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  We never thought he’d actually be hiding something.

  Is he though? Is he hiding something just because he didn’t tell anyone he liked to paint?

  I’m about to shrug it off, turn the light out and ask Trell when he’s up, even though I have to admit that I snooped behind closed doors, but then a canvas at the back, covered up by others, but large enough that it’s still peeking out. I wade through the room and move the other canvases aside, exposing a huge, nearly mirror image, of me.

  I clap a hand over my mouth to stifle a scream. Coming face to face with your painted likeness when you least expect it is honestly more than a little creepy. It’s a little flattering too, I guess, and the guess part of that is seriously massive.

  I’ve never been overly good at math, but my brain does the equation real fast. A well-known artist sent Trell a painting after he gave her one. Not just any, but one he painted. He exchanged paintings with someone semi-famous. . That painting he gave me? Unsigned? He didn’t get it at a craft show. It’s too close in style to the other landscapes in the room. People work really hard to get their art out there. It doesn’t just seem like a part-time hobby that someone dabbles in here and there. Not when they know other artists. Not when they exchange work with them. Not when an entire room of their house is filled up with gorgeous, likely musem worthy art.

  Trell never told anyone about this. He never told me. He kept where he lived a secret. I thought it was weird before, but now it changes shape in my mind, morphing into an almost sinister secret. A thousand doubts and questions plague me. Any positive feeling I had about that painting of myself, about being a little impressed or flattered that he’d paint me at all, quickly fade. I want to keep them alive, but they’re like a little row boat, tossed about in an unforgiving ocean. Confusion clouds the sky and doubt lashes at me like torrential rain.

  I gave myself to Trell blindly. I trusted him blindly because I thought I could. I thought I knew him.

  What if I don’t know anything about him at all? What if nothing he’s ever told us is true? What if he doesn’t even work in finance? I have no idea why he’d lie to us or why he wouldn’t tell us about this. Bryn, Karsyn, and Jake have been Trell’s friends forever. They might bug him about being an artist, but not mercilessly. Kind of like they rib him about being so good looking, but at the end of the day, if someone else tried it, they wouldn’t hesitate to step up and tear them a new asshole.

  The minutes fly by and I’m growing more sure that Trell lied. How much, though? How many lies? This is just a small thing. Really, in the entire scheme of things. If he lied to us about all of it, what does that say about the big things? The things that truly matter? Do any of us really know him at all? I felt safe with him. I felt things that I’ve never felt before. I was scared to do it. To trust. To thrust myself into a world of sensation again. I found the courage, but if Trell lied about a few things, is he lying about everything?

  What if I’m just some weird muse for him? There’s a painting of me. . Flatering on one hand, but what if he just wanted to use me for inspiration? Maybe he never truly felt anything at all. Maybe I’m just some sick kind of muse that he’ll use and spit out after he’s done.

  Even though it’s irrational, since the larger, saner part of me doesn’t want to believe it, I’m also getting more pissed off with every passing second. I want to talk myself down, but talking isn’t exactly in the cards at the moment. Rage, born of the sharpest pain, crawls up my throat. It invades my chest, the hurt, the wounding, the brutal cuts, the betrayal. I don’t want to believe it’s true, but my heart aches with every beat.

  I know I’m not thinking clearly when I burst out of the room, like the walls are caving in, suffocating me. I find my clothes in the kitchen, wad them into a ball, and rush back to Trell’s room.

  My hand shakes so badly I can barely get the light to flick on. When I do, it floods the room. Trell doesn’t wake up, but when I smack my open palm into the wall, he flies upright in bed, dishevelled and wild, like I’m a robber standing in the doorway.

  He blinks at me, trying to clear sleep from his eyes. “Coz…what the heck?”

  “What the heck?” I hiss. I’m breathing hard. Violent. Every breath is like razorblades scraping into my lungs. My heart feels like a weapon in my chest, sending brutal shockwaves of pain, more broken glass, pumping through my veins. “Yeah. That’s my question too. If you don’t want me to leave in the next minute and never come back, you’re going to tell me the truth. All. Of. It.”

