Chapter 11: The Night Before

The crew gave me my studio back on the sixteenth day, and I spent the last night before my surgery in it.

The north wall was plaster again. The big window was back, and the shelves my father had built stood empty and waiting.

I had no canvases yet. I had a drop cloth, a stool and a lamp, and I was painting a slab of gessoed board with the green I could never wash off.

Gavin came at nine with a bag of takeout and a bottle of water, because I wasn't allowed wine.

For sixteen days he had come every evening, sat on the far side of the room and not touched me.

"You haven't eaten," he said.

"I'm busy."

"You're always busy."

"Sit down, Gavin."

He sat on the daybed he'd had carried in that morning, and he watched me paint.

I worked for an hour with my back to him.

I knew the exact moment he stopped pretending to look at his phone.

"Give me your hand," I said.

"Which one?"

"The right."

He crossed the room and held it out.

I took it in both of mine and turned it palm down under the lamp, with the pale hook scar on the thumb.

I dipped a brush in green.

"What are you doing?"

"Drawing you," I said. "For once, you're going to hold still."

I painted a line from his knuckle down to his wrist.

His breath came short.

I painted another.

"Cassandra."

"Quiet."

I painted a third, and then I lifted his hand and kissed the inside of his wrist, where the paint wasn't.

His whole arm went tight.

"If you do that again," he said hoarsely, "I'm not going to be able to be good."

"Who asked you to be good?"

"You have surgery in fourteen hours."

"I know exactly when I have surgery." I looked up at him. "Tomorrow they open me up. Tonight, I want you."

His eyes darkened.

"If they're wrong about it..."

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