Oct 2014

Jo could see it so clearly, the red of the walls already cast a hue onto the occupants, whether the source of light was the window or the dingy hanging bulb over head. Harry would like red too.

She was red. That was for sure. If she had a palette and brush in her hand she would be mixing a little brown into her crimson to dull the orange and bring the color's brightness down to the hue of her desire. She imagined it would be deep and saturated, like Bordeaux or Syrah. She liked to drink Syrah when she was painting through upset. So maybe Boudreaux if she was painting out desire. Jo liked to have her wine accompany her mood. Like white with fish and red with steak.

He looked like a three course meal in front of her.

In her mind's eye it wasn't unrequited or unmet, the desire that pulsed up and through when he answered the door to his apartment in his current state. She was often on a low simmer for him, had been since his metamorphosis. It's power today though was shocking, like someone knocking you on the chin, but with brass knuckles. Jo's head is reeling and whirring from the blow. Her imagination is fired. And in her head Harry feels it too. Feels her and her ache and her thrust. So, there would be no preamble, which would never happen, clearly. Men wanted their tit and a blow job usually before they went for that tat. But in her fantastical reimagining of her first time in Harry's home studio, there was no tit. He just pulled her down to the flat table, shoved supplies to the side, pushed the flowy fabric of her long skirt up to her waist and grinned at her lack of underwear. She didn't wear them as a rule, but how would he know that? It would give him immediate access and his long stare would make her the opposite of self conscious, because he poured over her form the way he did the Van Gogh at the museum last week.

In the museum, he'd been entranced by the thickness of the brush strokes. "They are so full of emotion! I can feel this!" He'd been the most excited student there with her and she once again saw those flames around his head, his spark. Jo knew then that she needed to see his current art. He had been a bit of a prodigy as a teenager, but he told her that first day in her office that he had been painting voraciously ever since then. And all the sparks and ignition of ideas she could see coming out of his ears made her excited. As much as the trip to London was gassing up his artistic engine, she knew a trip to his studio would fill up her tank too.

She was wet, had been from anticipation before getting here and stayed that way when he answered the door in a pair of threadbare gray jeans and a half buttoned plaid. He'd pushed his hair back with a hand and Jo thrilled at all the tattoos on the underside of his arm where his sleeve was rolled. Jo had to stop herself from reaching forward and keeping his elbow pointing up so she could look at them all. For a boy obsessed with color, she wanted to ask why only one or two tattoos had pigment at all.

She kept her hands to herself, a little confused by the urges she felt, like seeing Zoe reach for a flame at her first bonfire or Ethan weep for the girl least interested. But seeing the art on his body was exciting and she hadn't even seen any of his creations yet. Jo couldn't imagine how she'd put a cork back in now that she has seen him in his place of revelation. Not that there was an adequate seal on her simmering need since he'd walked out of his cocoon into her house what was now years ago.

He's called her to come over, they had spoken in her office recently and arranged for a time for her to see his studio. But two days later and two before the appointed time, her phone had rung with a frantic, rambling H on the other line.

His mood was contagious, and her body had translated it into a different energy.

Harry pushed the door closed behind her and began talking really fast. Especially for him. He usually had a slow cadence to his words and he carefully placed each, like his thoughts were a puzzle and he had to find where the edges matched. It made you listen, and emphasized the low thick sounds he made.

There was none of that now, he was in a fit of inspiration, and its fire matched the one Zoe had last night when Jo had sliced her cheese instead of giving her the whole block to chew on.

"Jo, I mean Professor Smith," that makes her a little slicker, too. Her own name on his tongue and her title was even more titillating. His excitement was palpable, pulmonary, beating out of him and into her. His excitement was not carnal at all, but artistic, but Jo's was definitely centered in her core, not in her imagination. Though that is firing too. And her twin drives have melded like an alloy for her in his presence, art and act merged in his red painted forge.

She was thinking she couldn't meet him here again when she realized he was still talking.

"I found her last night. Haven't slept I've been so busy defining her edges. That's why I had to call you, though I'm not exactly ready I couldn't wait.. Sorry 'bout that, not being ready, studio is a mess," and he led her into what she assumed was meant to be a second bedroom with bright red walls. It was covered in canvases, some blank, but mostly covered in oils and acrylics, stacked around and against most of the walls, three and four deep. The piece he immediately went to was giant, which was why she had to come to his apartment to see it, he couldn't bring it to her. It was a blended landscape of golden hills. Jo actually kind of recognized the geographical forms, but the colors were wildly washed out for verdant England. "But, I've always done landscapes, think you may remember that, it's what I started with. I've tried before, to draw people - my mum and Gem, even Ethan once. I almost had Zoe, but she just turned into a wave, think she was gonna be a mermaid anyway, though those are vaguely humanoid in shape." He shrugged and kept walking to the far right quadrant of the painting. He was still excitedly talking and picked up a pencil, went right back into what she imagined he had been doing when she knocked.

