I hold up a hand. “This isn’t your experience. It’s my experience.”
“Okay, but I—”
“I’m not you, Afton!” I burst out before she can get fully into the big-sister lecture on changing my perspective. “I’m not . . .”
Perfect is the word I don’t say, the word that sticks in my mouth, because I know Afton won’t like that. Perfect people hate to be called out on being perfect. Because being perfect isn’t perfect. A perfect person needs to have just the right amount of flaws.
“What?” Afton’s eyes become ice. “A slut? Is that what you’re about to say?”
“No!” I say immediately, shocked. I’ve been taught never to say slut. The word feels dangerous in my head. “No. I did not say that.”
“It seems like you were about to say it.”
“I wasn’t.”
“That’s not fair.” Now Afton’s cheeks are each stained with a blotch of nearly neon pink. She stands up and starts to pace. “It’s not like I’m promiscuous, Ada. Yes, I’ve been with three guys in two years. And yes, the first two were big mistakes—you don’t even know—but that’s why I’ve been trying to tell you that you aren’t ready for—”
“You don’t get to tell me what I’m ready for,” I interject. “I’m not like you,” I say again.
Afton turns to face me. “How are you not like me? Enlighten me.”
I scoff. She’s got to be kidding me. “I mean, outside of the obvious differences. Everything always works out for you. That’s not me. I have to think things through first. I did think this through. And tonight with Leo, it was going to be the one part of my life that I did right. This wasn’t the same as hooking up with a stranger in a garage, or some rando boy at a party because you had too many wine coolers.”
Afton stares at me silently for a minute. “Well, I’m sorry your plan to be better than me didn’t work out the way you wanted it to.”
She stalks off toward the house.
“That’s not what I meant,” I say, too late for Afton to hear. I shiver.
The fire has burned out.
8
All day I replay our first conversation, from when Leo and I met, about a million times in my head. How I recognized him. How I went up and asked him if it was weird being his mom’s muse. How I told him that I was an artist, too, and he seemed genuinely interested. Because of course he did. Leo, if nothing else, knows how to deal with artists.
Then after we talked for a while, he asked, “So do you know my mom?”
I’d stared at him blankly, unsure of how to answer his question because it seemed so obvious. Of course I knew her. That was why I was there. “Yeah, I’m a huge fan,” I said finally.
I actually said that I was a fan. That’s the word I used. God.
“I mean, have you met her, in real life?” he asked.
“Oh. No,” I said, my cheeks heating. “I just admire her enormously.”
“You should meet her.”
“That’s not necessary,” I protested, but he’d already grabbed my hand and was towing me over to where his mother stood in the back corner, next to a woman in a white linen dress who was drinking a glass of red wine. I was momentarily distracted from my panic by the feel of Leo’s enormous fingers enclosing mine. He pulled me right up to Diana Robinson like it was no biggie. Which I guess it wasn’t, for him.
“There you are, Leo,” Diana said, as if he hadn’t been parked in a chair directly in her line of sight the entire evening. “And who’s this?”
All eyes turned to me expectantly. Even Leo didn’t know my name at this point. I had forgotten to tell him.
“I’m Ada,” I got out with difficulty. “Ada Bloom.”
“She’s an artist,” Leo said.
Diana smiled, a real smile, as warm as Leo’s hand that I was still inexplicably holding. “Ada Bloom is an artist’s name.”
“Thank you.” With my free hand I tucked a strand of flyaway straw hair behind my ear. Looking at Diana was like looking at a piece of art herself. She was wearing a little black dress with a beaded necklace that sparkled under the gallery lights; her bobbed hair waved around her face in something that reminded me of flapper fashion from the twenties; her lips a bright, well-defined red, the same color as her heels. I wished I’d worn nicer clothes. I was wearing fricking jeans and my purple art shirt, topped by a somewhat ratty gray cardigan my grandmother had knitted for me years ago.
And Diana Robinson was looking at me.
“I’m a . . . huge fan,” I breathed. “I mean, I love your work. Every time I look at one of your sculptures, I see a detail I never noticed before.”
“Oh? Like what?” she asked, but not like she was challenging me. Like she genuinely wanted to know.
I turned and pointed at the nearest statue: kid Leo reading Proust. “Like his shoelace on the left foot. It’s about to come untied. So many people would just make it so the shoelaces are the way you’d expect them to be, tied up neat, or maybe untied, because he’s a little kid. But about to become untied is kind of brilliant.”
I was talking too much. It’s a problem.
The woman in the white dress made a noise in the back of her throat. “You have a sharp eye. Do you sculpt?”
“I draw,” I explained. “Portraits, mostly.”
“Well, I’d love to see your work sometime,” she said.
This is something people say all the time, when they find out that you’re an artist: I’d love to see your work. Which always feels to me a bit presumptuous. Sharing your work is like showing people a piece of you. An intimate piece. But with this woman, the request felt different.
“Me,” I said. “Why?”
Diana Robinson chuckled. “She’s the gallery owner.”
“Oh.” My eyes widened. “Oh. Well, I don’t have anything I could . . . I’m not a professional artist or anything. I’m not—”
“But you obviously will be,” the woman said. “Take my card.”
I was worried she was going to spill red wine on her white dress while she dug into her bag, but she didn’t. She handed me a simple, heavy card, where cleanly printed in silver letters was the name Eileen Watts, Watts Gallery, and her phone number and email address.
Later I taped the card to my bedroom wall, where I always look at it and think, Someday.
“What else?” Leo asked after the conversation with Diana and Eileen moved to other things and I kind of backed away.
“Else?”
The corner of his mouth lifted. “What other details did you notice?”
I bit my lip. “Let’s see. You have a mole on the side of your neck. Not anything big or hairy or gross, just a little dot halfway up on the left side.”
He turned his head and pulled back the collar of his hoodie to reveal the mole, just where I said it would be.
“Your second toe is a tiny bit longer than your big toe,” I said.
He grinned. I smiled, too, but I was embarrassed. Here I was describing parts of his body like I knew what was underneath his clothes.