"Okay I'm done."
His voice an alarm setting off my body into a jolt of energy.
I held my shirt and bra up to my chest and crawled up from the bed. Our eyes locked a minute while I adjusted my arms. My feet took me away from the moment and in front of the hallway mirror. The colors and details soaked into my vision. His art was completely another dimension. He had painted my back to where it looked like stained glass. It was one of the windows you had in a traditional white church, one that took you away in the middle of a boring lesson. But it wasn't a typical bible story or symbol, it was me painted as an angel. It was the best painting I had ever seen and it was on my skin. My heart heated up.
"This looks so sick Austin!"
I pushed out a shaky breath. My best efforts to push out my enthusiasm didn't seem to sound so real and honest in my head.
He stepped out of the room and let his reflection meet me in the mirror. Both of us watched eachother's movements. His fingerprints were stained with paint.
"What's your biggest insecurity?" His face scrunched and unscrunched from a serious expression. It took me a second to notice that he had found a clear plastic jug filled with chocolate milk. He lifted it to his face and tilted his neck back to take a huge gulp of it.
That was a random question. Did he mean it offensively?? Maybe I'm just paranoid.
I couldn't seem to pluck a thought from the files of my brain. I knew my flaws of course. They were constantly being pointed out by my worst critic- myself. But today I wasn't insecure about them. There's a difference. He made me forget about them, like them even. Maybe because he makes me realize nobody is going to care how you look if you are having a good conversation. I spent too much time evaluating my looks to where I couldn't even get a personality out of myself.
"Dunno. You?"
I could picture him giving out a wise sentence, or replying the same as me. He taught me that lesson after all.
"Well I could be more buff. My hair seems to always be greasy as fuck," He chuckled silently at himself as if he were pathetic. I didn't laugh back. It was serious to me. How could he hate himself? His head swiveled my way to stare. The corners of his smile tucked away into a frown. He turned back to the reflection looking back at him.
"I could go on. But I could understand why you don't have any. You're practically perfect." Austin's tongue pushed past his lips to wet them.
"I'm far from it, trust me."
"But isn't that a cycle that were all expectant to hear? The one who everyone thinks might as well be a doll don't think they're perfect. When it's obvious that they are."
He dropped his back to the ground like a bodybuilder giving the last rep on a heavy weight. The wall felt like sandpaper against my back when I did the same, plopping my body right beside his. My fingers almost accidentally let go of my shirt. We had both gotten over the fact that I was braless. I was pretty comfortable around him now that the feeling of something burning and the adrenaline rushes were gone. I guess I thought it was pretty daring to be with him alone- besides whatever Garrett was doing downstairs. Both of our eyes gazed down the dark abyss of staircase. It was kind of creepy, but that didn't bother me at all.
"I guess when we are all stuck in our own bodies we get pretty tired of them."
That was a good response. I never thought about it that way until I had randomly blurted it out, as if I wasn't thinking out of my own brain.
"Yeah, we know ourselves too well."
From the way his voice sounded, it felt like he had already beat me to the punch in looking for those thoughts himself.