Jo scanned him, his bare feet with a smudge of charcoal on the right heel and a bit of red pigment on his big left toe were sensual and lurid to her. His black encased legs were sexy even at the ankles and his thighs, when her tracing gaze reached them, reminded her of one of Michelangelo's subjects, thick and with obvious definition even through the denim. His shirt covered his ass, thankfully -she wasn't sure she could take that - and was loose over his abdomen and he was faced away so she couldn't see the bare skin. Only the tattoos on his nearly sleeved left arm and it's almost bare twin were exposed. But the pull of the fabric across his broad upper back made her think of a tree. Sprawling and wide, full of life giving strength. Self sustaining and capable of holding weight.

Could he hold her weight? If Jo pressed herself to him, literally came onto him. Would he heft her up onto his hips and take her down before he took her. She couldn't even listen to him talk, heard thedull roar of her own blood rushing to needy areas instead of his voice. Unless she concentrated on his low down rumble.

And when she did.

Well, Jo wanted to spread herself on the low table, offer herself as a meal to him there. She imagined the light in the red room as that deep wine red again and him leaving her shirt on, not bothering to strip her bare up top at all. Hungry for the pulsing center of life on her own body. Her cunt may not carry out photosynthesis, but it certainly had made and brought forth existence. Worthy of a feast, and to be feasted on.

Jo imagined the open purse of his mouth around her. Her thighs formed a cradle for his head. The urge to rock took her and she squirmed on the couch while he sketched for a minute. She should have been looking around his studio, but she could only watch him work and imagine him at other work. A man's work. The curls of his head, especially the ringlet on the left side and the swoop over his forehead, made her want to pull them up to run her fingers through while she moaned and moaned. Or the bun, god she wanted to used the bun as a handle. The first time he had walked into class with it she had tilted her head like a curious dog. She wasn't sure she liked it. Now she was. She wanted to grip it, and moan. She wanted to say his name.

"Har, Har-ry?" God, the ache and catch in the syllable break, it sounded like driving down a rutted road to a home you never thought you'd be allowed go back to. He must've heard it. Because he stopped sketching and his back stiffened. She watched his chest pick up in pace and he put down the pencil, she couldn't see what his hand did after that, but it was something hidden near his midsection and she heard him suck in a breath before he let his head fall for just a second. Then he squared up, like a fighter entering the final round. He turned to her. And the look on his face? The look there was an open valley after a long climb.

His eyes, what color were his eyes?

Jo got up abruptly.

Her intention was twofold. The one set by her fantasy about red light specials on tables was to get close enough to determine the exact color of his eyes,  the texture of his hair, and the taste of his lips, was what she desperately wanted.

But a need had asserted itself. And she couldn't push him against the wall and wrap a leg around his strong thigh or slim waist. She wouldn't. She could obey the need though. So Jo gestured to his supplies and he nodded at her, confused. She started mixing on a palette and set herself an easel adjacent to his elbow, with enough space for comfort. Once she had the green and blues to choose from she turned to him and gestured at his work.

"Do you see her too, Jo?" His voice sounded like an old engine starting cold and she dreamed of pressing him against the canvas in front of them, her front to his back, and she took his hand and put his pencil back to the top of her head. Tracing over the anterior of her body. Whoever she was, that was what she wanted to do.

She saw her, Jo definitely saw her.

She wanted to trace her with him and then let Harry trace her. If he wanted of course. God, she'd never wanted an attraction to be two sided and unrequited at the same time. If he was just a daydream, someone who she wanted and didn't see her, it would be loads easier. If he felt it, the pulsing blood beneath her skin, and in her fluids, then it was worse. If it beat beneath his breastbone to the same rhythm, it would be so much harder. Because they could not, would not. They could not fuck on a plane, or on a train, or against the art frame.

So she painted

Jo had painted before in this mood, but it's oncoming had taken her unawares. It's connection to this place, Harry's studio, was revelatory to her, a ripping open of all seven of her seals.

