“Here?”
“My chin.” It tickled, but I didn’t let myself move. Moses traced the tip of my chin, followed it down and around, making a straight line to my neck. I swallowed as the brush slid down my throat and whispered down my chest to the opening of my T-shirt. My T-shirt made a neat V above my breasts, and Moses paused, holding the brush pressed against my skin, directly over my heart. But he kept his eyes closed.
“If I were to paint you, I would use every color,” he said suddenly, almost wistfully, as if he was sure he couldn’t paint me . . . but he wanted to. “You would have crimson lips and peach skin and ebony eyes with purple shadows. You would have hair streaked with gold and white and blue and skin tinted with caramel and cream, swirled with pink and shaded with cinnamon.”
As he talked, he moved the brush this way and that, as if he were actually painting with the colors in his head. And then he stopped and opened his eyes. My breath was stuck somewhere between my heart and my head, and I concentrated on letting it out without giving myself away. But he knew. He knew what effect he had on me. He threw the brush and stood up, breaking the spell he’d woven with gentle strokes and soft words. He headed back into the house and I could have sworn I heard him mutter to himself as he left me lying on the grass, “I can’t paint you Georgia . . . you’re alive.”
Moses
GEORGIA WOULDN’T STAY AWAY. I did my best to make her go. I didn’t need her tying me up and tying me down. I was leaving as soon as I could, and she was not part of my plans. I treated her like shit most of the time. And she just shrugged it off and handed it right back. It didn’t faze her and it definitely didn’t make her go away. The problem was, I liked kissing her. I liked the way her hair felt in my hands and the way her body felt when she crowded me and got in my space, demanding attention and getting it, every damn time.
And she made me laugh. I was not the laughing kind. I swore more than I smiled. Life just wasn’t that funny. But Georgia was extremely funny. And laughing and kissing does not make it easy to convince someone you want them to go away. And she just wouldn’t go away.
I thought after that night at the rodeo, tied up and terrorized, Georgia would lose some of her sass. Terrence Anderson, who had nothing but insults for Georgia, had definitely lost his sass when I cornered him a few nights after the stampede and made sure he knew that little boys who liked rope got sliced up by men who liked knives. The truth was, I was good with knives—I could throw them and hit the target dead center at twenty paces—and I made sure Terrence knew that. I showed him a nice big one I’d taken from Gigi’s kitchen drawer, and I gave him a little knick on his cheek, marking him up in the same place where Georgia’s cheek had bled.
He said he hadn’t done it. But his eyes shifted around like maybe he had. Even if he hadn’t done it, he was an asshole, so I didn’t feel bad that I made him bleed. The only thing I felt bad about was that I had been compelled to scare him off at all. Georgia’s problems were not my problems. Georgia was my problem. Like right now, when she was determined to help me repair fence, talking and making me laugh and then making me angry because she was making me laugh.
“I can’t get any work done when you’re around. And it’s gonna rain, and I’m not gonna finish. This section of fence has been a bitch, and you aren’t helping.”
“Whine, whine, whine,” Georgia sighed. “You and I both know I rock at repairing fence.”
I laughed. Again. “You suck at repairing fence! And you didn’t bring gloves, so I had to give you mine, and now my hands look like porcupines from all the damn splinters. You are not helping.”
“That’s it, Moses. Give me five greats.” Georgia said, like she was demanding push-ups, a drill sergeant barking out a command.
“Five greats?”
“Five things that are great about today. About life. Go.”
I just stared at her sullenly.
“Okay. I’ll go first. It’s easy. Right off the top of my head, five things I’m grateful for. Bacon, wet wipes, Tim McGraw, mascara, and rosemary,” she said.
“That’s kind of a strange assortment,” I said.
“What did you tell me about finding beauty in little things? What was that painter’s name? Vermeer?”
“Vermeer was an artist, not a painter,” I objected, scowling.
“An artist who painted nails and stains and cracks in the wall, right?”
I was impressed that she remembered.
“The five greats game is kind of like that. Finding beauty in ordinary things. And the only rule is gratitude. My mom and dad use it all the time. Grumbling isn’t really allowed around my house. Foster kids learn that real quick. Any time you start feeling sorry for yourself or you go into a rant about how bad life sucks, you immediately have to name five greats.”
“I can name five grates. Five things that are grating on my nerves.” I smiled sarcastically, pleased at my play on words. “And the fact that you’re wearing my gloves is at the top. Followed by your annoying lists and the fact that you just called Vermeer a painter.”
“You gave me your gloves! And yeah, it’s annoying, but there’s something to it. It changes your focus, even if it’s just for a minute. And it shuts down the whining. I had one little foster sister who named the same five things every time. Toilet paper, SpaghettiOs, shoelaces, light bulbs, and the sound of her mother snoring. She had a pair of flip flops when she came to us, and nothing more. The first time we bought her shoes, we got her a pair with fluorescent green laces with pink hearts on them. She would walk, staring down at those laces.
“The sound of her mother snoring?”