Just You

Paint splattered the canvas, bringing the infinite white into a world of vibrant color. A strand of hair fell in the painter's face, earning a sigh of agitation, and she pushed it back with a paint-splattered hand.

Noon had only just passed and already the sun was becoming too hot to paint in, the center of town becoming too loud to focus in, the air a constant subject of humidity and floating dust.

The painter put the end of the brush in her mouth while she redid the messy bun her glossy auburn hair rested in. A few disobedient curls fell her in olive-toned face anyway and she had taught herself to paint around the distraction, not matter how annoyed it may be.

The thoughts of gaining enough money from these plain tourist portraits slid through the young woman's mind as another splash of blue was added to the canvas. A life beyond the small stool she occupied in the center of town, a life built past the small cottage she rented on the edge of the city.

An image of her own art studio forced her work harder than ever on the portrait in front of her. One wall, she thought restlessly, would be purely glass, so onlookers can watch me work and study the canvases in the window. The other walls would be brick, well one would. The other two, or three, I would paint with a specific landscape or tourist attraction of sorts.

"I'm not paying you to daydream," the impatient customer complained for at least the third time in the short fifteen minutes they had been sitting there.

The painter resisted the urge to roll her soft green eyes and finished the portrait as quickly as possible. The costumer huffed something that sounded very close to "Finally..." before extracting the exact amount of money due toward the hard-working young painter.

Handing another piece of art over with a very cheap price, the painter stored the money in her cookie tin that stayed under her right foot, her Converse tapping incessantly against the cover while she waited for another patron.

Over the year or two she had painting in the middle of the town, there's an obvious dent in the cover now, the exact size of the ball of her foot. The painter smiled at passer-bys, hoping the friendly gesture would earn another painting and another royalty to keep in the still sweet-smelling cookie tin.

Without the painter even noticing, too enveloped in deciding what to paint on her art studio walls, a young man takes a seat across from the wooden easel. He lets out a polite cough, alerting the oblivious woman of his presence and she jumps, startled and practically falling out of her stool. "Oh, hi," she says timidly, automatically hiding her face with another blank canvas.

She sticks her head out to the side for a second, taking in the man sitting casually in the seat. His sandy hair had streaks of darker brown in it, along with a porcelain complexion sprinkled with faint freckles across the bridge of his nose. He smiles a heartbreaking smile at her, a dimple denting his right cheek only and the action makes butterflies erupt in his stomach.

A scarlet blush dancing across her cheeks, she squints her eyes and imagines his face against the pale canvas. It begged for the brush to draw the color across it, it begged to become something other than this bland thing.

She leaned forward, amount to touch the tip of the brush to the paper when the customer's stool shifted and squeaked. When the painter looked up, the patron sat just so the canvas was no longer blocking the beautiful girl's face.

He was intrigued by this girl, this painter who decided to hide her timid and yet somehow determined face behind her work. He had never quite seen a girl's eyes so fierce and soft, or hair so caught between red and brown. This girl seemed to be everything in between, not black or white, not night or day, but stuck right in the middle, waiting that one thing to enable her to break free from no-man's land.

The relaxed customer fought for something to say to the beautiful, shy painter, but no coherent words came to his lips. The girl watched him fight this battle, his jaw muscles clenching and lips twitching up. "Hi." His voice flew the air toward her, breaking through the icy silence between them. The painted attempted to fight the way this one word made her heart stutter and instead focused on the painting in front of her. She didn't say anything and the costumer sighed. "Usually when someone greets you, you say something back."

The painter slides cautious eyes toward the man and he smiled gently at her. "I agree, but I already said hello, so it would be redundant, wouldn't it?"

He laughs and the sound makes the painter's usually steady hand shake. "You are quite right."

A small smile makes its way onto the girl's already blushing face, and the boy enjoys the sight of it, making a silent pact to himself to keep her smiling. "What's your favorite color?"

"Who says I have a favorite?" The artist shoots back, fighting and failing to keep the grin off her face.

"Why do you always avoid the question?"

The young woman rolls her green eyes. "Aqua."

This throws the costumer off and he leans forward, elbows on his knees. "Hold up, what?"

"That's my favorite color." The painter laughs and dabs at the blue on her palette for his bright blue eyes. "Conversations with me require you to keep up."

The man smiles brightly and relaxes back in the seat, "I guess so."

Silence falls around them, and suddenly this isn't enough for the painter. "What's your favorite color?"

The patron, rests her foot on his other knee and thinks this over, upturning his face to the sky.

"Keep your head straight forward, looking right at me," the woman says out of habit, eyes intent on the canvas slowly bursting with the image of the attractive man.

She looks back at him, noticing how there's a playful expression on face while he stares deeply back at her. Her heart slam-bangs against her chest, a blush decorating her cheeks again, forcing her to turn back to the canvas immediately.

"Blue."

Distracted, the painter crushes her eyebrows together in confusion and the man finds this adorable. "What?" She responds, afraid to look away from her canvas.

"My favorite color, blue." There's a measured pause before he says, "Conversations with me require you to keep up."

The young lady laughs and the sound makes the customer watch the girl with adoration and fascination. "Let's get outta here."

The painter looks up, startled, thousands of thoughts rushing through her mind, "What?"

"Let's get break out of this town, take whatever exit we want on the highway, break free from whatever we need to."

The girl points toward the little art station she has set up, "But I can't just leave this stuff --."

"Of course you can. You can do anything." The man leans forward on his elbows again, his face so dangerously close to hers, minty breath brushing across her face like it's its own canvas. "It's whether you want to. Whether you want to get out of this plain, old town and do what you want with your life."

His blue eyes captivated hers while she weighed her options. She could get out of here with the money collecting in that cookie tin, get another job, and open that studio she's been dreaming about.

She could stay here, suffocating under her own self-pity with portrait after portrait of people who know exactly who they are already, who aren't stuck in the gray zone like she is.

Surprising herself, she stands up, grabbing her cookie tin and shoving it in her tote bag hanging on the back of her stool. The costumer smiles and takes her hand, leading her away the cage she's been locked in for as long as she can remember.

Glancing back quickly at the half-finished canvas, the painter sees the man, eyes staring back at them, joy and a sort of love? looking back at her. She smiles, slinging her bag tighter over her shoulder.

What she was doing right now was probably stupid on so many levels. It was juvenile, completely reckless. But it felt so right, especially with this man's hand clasped in hers.

She was waiting for the moment to break free from this place, and this was it.

So she seized it.