It could not just be the place, it had to be the company. But, if she couldn't act on it, mark him with her passion and splash him with all the colors in her head, she would paint it on a canvas. Just like she had when she was sixteen and felt like a burden to her mother and an accessory to her father. Thank god Jo was pretty, or they both may have had even less use for her.

She had painted through her first love. As unsuitable as they come, co-dependent and a gaslighting nightmare. But he wanted her and she wanted that.

So Jo made art and they made Ethan.

She painted through the decision to leave him. Charlie may have wanted her in a way even her parents didn't, but the baby, it needed her. And Charlie was not in a place to be a dad. She painted the heartbreak and hope.

Then Jo did not paint for ages. Because she created other things, a life inside her and a home for her and Ethan and a career to clothe and feed him.

Jo went back to painting her feelings when he got too old to need her relentlessly. She painted the pain of his burgeoning independence. The pride too.

That was when she taught Harry to paint.

Then Jo went through another fallow period while she created Zoe.

But she had picked up her brush again, painted out her feelings when she realized she once again lost the man but kept the baby.

Jo had sat up many nights wondering if her picker was broken. She could see the downfall of her first relationship clearly. It was doomed from the start because it was a product of her home life, which she had done her best to work through in therapy later. Charlie loved her, but only if she could love him above all else, and let him be the same. He required co-dependence and she already felt stifled. Jo was growing out of him. He started to become very controlling before she got pregnant, as her world got bigger at university and his got smaller at the auto shop. She'dended it when she had a squirming reason to.

There had been nobody significant while Ethan was growing. She didn't have time for it. She had a university friend that she met for the occasional interlude when she needed it. Jo went out on random set ups and finally resorted to tinder when Ethan was a teenager, just to scratch her itches. They were usually infrequent and mostly controllable, but sex was an appetite like any other and healthy. So when she had to, she had it, responsibly, like a drink on a Friday night.

It was never an undeniable need like they talked about in books. Definitely not with Colin, though she thought they did well enough in the bedroom. That relationship didn't even require her therapist to figure out. He was older than her and had never had to share his life or the spotlight. If marriage was a partnership, he only wanted a junior to his senior. But he had looked so good on paper and, if she was honest, Jo was desperate for another baby before her time ran out. They had hit fast forward and because Colin was desperate for an approximation of normal, the full package, pretty educated wife, little baby, he would deal with the stepson.

He'd hid that bit, his indifference to Ethan, until he lived with them. That was the beginning of the end. When Jo made it clear she was also an adult who was capable of running their life, had run her own and molded her son's, so she got a say, thank you very much, that was another nail into the coffin. The box was sealed up tight when his only interest in the forthcoming Zoe was getting it her on Jo and having sonograms to share, though he never witnessed one.

A show, Colin wanted a show.

So that was Jo's second strike. She was determined that her next step up to the plate was going to be a home run.

Which was why, no matter how much every fiber of her being was telling her to push Harry up against the red walls of his studio and paint them black and blue and every hue of pink, she was not going to.

There was no way that choosing him was the right choice. He was wrong on paper, and she was wrong for him and he needed to find a different woman, search for her and draw her out like the one in his painting. Anybody would be more suitable for him that his best mate's mum, who was twice his age, had a young child, and was his professor and senior advisor to boot. No matter how red the pulse of her feelings were, she knew they were wrong.

Her strokes over the middle of the canvas were rough, thick, and wide. Jo felt like she might as well be finger painting with all the finesse she seemed to be able to show. She didn't even like color blocking, didn't understand the fuss about Rothko. And even with the wide swath of green on top and blue below, the mix between was still the wrong color.

Abstraction wasn't her strong suit, unless they were figures. Jo sat back to frown at her painting.

Harry seemed to sense her movement and paused too. "That's a lovely color there, Professor Smith." It seemed odd to be formal now that she had sat with him painting for over an hour and daydreamed about him giving her orgasms on his table. Thank God he couldn't read her mind or feel her moods! "What do you call it?"

"Silt." Jo said, "but it's not right. The shade is....." She peered closer. "Too blue?"

"What exactly are you trying to paint?" Harry asked. And looked back to his own work with a smug smile before going to get black to make his woman permanent. He knew what he was trying to paint.

"I dunno. Not sure what I'm going for. Just know this isn't right."

Another hour of creative silence later, Jo looked up at Harry's work and sighed happily. He was so good.

"Your woman is lovely Harry! I can definitely see her." He looked back at her comment and held her gaze.

"Me too."