I could feel myself losing. In advance.
I had a bad feeling. I took a picture of the portrait so far and texted it to Sue for her professional opinion.
Her reply was immediate: Nope. Creepy.
Salvageable? I texted back.
Not a chance.
“I don’t think the grid is working,” I said to Joe.
Joe shrugged. “Okay. What’s next?”
I consulted my list of ideas. “Let’s turn you upside down.”
So that was our next attempt. Joe lay on the sofa, hanging his head backward over the arm, and I turned the canvas upside down and tried to sketch him like that.
Sue’s response to this one was a simple two words: Police sketch.
So we moved down the list. I tried having him describe his face to me and painting with my back to him.
Maybe the third time would be the charm.
But no.
Sue’s final response was the worst of all: Serial killer.
Okay.
We were done here.
I set my brush down and took a second to rub the kinks out of my hand. Had I ever cramped up while painting before?
Never.
Joe must have been cramping up, too, somehow. Because he watched me working on my hands for a minute, then looked up decisively and said, “I think I need a break.”
We’d been at it since five o’clock, and now it was ten.
“Oh,” I said. “Sure. Of course.”
He started walking toward my door, and when I didn’t follow, he turned back to wave me in his direction.
By break, I thought he meant, you know, a turn about the room or something. “Are we … going somewhere?”
“We need to get some air.”
* * *
OUTSIDE, WE STROLLED for a bit.
Then Joe asked, “Who have you been texting all night?”
Was there any way in hell I’d be telling Joe that I had no ability to judge if my own portraits were any good?
No.
“Is it your friend who eloped?”
“I’m just getting her opinions,” I said. “On the portraits.”
“You’re texting her pictures?”
“Yep.”
“Can I see?”
“See what?”
“The portraits.”
I frowned at him, like he was crazy. “Of course not.” We’d already agreed.
Just then, another text came in from Sue. I glanced down to check it—just as Joe leaned over to peek.
“Hey!” I protested, hiding the phone behind my back.
But he tried to reach around me, all playful.
“Nope,” I said, race-walking away. He was not seeing those portraits.
Now he was chasing me a little. “Your friend gets to see them, and she abandoned you for Canada.”
“She didn’t abandon me, she was kidnapped,” I said, moving toward a patch of grass.
What was happening here? It goes without saying that Joe trying to steal my phone was much more fun than Parker trying to steal my phone.
But did he really care about seeing the portraits? Or did he just want to blow off some steam and roughhouse? He hadn’t seemed to care at all earlier—but maybe he was just … looking for a reason to run around outside? Flirting, even?
Joe swiped at my phone again, managing to pull me into a hug-like situation as he did—and this time, he grabbed it.
I wasn’t cleared for running, so I knew I couldn’t chase him.
Instead, I threw my foot out and tripped him.
He hit the grass with an “oof,” and then, before he could scramble off and run away, I sat on him and started tickling him.
It worked. Joe, despite his claims, was highly ticklish. He started laughing so hard, he fully dropped the phone. And it was so fun to see his reaction that even after I’d grabbed it and stuffed it deep into my pocket, I went back to the tickling.
What a strange thing to do. Had I ever tickled anyone in adult life?
Definitely never. But it felt somehow like the only thing to do.
Turns out, it was fun.
“We agreed,” I said, like I had to punish him with tickling now because he’d broken the rules. “You weren’t going to look at the portraits until I was ready. Right?” I tickled some more. “Right?”
“Fine,” Joe finally said, breathless. “Right. I give up! Peace!”
I sat back, out of breath, and then he sat up, also out of breath.
We sat companionably side by side for a minute. That whole thing had been a lot more playful than either of us had expected.
And more suggestive.
Joe was just standing to help me up when we heard a woman’s voice say, “You always were ticklish.”