  It’s when his shoulders sag and his eyes drop down to the sheets he just threw off himself, the sheets still mercifully covering him from the waist down, that I know that I’m right.

  He lied to us. He lied to me. . I just need to know how many. How many lies. And how deep does that river run?

  Chapter 14

  Trell

  Shit. She found the room where I stuffed all the paintings. My studio, though it hardly looks it at the moment after I cleaned the house. I don’t have time to worry about any of that, why she was up or why she opened the door. I was going to tell her, and now I have to do some major damage control.

  “Coz, I was going to tell you.” I’m no longer half asleep, blinking at the vision in my t-shirt, looking pissed, arms crossed, leaning on the doorframe. Okay, I’m still blinking at her and she’s still a vision, but I’m no longer tired.

  “Don’t Coz me. You’ve lost that right. You lied to me! You used me!” Her face falls, but she schools it into a mask of steel. I’ve never seen her do that before. I’ve seen determination and just about everything else, but I’ve never seen Cozzie purposely shutter herself off.

  “I never used you,” I splutter. Where the heck is she coming up with this? “I didn’t tell anyone what I really do for a living because I wanted it to be private. I wasn’t lying to you all I just…I wanted to keep my privacy.”

  “You can’t have it both ways, Trell. You did lie to us. You didn’t just stretch the truth. If you don’t work in finance, then you lied to everyone.”

  “I used to. I used to work as a financial analyst, but after I made enough money, I wanted to concentrate on working on my art full time. I got lucky the past few years and met a few good people who got me some shows. I just…it never came up in conversation and I didn’t want to bring it up.”

  “Right. Because you’re a liar.”

  “I think everyone has a right to their privacy…” I’m losing any foothold I might have had, and it scares me as much as teetering over the edge of a real cliff. I can feel the ground opening up beneath me, getting ready to tumble me into the abyss.

  “Privacy? Bryn was your best friend! You never said anything to him! And what about me? We’ve all known each other since high school. You could have told anyone. How hard is it to bring it up in conversation and say, oh, by the way, I’m good at painting and I decided to pursue it? What’s so bad about that? We all love you. We would have supported you. Gone to your shows and everything.”

  “I was going to tell everyone. When I’d actually made it. Until then…”

  “So that’s why you never told anyone where you lived?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Because you thought they would find out the way I did?”

  “I don’t know.” She’s making it sound so logical and so stupid. Making it sound like I’m an idiot for wanting to keep my art to myself. It’s hard enough trying to make good art. Battling through the blocks and the ruined canvases and all the pressure I put on myself. I didn’t want my friends, as well meaning as they might have been, to make it worse.

  “You used me, Trell. You painted me! Is that a one-off? Is it sold? Did you make money off of me?”

  I frown at Cozzie. “No. Of course not. That painting was for me alone. No one else has seen it. You’re being a little irrational about all of this.”

  “Why did you lie to me, then? About that painting being a print?”

  “I was going to tell you. I was just t
rying to think of how. It’s not…my father always tells me that being an artist isn’t a real profession. He keeps asking me how long I’m going to keep doing this childish shit for before I go back to having a real job.”

  “I’m not your father,” Cozzie spits. “None of us are. We would have helped you. We never would have torn you down.”

  “I never used you.” I move on to the worst of her accusations, facing it head on. “I would never do that. You know me, Cozzie. You know that I’d never hurt you.”

  She sighs and actually rolls her eyes. Rolls her eyes. “How do you expect me to believe you? You’ve lied to us about everything. To me. How do I know anything you ever said is true? Maybe you’re blocked now. Maybe you needed a burst of inspiration and that was me for the moment. Maybe you saw me at my most vulnerable, confused time and you decided to make your move. To have this for a minute. A second. Are you going to drop me when it’s done? When you’ve had your fill and you’ve got our stupid paintings and move on to the next thing?”

