Jamie was three years older than me, and a relentless flirt. He wasn’t a skilled flirt, but he was persistent. With his tan and his matted curls, he had this grimy-surfer thing going on that I didn’t hate and an unhurried way of speaking that made him seem either wise or dense, depending on the situation. Unlike some of the other Brookbanks employees, Jamie didn’t treat me differently because of my last name or any of the stupid stuff I’d done. When I kissed him at a staff bonfire on the August long weekend, I was as surprised as he was. That was four years earlier, and we’d been together since.
“Want to give me a hand varnishing?” Will said as I washed our mugs. “If we do it together, we can get out of here faster.” He twisted his pinkie ring.
“You want me to do your job for you?” I wasn’t sure working alongside Will was a good idea.
He walked behind the counter and picked up a tea towel, then began drying one of the cups. “With me,” Will said, and my insides swooped.
* * *
—
Will demonstrated how to apply the clear coating in a crosshatch pattern with a wide brush, starting at the top of the wall and working down. “It’s kind of hard to mess up,” he assured me.
“Why are you living in Vancouver?” I asked as I covered the mural with gloss.
“I moved out there for school. I just graduated from Emily Carr.”
“That’s an arts university, right?”
“Yeah, and design.”
I pointed my brush at his lapel pin. “Surrealist—is that the style of painting you do?”
“No.” He pulled out his collar as though he’d forgotten it was there. “I guess it’s kind of an inside joke since my work is fairly literal. My girlfriend gave it to me.”
The word girlfriend was like a finger prodding between the ribs. I flinched. I couldn’t help it.
“Literal how?” I asked, trying to loosen the tight squeeze of envy. I had no business being jealous. I had Jamie.
“I’m an illustrator. Comics, mostly. I dabble with portraiture, but—”
“Dabble! I’m pretty sure dabble and smidge are related.”
Will laughed. “Definitely from the same gene pool.”
“Okay, so you dabble with portraiture,” I said in my haughtiest English accent.
“Cute,” Will said. “I had a comic strip in a campus newsletter last semester. My dream is to turn it into a graphic novel.”
“You have your own comic?”
He raised one shoulder as if it was no big thing. “Fred was the art director of the newsletter. I had an in.”
“Fred?”
“My girlfriend.”
Of course his girlfriend was the art director of an art school newsletter, and had an awesome, non-plant-based name like Fred.
We finished our sections and shifted farther down the wall.
“You said playlists are your thing—you and this friend of your mom’s,” Will commented after a while.
“Peter. Yeah, we’ve been listening to music together since I was little.”
Mom got snippy whenever we geeked out in front of her. If I hear the words distortion or tonality one more time tonight, you two can find someone else to play cards with. But I could tell she never meant it.
“That’s different. I mean, it’s cool,” he added. “I don’t know my parents’ friends well. You and your mom must be super tight.”
“My mom and I are . . .” I listened to the swish of Will’s brushstrokes, trying to figure out what Mom and I were. Our relationship had been strained throughout my teenage years—I was annoyed by how much she worked and how often I had to cook dinner for myself. Then I read her diary, and I became a human wrecking ball. But I’d spent the last four years at university showing her I was responsible—earning a business degree, same as she did. We spoke every Sunday. We watched The Good Wife together, our phones on speaker, while I folded laundry and she did her nails. Alicia Florrick was our hero. “I wouldn’t say we’re super tight, but we’re getting there.”
I started painting again. Will hadn’t paused to look my way, and I wondered if he knew that made it easier for me to talk. “Peter helped raise me. He says he oversaw my musical education. Mom says it was more like indoctrination.”
Peter was the head p?tissier at the resort. When I was a kid, I was his resident taster. He kept a white plastic stool in the pastry kitchen so I could stand beside him, dipping my fork into various tarts and pies, music blaring. Whenever Mom came in, she nagged him to turn it down. Or better yet, Peter, turn that crap off. Mom hated our music.
“You make him playlists, too?”
“We go back and forth. Our only rule is there has to be a theme.”
“Are you putting one together now?”
“I am.” I pressed the brush against the wall with undue force. “The Endings playlist.”
Will was quiet for a moment, then said, “Some people might think of this time in their life as the beginning.”
“Some might,” I said.
“But not you.”
I blinked at the mural, and then looked over at Will. He turned my way.
“What I want to know,” I said, deflecting, “is how you ended up here of all places.”
“Oh, that’s just nepotism,” Will said. “My mom is friends with the owner. When I mentioned I was coming out here for a visit, she suggested I do a piece.”
I imagined having a passion, a parent who supported it, and the freedom to follow it through. “That’s so amazing. She obviously really believes in you.”
He looked at me, and something about it—the way his eyes held on to mine for three long seconds—snagged in my chest. It was the first time I’d seen him without any trace of merriment. He seemed older. Maybe even a bit tired. The urge to tell a joke, to see a smile bloom on his face, was strange in its intensity.
“She says my desire to draw in boxes and paint on walls lays bare my inner rigidity, and that I have a ruinous case of perfectionism that has no place in the heart of an artist.”
My jaw hung open. “Your mother said that? Like, to your face?”
“More than once.”
Mom and I had been through a lot. But I couldn’t imagine her saying something so cold.
“My mother is an artist,” Will said, as if that was an explanation. “A sculptor.”
I frowned. “Are all artists mean?”
“Some of them,” he said quietly, then cleared his throat. “But I like working within a box. I get off on the limitation.”
I heated immediately, palms burning as if I’d pulled baked potatoes from the oven.
“What about you?” he asked. “What gets you going?”
“Me?” I turned to the wall, and then Will leaned over and spoke into my ear, making the hair on my arms stand. “Relax, Fern Brookbanks.”
Unlikely.
“Likes: coffee, music, walking.” I glanced at Will. “The basics.”
“The fundamentals,” he corrected. “What was your major?”
“Business management?” I sounded unsure. I felt unsure, even though I’d all but donned my cap and gown.
His eyes skated over me. “That’s not what I would have guessed.”
I wanted to ask him what he would have guessed, but we’d reached the end of the wall.
“Well, that’s it,” he announced. “I’ll clean up and put everything away, then we can take off.” He put his hand out for my brush.
“Do you want help?” I offered.
“Nah, that’s okay. I already roped you into varnishing.”
I nodded, disappointed. I packed up my things and unhooked my iPod, leaving the café silent except for the sound of Will washing his brushes in the back.
I wandered over to the mural, studying the painting while I waited, my eyes moving the direction we had worked, finally landing on the plane. My breath caught, and I stepped closer. Will had varnished this section, so I’d missed it. He’d put a tiny fern frond on the plane’s rudder.
“You gave me a fern on a coffee, so I gave you one on a plane.”
I turned at Will’s voice. He was drying his hands on a towel. “You painted a fern on a wall for me.”
“A very small portion of the wall. Do you like it?”
It was the best fern I’d ever seen. I wanted to chisel it out of the plaster and take it home. “Yeah,” I murmured. I loved it.
“So I have an idea,” Will said, throwing the towel over his shoulder. “I thought I could show you some of my favorite spots, if you’re free. Nothing basic, I promise.”
I was temporarily speechless.