“If I’d known you were such a comedy fan, I would’ve brought you to the Comedy Cellar instead.”
“It was a lack of foresight on your part, but perhaps next time,” I quipped, implying there would be a next time.
My stupid, overly hormonal heart thumped at the prospect.
Kai and I hadn’t discussed our almost-kiss yet. After three weeks, what happened in the library seemed like a fever dream, the product of exhaustion and fantasies bleeding into real life. Looking at him now, so rigid and proper in his four-thousand-dollar coat, it was hard to imagine him ever losing control like that.
“Perhaps.” Kai eyed the warehouse’s black metal front door like it was infested with cholera.
Someone had spray-painted three giant boobs on it, along with the word Titz in fluorescent yellow.
“How charming.”
“It is.” I shrugged off my disappointment at his lack of response to my next time remark and typed the security code into the keypad. A second later, the door buzzed open. “You know what they say.
Third boob’s the charm.”
Kai coughed into his fist. If I didn’t know better, I could’ve sworn he was hiding a laugh.
The door shut with a clang behind us. We walked down the dimly lit hall and took the elevator up to the top floor, where a woman with blue pigtails and black lipstick sat on a stool by the entrance.
There were no rooms in the building; each floor was comprised of one giant, loft-like space, and she looked inordinately small against the cavernous backdrop.
She glanced up from her sketch pad long enough to check our IDs and my membership card before waving us past.
The studio was empty save for the woman at the door and a skinny, goateed blond rubbing blue paint over his torso like it was baby oil. Everyone was probably downstairs, but I wanted to ease Kai in before I threw him into the deep end.
He stopped at the edge of the tarp covering the gray concrete floor. A temporary wooden wall stood in the middle of the room, covered with white floating canvases and paint-filled balloons hung on push pins. Detachable tabs locked the canvases in place. Next to the wall, a rolling bar cart held drinking glasses, several bottles of clear alcohol, and a jar brimming with folded slips of paper.
Kai’s eyes moved from the balloons to the bar to the blond artist, who was now doing yoga stretches on his corner of the tarp. Quite a sight, considering he wore nothing except paint and a pair of loose-hanging shorts.
A faint grimace crossed Kai’s face when the blond shifted into a killer praying mantis pose.
“Isabella.”
“Yes?” I said brightly.
“What, exactly, did you bring us to?”
“A creative community! It’s like one of those paint and wine places, but better.” I gestured at the wall, where bright trails of paint snaked over a few of the canvases and dripped onto the tarp. “Have you ever watched The Princess Diaries? With Anne Hathaway? There’s this scene with Mia and her mom after she finds out she’s actually a princess…”
He stared at me.
“Never mind. The point is, this is very similar to what they did in the movie. Your goal is to puncture those balloons with a dart so the paint spills onto the canvas and creates an abstract piece of art. If you miss, you have to pick a slip of paper from that jar and answer the question truthfully or take a shot of Violet’s Special Moonshine. Violet is the owner of the studio,” I clarified. “Her moonshine is no joke. The last time someone took more than three shots, they ended up streaking across Bushwick and singing the national anthem at the top of their lungs. Got arrested for indecent exposure, but their boss’s daughter’s best friend bailed him out because they were having an affair—”
“Isabella,” Kai said again.
“Hmm?”
“Unnecessary detail.”
Fair enough. Not everyone found the sex lives of random New Yorkers as interesting as I did.
Maybe because they were having sex and not confined to hearing about it through friends and strangers.
To his credit, Kai didn’t immediately turn and walk out the door at the prospect of throwing darts at balloons all night. Instead, he averted his gaze from the artist yogi, took off his coat, and draped it over a nearby chair.
An irritating wisp of relief curled through me. I shouldn’t care whether he stayed. I didn’t enjoy his company that much.
I placed my coat over his and retrieved two smocks from the hooks lining the wall on our right.
“How did you find out about this place?” Kai rolled up his sleeves and accepted the smock I handed him.
I darted a glance at his forearms. Tanned, muscled, corded with sexy veins and a light smattering of dark hair…
An electric shiver ghosted down my spine before I yanked my eyes away. New Isabella does not drool over random men’s forearms. No matter how hot they are.
Kai lifted a brow, and I remembered belatedly that he’d asked a question.
“My brother Felix told me about it.” I removed my heels and fastened the smock around me, all the while keeping my gaze planted on the canvases. It was safer that way. “He’s an artist, and he likes to come here when he’s feeling stuck. He says being surrounded by other creatives in a low-stakes environment helps jog ideas loose.” Felix’s method for getting unstuck had never worked for me, but I liked how fun the exercise was. Sometimes I paired up with another person for the questions part; other times, I was content with just throwing darts. “He lives in L.A., but he visits New York often and knows all the underground places.”
“An artist. A writer. Creative family.” Kai’s warmth brushed my side as he came up beside me.
Even in an ugly black smock, he looked aristocratic, like a prince among commoners.
He plucked a dart from the nearby tray and handed it to me.
I took it gingerly. Our hands didn’t touch, but my palm tingled like they had. “That’s only me and Felix,” I said. “The rest of my brothers aren’t into the arts. Gabriel, the oldest, runs our family business. Romero is an engineer, and Miguel teaches poli sci at Berkeley.” A wry smile. “A lot of Asian families push their children into law, medicine, or engineering, but my parents were big on us doing what we wanted as long as it’s not illegal or unethical. Habulin mo ang iyong mga pangarap.
Chase your dreams. Our family motto.”
I left out the part about us having to achieve said dreams by age thirty due to a certain written clause. It was my parents’ way of ensuring we didn’t jump from passion to passion because we couldn’t make up our minds. The way I had for the past oh, ten years.
If we didn’t settle into a career path by thirty, then…
I swallowed the lump of unease in my throat. It’ll be fine. I had time. If there was one thing that motivated me more than the prospect of money, fame, and success, it was the chance to prove my brother wrong.
“Are you?” Kai asked.
“What?”
“Chasing your dreams.”
Of course. The answer sat on the tip of my tongue, but something prevented me from saying it out loud.
My eyes met Kai’s for a single, knowing beat before I looked away. My heart rattled behind my ribcage, but I tried my best to ignore it. Instead, I focused on a balloon, aimed, and threw my dart as hard as I could. It glanced harmlessly off the wood.