Now he stared at yet another sketch he had drawn of her, this one of them sitting on the beach, waves crashing before them, moon shining down on them. They were staring at the ocean, cuddling together with a blanket wrapped around their shoulders.
He closed his sketchbook and left it on the kitchen table before opening the refrigerator. Leftover Rice-a-roni, pizza from the previous week, and hot dogs were about the only things there. He needed Michelle there. She always did the grocery shopping, and she always knew what to pick out, too. He never even had to tell her. She always got the double fudge cookies they both loved, she knew the right brands of ice cream and the right flavors to get, and she never got the bad kind of macaroni and cheese. God, how he missed her! He needed to get out of the house.
“Maybe I can go get some food or something,” he said aloud, to no one in particular. With that, he went out to the garage and took off in his Prowler.
Later, another car pulled into the driveway. It was Michelle’s piece of junk old blue Geo Metro. She got out of the car and went inside, knowing Nick was not there. His car was gone, so he was probably at Brian’s or something. He certainly wouldn’t have lent it to anyone. That Prowler was his baby, and no way was he gonna let anyone else drive it. If anyone would know, Michelle would. She was an excellent driver, and he even complimented her on that several times, but he had still refused to let her borrow it.
“It’s been too long,” she mumbled when she saw the number of messages Nick had saved on their answering machine. There were fifteen. She didn’t bother to play them yet. Luckily, she hadn’t stayed the whole month because she wouldn’t have looked forward to sort through probably at least thirty.
The time away had done her good. It hadn’t been much easier than here with Nick, but at least it gave her time away from both him and Jesse, and she had been able to evaluate her feelings for each of them.
Before she got any deeper into thought, she noticed the yellow pad of paper on the kitchen table. “Gee, Nick, that’s a really intelligent place to put your sketchbook, with all the messes you make and the spilling you do,” she mumbled sarcastically. She picked it up and started to go upstairs to put it in his room, but realized she had never seen his work before. After a moment of debate, curiosity got the better of her.
She went back into the kitchen and sat down at the table. The first picture was of some girl she didn’t recognize, presumably an ex-girlfriend or crush or something. The next one was of the beach, the next of a different girl, then one of another different girl… She continued paging through it. To her practiced eye, they were gorgeous, full of emotion, and definitely realistic looking. Why didn’t she have talent like that?
When she got toward the back, she gasped. That one was of a girl who strangely resembled her, except this girl was absolutely gorgeous. They had the same facial features and the same hair and the same body and everything. He’d made her pretty. How had he done this? Then it hit her that that wasn’t the right question to be asking. Why had he done this? She shrugged it off as a lack of inspiration. Then she kept going. Maybe it wasn’t just a lack of inspiration. There were more of her.
Realizing how badly she was invading his privacy, she almost slammed the book shut, but seeing one more picture couldn’t hurt. She flipped the page over and let out a cry. When had he drawn this? They were asleep, and they appeared to be naked. She couldn’t tell – they were covered by a blanket. What shocked her was how right it looked.
Now she couldn’t stop. There were three more ordinary ones of her, and then she got to the last one. They were cuddling on the beach, a blanket wrapped around them. It was beautiful. This one was so full of feeling, it was about to burst.
She didn’t hear the door open and close, and she didn’t hear Nick’s footsteps in the hall. “What are you doing?”