  “No!” I storm out of bed, realize that I’m naked and I look like a fucking idiot, and stumble over to the dresser, where I rip out a pair of boxers and some jeans. I tug everything on. Cozzie, of course, studies the floor.

  She falters back when I approach the door, like she’s afraid that if I touch her, she’ll lose all her anger and actually listen to reason. She’s angry. I know that. I did lie to her and I know that she sees it as an act of betrayal. I wounded her by wounding her trust. If she’s not going to listen to me now, the only thing I can do is hope that she’ll calm down and listen to me when she’s not so angry. The heat of the moment isn’t exactly the best time to try and make sense out of anything.

  “Don’t. I’m not going to listen to anything you say now. It’s all tainted. All of this. It’s ruined.”

  “Don’t say that,” I beg. I stop, leaving a few feet of space between us. I feel like we’re on opposite ends of the universe. I feel like said universe is crumbling and I’m about to be plunged into the darkness I feared so much. “You’re upset. I get it. I did lie to you all by not telling you when I should have. It doesn’t matter what I wanted or when I was going to do it. I get that you’re mad, but don’t say that I used you, because that’s not true. I would never do that.”

  “I don’t know that though. I don’t even know you,” Cozzie hisses. Her eyes are huge and sparkling with tears. Her voice, though, is firm and unwavering.

  I thump a hand to my chest and it smacks against naked skin. I don’t even feel it. All I can feel is the agony of my heart being ground to dust.

  “You know me. You’re just upset. You’re not thinking clearly or being rational. You need to calm down and we can talk about this.”

  “No! I’m not talking to you! And we…we are done. You ruined this before it even had a chance to start. I’m not going to get into a relationship with someone who starts it off with lies. You think that I’ll ever be able to trust a thing that you say again?”

  “Trust how you feel, then! Don’t trust what I say. Trust what you feel! Does it feel like I would use you? That I’d want to make money off of your or just throw you under the bus for art’s sake? Do you truly feel that I’m a terrible person? Do you really believe that I’m not the same guy who would do anything for you? Who was always there for Bryn and for you when I could be? Does it feel like I feel nothing for you?”

  Cozzie’s eyes hit the floor again. I feel like she’s wavering. Like she’s cracking. I want to push her, to go to her and pull her into my arms and press her face against my bleeding heart, pierced from the sting of her arrows, but she anticipates my movement and she whirls.

  I realize her clothes are still in her hands. She storms down the hall, pulling her jeans on, hardly missing a beat. I trail after her, but she’s faster. She stops me in my tracks when she drops the remainder of her clothes and throws open the door to my studio. She stomps in and I wince. She can do whatever damage in there she wants. I just hate that what I viewed as one of my greatest treasures, one that I wanted to share with her, is what she views as ugly and dishonest.

  She rounds the bend a minute later, dragging the large panting I did of her. It’s almost a mirror likeness, one of my best works. Every detail of her face, her crinkly curls, the red blouse she was on, the slope of her shoulders and the grace of her neck—it’s all perfect. Not as perfect as she is, but probably as close as I’d ever get to capturing. Her eyes dance with life, like she has a secret no one knows. The tilt of her perfect full lips suggests that same mystery.

  I’d actually planned on showing it to her within the next couple days. I was going to tell her everything. And now I’ve been such an idiot that my chance is gone and all I have is this. This disaster, the shattered pieces of something that was going to be amazing, the ashes of my heart, and Cozzie’s rage and pain.

  “I’m taking this,” she barks at me. “Before you have a chance to sell it and I end up on some creep’s wall as their spank bank material.” Her nostrils flare and pain dances in her eyes. “Or was that the reason you painted it? Because you needed some inspiration of your own?” She lets out a bitter laugh. “Wait. I guess not, considering you had the real thing. I was stupid enough to fall for it, but not again. Not ever.” She takes off towards the door and I’m so stunned that it takes me nearly a minute to uproot my lead feet from the floor and follow.

  “Cozzie, wait!”

