Chapter 15

CHAPTER 15

I've painted Aunt Mari, Julio, Dad, and they have all turned out…middling at best.

Painting sucks. Art is stupid.

I can't understand why I haven't had a breakthrough. I blow out a deep breath as I walk to work. What happens if I can't hack it as an artist? Art won't go away; it doesn't need to be my profession to remain in my life. I don't know. Giving up now feels like giving in and proving all my naysayers right. I'm not out to have a "Gotcha!" moment or put people in their place. I just want to be proud of doing something on my own, by myself, making my own way in the world. Why does painting have to be so annoying all the time?

I stop by the gallery after work to have a little pout with Lorraine, but she's busy with another customer. She sees me and waves for me to stay.

I wander around a bit, wondering why I'm so stuck on this gallery. I could be painting my normal nighttime paintings and leveraging them into printed merchandise, like notecards, wrapping paper, framed prints to be sold on home goods sites.

Lorraine sidles over with a "Sold" sticker to put by the boat captain's portrait. "I can tell by your sour expression it's not going well."

"I'm considering going back to what I'm comfortable with. I don't know if I need to push myself to do this portrait."

"No, don't say that yet. Just keep practicing. It takes endless patience." She gives my shoulder a reassuring squeeze. "Have you tried doing a self-portrait yet? A lot of artists start there."

Which is how I find myself in the bathroom with an easel and canvas set up in front of the long mirror. I stare into it and take notice of my shadows and highlights, the overall shape of my face. I play with raising the blinds at the end of the room to let in natural light, then turning on the vanity lights versus the overhead lights.

And then I look into my own eyes for a while.

What do you want?

The longer I study myself, the deeper I fall into reflection, as if I'm viewing myself in third person. What does she want? What does the future hold for her? Where will she live, what will she do, what are her goals, her hopes, her dreams?

The future? In ten years, give or take, I'd like to be an established artist, painting collections of fine art. I'd like a small family, a husband and a baby or two. I want to feel confident in my choice to be an artist, secure in my marriage, and happy in my community. I want love, both the soul-splitting romantic love and the steadfast love of friendship.

I don't need to travel the world or discover new places. I don't need an illustrious title or a job in a renowned city. I want to use my creativity to plumb the depths of my heart and soul, to share the things I'm passionate about with the world, and to help others along the way. I want to know at the end of the day that I'll crawl into bed and feel safe and cared for.

I exhale and drop my gaze. That's what I want, but it feels unreachable, too far to fathom. Am I going to be able to support myself on coffee shop shifts and selling art, or is there some other job in my future, like running a gallery? Should I go back to school, get more training in art?

I look up again. "I just want to be brave," I whisper to my reflection.

The Goal Diggers are on a roll, and we're letting the league know we're here to win. After we add another "W" to our record, the Navy guys decide it's too hot to go to the beach and we should all go to Luko and Denny's place for a Mario party.

When I walk into the guys' townhouse, I gawk at the sheer quantity of couch dominating their living room. A massive, overstuffed U-shaped sectional lines the wall with a huge ottoman in the middle. All seven of us on the team could easily fit on it without needing to touch each other.

I'm nudged out of the way by Sarah and Anisha, who take a diving leap onto the couch and claim the middle cushions. Denny opens the long entertainment console under what must be an 80" TV screen and starts tossing video game controllers around the room. He glances at me, about to frisbee one my way, but I hold my hands up in protest.

"I'll watch. I suck at video games."

"No worries," he says, chucking it to Frank instead.

Luko and Cole head towards the dining room table across from the kitchen and I follow them. Cole dumps a heavy backpack on the floor and sinks down on a chair on the far side of the table.

"Make yourself at home," Luko says to me. "Drinks are in the fridge, but no food or drinks on the couch."

"Noted."

The lack of color, the absence of anything hung on the walls, and the fact it smells like car air freshener screams bachelor pad, but it's also mature and comfortable. There's real furniture, however mismatched, and when Luko opens the fridge to grab a beer, it's well-stocked with ingredients and meal prep containers stacked up in neat rows.

"Beer? Soda? Sparkling water?" Luko asks.

"I'll take sparkling water," I reply.

He grabs a can and tosses it to me.

