I felt my cheeks heat as I wrapped my hands around the can. Rider led me over to the canvas, shaking his can as he went. I did the same, probably looking a little deranged.
“How about we start with just a letter—the letter M.” He tugged his mask up over his mouth and when he spoke, his voice was muffled. “Here.”
Shoving the can under his arm, he turned to me and pulled the mask up, situating it over my mouth. His hands lingered along the band, sending a shiver dancing down my spine. “There you go.”
He popped the lid off the can and it hit the floor with a soft clang. Eyes bright, he knelt down and with a series of flicks, he had a bold letter R in black paint. “Your turn.”
At first I just stood there, frozen with indecision. I didn’t know what I was doing. I mean, spray-painting a letter wasn’t hard, but the idea of even trying to do it was frightening, because...because of what? Failing? How could I fail at spray-painting a letter? I mean, come on. And if I did somehow manage to be that ridiculous, Rider wouldn’t care. I shouldn’t care.
But I was scared of just trying.
A tremor curled down my arm, and I stopped thinking, stopped stressing. I popped the lid off and then walked forward. I knelt down and painted a giant, bubbly letter M in red.
There.
No big deal.
No one was injured or killed by my lame M. I looked up at Rider, and even though I couldn’t see his mouth, I thought he was smiling.
“So...” He added an I beside his R. “You’re looking at college, right?”
I started to nod as I drew an A, but forced myself to talk. “Yes. I want to...go to College Park, but I...”
“What?”
My brows knitted as I concentrated on what I was doing. “Carl and Rosa want me to go into...one of the health sciences, focus on research. Marquette—their daughter—was going to become a doctor like them.”
Rider was quiet as he worked slightly above me, to my left. “Is that what you want to do?”
“I...” I stopped, lowering the can as I stared at the first three letters of my name. I already knew the answer, but I thought about how Carl had laughed and outright dismissed my idea of going into social work. I didn’t want Rider to do the same. “I don’t...know.” I looked over at him. “Do you think that’s not what I want?”
He paused, his gaze finding mine. “I don’t know the answer to that, Mouse. You’re not the same girl I knew four years ago.”
Sometimes I felt like I was exactly the same girl.
He started spraying again and the heavy scent of paint puffed into the air. “As long as it’s what you’re passionate about, go for it.”
I was so not passionate about research, but I had a feeling I would be when it came to social work. I just didn’t want to disappoint Carl and Rosa, and I knew if I decided to do something like that, I would. But what else was I passionate about?
Rider talked about the different jobs he’d done, some of the shapes he had to paint. I’d laughed when he said he had to do a clown on a van once. That was about fifty levels of creepy. We filled in our letters. Rider got all fancy, zig-zagging designs throughout the letters. I tried it and it looked like blood splatter.
And I thought more about what I was passionate about. What screamed my name, and I realized as I finished filling in the Y, I had no answer. Everything about me was superficial, barely scratched the surface. I liked to read. I liked to carve soap. I liked to watch Project Runway. I didn’t love any of those things.
I didn’t want to write like Ainsley did. Carving soap was more of a weird hobby—my own version of meditation. And I couldn’t design a white cotton T-shirt to save my life.
Man, I was...kind of blank. Like the spots on the canvas that had just the tiniest drops of paint on it. There were things I liked, things that had caught my attention over the years, but for the most part, I was empty.
Over the past couple of years, I’d been slowly unpacking all the emotional baggage from the past, all the trauma and fear, but that mess had done more than just keep me silent, existing in the background. It had held me back from—from living. Wasn’t that what being passionate really was? Living? Except that fear was still there and because of it, I was this blank thing.
Oddly, a pressure lifted from my shoulders. I didn’t feel bad about this as I rose. I was basically a blank canvas and that wasn’t a bad thing, I decided in that moment, because that meant I...I could be whatever.
I could become anything.
I just had to do it.
But my name looked like a bloody marshmallow.
I grinned behind the mask.
“I like it.” Rider removed his mask as he walked over to the bench, dropping the can and mask there. “What do you think?”
Tugging the mask off over my head, I smiled at him. “I like it.” I glanced back at our names. “Thank you for bringing me here. I’m sure the party...is probably more interesting—”
“Not true. I can’t think of a place I’d rather be,” he said, twisting his long and lean body toward mine. “Honestly.”
My brows flew up. I wasn’t sure if I should believe him or not.
He picked up a cloth. “Show me your hands.”
I did. Two of my fingers had red smudges on them, much like his always seemed to. Taking my hand between his, he gently scrubbed at the paint. “I’m being serious, Mallory. I’m happy you’re here. I don’t care about a party.”
Staring up at him as he diligently cleaned my hand, I decided to let myself believe what he was saying. To take his words at face value. Pulling the cloth away, he inspected my hand. “You don’t see what I see.”