  She pauses near the door, but only to jam her boots on. She picks up the canvas again, dragging it across the floor and the threshold of the door she throws open and I wince at the damage it’s doing to the canvas. I spent over a hundred hours on that painting. Not that I fucking care at the moment, but I know she’s going to come to her senses and feel bad if she wrecks it. I don’t want her to feel regret. Pain. Anger. I want her to be happy.

  “I’m not going to tell anyone else, if that’s what you’re worried about. Your stupid secret is safe with me. I don’t want to see you, though. Don’t try texting or calling and don’t show up at my place. Don’t try to spin this with our friends. If I don’t say anything, you can’t either.”

  “Cozzie, just please calm down. We can talk. Tomorrow or the next day, or the next, when you’re thinking more—”

  “Clearly? I’m thinking clearly now. You toyed with my feelings. I realized something, Trell. That what I felt with you, I’d never felt it before. Not even with Bryn. I realized that with Bryn, we were never really right for each other and we spent a lot of years figuring that out. I don’t regret it. I don’t regret being with him. We had lots of good times and we were there for each other when it mattered. We fell out of love together the same we convinced ourselves we fell into it. He never would have hurt me like this.”

  “So you regret opening yourself up? That it?” I slam a hand to the doorframe, mostly to hold my pathetic ass upright, as Cozzie moves towards the concrete stairs, still scraping the canvas along. “You regret doing this with me? You think that those feelings were a lie? That I betrayed you? You’re being overly sensitive. You’re letting yourself get hurt because maybe you’re too scared to admit just how much you feel. You want out while it’s easy. You want a convenient excuse to leave me, to pin this on me, to wall up your heart and make yourself safe. You want to find someone like Bryn. Someone who doesn’t make you feel alive, and you want to settle for another decade.”

  Cozzie’s face crumples. Her lips wobble, because she’s not hard or cold like she’s pretending to be. For a second, hurt wins until the anger battles back, like a forest fire devouring fresh trees, consuming everything. She whirls, flips me off, grabs the canvas, and races down the driveway to her car.

  I don’t chase after her. We’ve both had our say. I definitely regret putting that last bit out there and opening my mouth again is a non-option. Instead, I stand in the doorway, trying to force the mush that I have for brains to actually work, but my heart is dead and cold and without it pumping, no blood flow is actually getting to the dam
n thing.

  I stand stock still as Cozzie thrusts my painting of her into the backseat of her car. She gets into the driver’s side and peels out, leaving actual black marks on my concrete pad in her haste to get away from me.

  I want to tell myself I’ll get her back. That I’ll come up with some showy, amazing, stunning, miraculous romantic gesture, but that shit is for movies. This is real. This is real life. Real life sucks. It fucking hurts. It destroys you.

  And then, when my legs are ready to give out and my heart has slowed down to non-existent, it comes to me. How I can win her back, or at least, how I can convince her not to hate me. I want Cozzie to love me, but if that’s not our destiny, I want her to be happy. I’d like to be around to see that happiness as a friend, even if it kills me to go back to the friend zone.

  I’ll need the help of my friends though, if they’re still my friends at all after all of this. I’ll tell them everything, and if they want to help me, they help me. If not, I’ll have to figure it out on my own.

  The point is, my brain actually came up with a viable idea.

  So that must mean that my heart is still beating after all.

  Chapter 15

  Cozzie

  Sometimes I can’t believe it’s been sixteen days since I last saw Trell.

  I keep looking at my phone. Wanting to pick it up and text him or call him. Tell him that I calmed down just like he said and that I’ve done a lot of thinking. I want to give him a chance to explain, but I don’t want to be the one gives in first. I feel bad that I flew off the handle. That I said some really crazy things. Things I really had no right to say. It made me look heartless and that’s the last thing I want to be. I just- I don’t want to be lied to. It’s the worst kind of rocky ground and I feel like the foundation of the burgeoning trust I had, so new and terrifying, was shattered and broken. I want Trell to call me. I told him not to contact me, so I know that’s a catch twenty-two. I just don’t know how to start the conversation we obviously need to have.