Total pages in book: 83
Estimated words: 75783 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 379(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 253(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75783 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 379(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 253(@300wpm)
“How are you doing?” Dawson asks, carefully maneuvering into the room and leaving the door open behind him.
I smile and nod, feeling how the ice in my chest seems to warm at how much he cares about what happened. “I’m doing a lot better now. I think I just needed some time to calm down.”
Dawson smiles at me and takes a tentative step forward. “Well, now that you’ve had time to calm down, I think it’s time you ate something.”
I’ve been so preoccupied with what happened in the living room and trying to channel that emotion into my art that I didn’t even realize it was as late as it is. It’s almost 9:00 p.m., and I haven’t eaten anything since this morning. At the mere mention of food, my stomach growls, agreeing with Dawson.
“I guess I lost track of time,” I say, standing up and setting my pencils down.
Dawson points at the desk behind me, clearly interested in my closed sketch pad. He walks around the room to stand beside me as he picks it up. I almost want to yank it out of his hand and throw it in the trash because I’m that nervous about what he might have to say. Instead, I bite my lip and watch his face nervously as he opens the cover and takes in my work.
“Did you draw all of these freehand?” Dawson asks. His eyebrows are wrinkled as he analyzes each drawing, and I can’t tell if it’s because he’s trying to think of something nice to say or if he is just admiring the work.
“Mostly, yes. I have some studies in there that I traced initially, but I feel like that’s cheating, so I tend to freehand it.” I wrap my arms around myself to try to soothe the panic starting to rise in my chest again.
Nobody sees my art. The last time I showed someone art was when I was a child, and I made a painting for my mom that she promised to put on the fridge. It was on the fridge for about two days, then she had a man come over, and she threw it away. He didn’t know that she had a kid, so she was hoping she could trap him long enough to fall in love with her before she told him about me. That drawing was discarded easily enough that I never even considered making her another drawing again.
But watching how Dawson looks at my work, I can’t help but wonder if I haven’t shown it to anyone because I haven’t wanted to or because nobody else cared. Maybe if my mom had asked to see what I was working on, I might have shown her. None of her boyfriends or husbands had any interest in getting to know me, so they didn’t care. It’s not like I have any friends either.
Dawson is the first person in years to have taken any kind of interest in my art. Somehow, that’s the most surprising thing about it. He’s made it clear from the moment we met that he doesn’t exactly like me. Sure, he wants to fuck me, but he said it himself. He doesn’t have to like me to want to fuck me.
“This is really impressive,” Dawson says, turning the sketch pad around to reveal a creature I drew. It’s inspired by Appalachian folklore and the kinds of monsters that Native Americans warn their families about. “I can see why you want to go to art school so badly. Do you mostly draw monsters?”
I’m almost caught off guard by his compliment and his desire to know more. It feels like it jumps out of nowhere, but after a moment, I force myself to answer the question and have a normal conversation with him about it.
“I’ve always been fascinated with monsters and folkloric creatures like that one,” I say, shrugging. “Most of them are just metaphors for men, and I think there’s something beautiful about taking our fears and creating these creatures. It’s beautiful and terrifying all the same.”
Dawson nods in agreement before flipping through the last pages of the sketch pad and setting it back down. When he’s done, he gestures to my door, and I follow him out and head to the kitchen. There’s a pot of food on the stove with savory scents that almost slap me in the face as soon as I walk out of my room. How did I not smell this cooking while I was in there?
Two plates are set up on the table, and Dawson gestures for me to take a seat as he brings them both to the kitchen to fill them.
“Once a week I have Maggie make me a pot roast before she goes to visit her grandkids for the weekend,” Dawson says from the kitchen. “I think I look forward to this more than anything else during the week.”