"Cole? Beer?" he asks.

Cole is unzipping his backpack and pulling out some hefty notebooks and binders. "No, I gotta study. I have so much to catch up on."

"Told you Ripley was dragging you down," Luko says on his way to the living room.

I'm stunned Luko would toss that out so casually. I sling my purse over the back of a chair and sit down across from Cole. His eyes are glued to his notebook, but his pen is hovering over it, not writing anything.

"You okay?" I whisper to him.

"Yeah, fine." That's far too curt an answer for him. He sighs and drops his voice. "I'm on a deadline for this, and I'm behind. Luko isn't wrong. I did get distracted for a bit, stopped studying for my pin like I should have been. It happened, I need to move on. But not gonna lie, I'm worried."

"What are you studying?" I ask.

"I'm working on my Fleet Marine Forces pin. This"—he points to the two-inch thick binder—"is my study guide. Gotta know everything in it, from why the Marines have the shores of Tripoli in their hymn to how to disassemble and reassemble a rifle to how to do basic land nav, and more. Plus all my corpsman stuff."

"Land nav?"

"Land navigation, using a compass and map. And then once I think I know it enough, I have to go around and get signatures from different people that confirm that I know it. They want to make sure that even though I'm technically a Navy enlisted sailor, I can operate on the same level as a Marine when I'm with them." He slides the binder towards me. "Take a look."

I start flipping through page by page, then chapter by chapter, turning chunks of paper at a time and still not getting to the end. The sheer volume of information is overwhelming.

"You have to know all this?" My brain is panicking on his behalf.

"I can do it. I just have to focus."

"When they test you, they can ask you anything?"

"Yeah, gotta be ready for any question they throw at me."

It's section after section after section of information on a myriad of topics. Guns, tanks, maps, structures, terminology, history. It's completely daunting. The last page is about the structure of dental battalions, and it's so unexpected I laugh out loud.

"Dental battalions?"

"Yeah, dental battalions," Cole says with a chuckle.

"You want me to leave?" I ask. "I'm not big into video games, so I was going to do some sketching, but I can leave if you want to be alone."

"No, stay. If you want to. It does something to my brain, helps me stay focused to have someone nearby."

I nod. "It's like silent accountability."

"You get it," he says with a grin.

I reach in my bag and pull out my mini sketchpad and pencils, setting up my own little space on the table.

"You seem so calm," I say. "I would have taken one look at that study guide and said no, thank you."

He looks down at his hands, rubbing his thumb over a callus as he laughs to himself. "Well, it's a requirement, can't really skip it. But I also want to prove to myself that I can do it. I once heard this interview with an older corpsman, from the Vietnam War era. He said this line that I'll never forget, something he was taught by an even older corpsman. ‘Be the job big or small, do it well or not at all.'? 1 And that's kind of become my mantra. Just trying to do my job well."

"It's weird that it's one of those things where we'll never get to see you on the job," I say. "It's not like we can sit in the back of your classroom and watch you teach or go eat in your restaurant and enjoy your cooking skills. But I imagine you're really good at being a corpsman. I mean, look at how you were the other night. You were so calm and ready for anything."

Cole's cheeks flush, and the blush travels down his neck, sliding under the collar of his t-shirt. "Look, don't go glorifying what I do," he says. "I'm not a hero or anything. Marines don't always think the best of corpsmen, especially when we haven't had a chance to prove ourselves in combat."

I shrug. "You're never going to convince me it's not a cool job."

He may be red in the face, but he has no problem meeting my gaze. I love that his eyes are so warm and inviting and deliciously brown. The butterflies are back again. What are they doing here?

When he looks away and starts quickly flipping through the binder, I take a deep cleansing breath and shift my brain into art gear. I scan my lines of sight, trying to decide what I'll attempt to sketch. It's just for fun, just for practice.

I glance over to my right, towards the living room, right as Denny and Frank explode off the couch with fist pumps of victory and everyone else leans forward, groaning. I can capture that, the juxtaposition of elevated winners and sinking losers.

Sketching out the beginning lines is easy. Keeping my eyes off Cole as he studies is not.

