at her, and if she were honest with herself, he was quite handsome. He’d aged well.
“Second best? Why don’t you stick your nose in someone else’s trail mix and mind your own business, lady?”
Khristos was on his feet in mere seconds, setting her behind him in an act of protective measure. “Okay now, buddy. Let’s all just cool off. Quinn didn’t mean to interfere.”
Quinn poked him in his broad back. God, touching him was like touching a wall of sumptuous granite. “I did too!”
“Quinn,” Khristos warned, his voice rising.
She pushed him out of her way and stood on tiptoe, her finger under his nose. “Don’t you ‘Quinn’ me, buddy. She’s doing the right thing by nipping this disaster in the bud. I mean—”