There's an intensity to the way he fixates on each page, running his finger across the text, jotting down notes in a notebook, subtly whispering to himself. He's locked in, oblivious to the cheers and jeers coming from the living room. His forehead furrows every so often as he pops the cap off a highlighter and slides it across the page.

I keep sketching, adding color, shading, and detailing, all the while sneaking glances at Cole. I admire his dedication, how seriously he takes his job. People drift in and out of the kitchen to grab snacks or drinks, patently ignoring us so Cole can stay focused.

After about an hour, I finally set my pencils down and stretch my arms, shaking my hands out. Cole looks up, and when he sees me taking a break, he leans forward with a groan, rubbing his hands over his face.

"You good?" I ask.

"Brain fried." He smiles at me. "Can I see what you've been up to?"

The little scene I've drawn is neither my best nor my worst work, but the prospect of showing it to him makes me nervous. What's there is there, it was the best I could do in the moment. But it's just Cole asking to see it, not an art critic.

"Sure," I say with a shrug.

He comes over to my side of the table and leans one hand on the back of my chair and one hand on the table. I angle my sketchpad towards him. He looks at it for a long while, tilting his head back and forth. He's close enough for me to catch the faint scent of laundry detergent emanating from his shirt and feel the heat of his body. My legs get goosebumps, and I run my hands over my thighs to make sure he knows it's because I'm cold in the air conditioning, not because he's so close to me.

"You drew that?" he asks.

"Mmhmm." He might not get it. To the untrained eye, it could look like weird shapes and blobs.

"Tia, that's incredible." He looks over his shoulder at the scene in the living room, everyone yelling and cheering and taking Mario Kart way too seriously, then back to my sketch pad. "That's so cool. I've never known anyone who could draw like that."

A thrill runs down my spine, and I can't hold back a grin. "Thanks," I say.

"Can I see what else you've drawn?"

I mentally flip through the pages, hoping and praying that there's nothing in there that would be embarrassing. It's mostly nightscapes, some seaside sketches, some of the island's main avenue, the trees in the park, a few of Aunt Mari in the kitchen.

"If you really want to," I say, sliding the book over to him. He sinks down in the chair next to me, his knee brushing against mine.

Cole turns each page slowly, taking it as seriously as his study guide, his eyes roaming over each sketch and drawing. I have to remind myself to breathe like a normal person, in and out, in and out.

"I love your style," he says. "It's like you're barely capturing the scene before something shifts. Like you don't have enough time to do all the details, you're just putting down the basic shapes and shadows, and yet it's all there. That's so cool."

I blush. No one has ever talked about my art that way. It's filling a cup I didn't even know was empty, my cup of reassurance, of confirmation. My logical brain says he's simply being complimentary, but my heart is already melting into a letter mold that spells C-O-L-E.

When he looks up and meets my eyes with his brown, earnest gaze, my heart stops.

"Thanks for showing me this," he says, looking beyond my eyes and into my soul.

"Yeah, anytime." I say, the words coming out in a dry whisper.

He gets up and heads to the kitchen, then comes back to the table with a Coke in one hand and a sparkling water for me in the other.

When he settles back in his seat and resumes studying, I can't stop watching him. He's intent, persevering through the mound of information in front of him with a furrowed brow that illustrates his diligence. I have a revelation of a thought.

This is the painting you need to do.

"What?" Cole asks, catching me staring.

"Nothing," I say, shaking my head with a smile and a heated blush.

No. Absolutely not.

But even as I protest, my mind's eye starts to sketch out how I would arrange the notebooks and the spill of pencils and where I would put the light to catch the intensity of his eyes and the little pinched lines between his eyebrows and…

No, this is ridiculous. I'm not painting Cole. There are about a trillion things in this world that can act as inspiration for the subject of my painting, and it's not going to be him. I refuse.

Because I like him too much.

No. It's because I would be taking up his valuable time. He obviously needs to stay in the zone with his studying. There's no way he'd have time to sit for a painting. Can you imagine? Me, asking him to sit for a portrait? Crazy.

Maybe not so crazy. Maybe the smartest thing you've ever done.

No, I will not be painting Cole Slaeden.

1 ? All Hands Magazine, "Between Two Corpsmen" YouTube, June 29, 2018, video, 6:29, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9DjwKFQuLA