Page 34 of The Girlfriend Clause
“Wait—you don’t do that, do you?” Fuck. I’d assumed she was joking. “No judgment if you do, obviously, your lips look really nice already. Full. Or… natural. I mean—I think it’s fine if you—”
Jesus, Liam, shutup!
She laughed. “I don’t. But you never know who you’ll be in ten years, right?”
“True.” The room was quiet again—even “Greensleeves” had taken a break. Ten years seemed a long way away. Ten years ago, I’d been twenty-three. I could barely recognize that person now.
“Anything else?” I pressed my face into the top of her head and left another small kiss. I still wasn’t sure what it was about Andrea that had me snuggling and kissing, yet it just felt… right.
“Honestly?”
“Yeah. Honestly.”
“That I might wake up one morning aged fifty, absorbed in the rat race with no way out,” she said after a moment.
“You’d definitely want to avoid that.”
She laughed. “I know. Although the way things are going, it might not be an issue.”
“How come?”
“Ah, we might be having a restructure at work,” she said. “Although, at least I’d have time to paint again. Maybe even finish something.”
“You paint?” I asked. “Like artwork?”
“Ha. Kind of. I used to, anyway.” There was a quiet sigh in her tone.
“What sort of things?” I thought of her lanyard.Pixel&—What was it? Grape? Made sense she was creative.
“Oh, everything, really. But portraits are my favorite.”
“Portraits? Wow.” I couldn’t even draw a stick man. “How did you get into that?”
“Well… I guess I’ve always loved drawing people, since I was little. I like to think about what makes them tick. What they’re choosing to reveal about themselves, and how to show it in the painting. You don’t always get everything from a first glance, you know?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I think I do. I’d love to see them. Would you show me sometime?”
She laughed. “Sure. If you’d like. I just… haven’t painted for a while.”
“Oh? Why not? If you love it, I mean.”
She stiffened slightly. “I guess I just… don’t have time. With work and stuff. You know.” Her voice came out a little sad.
“That’s a shame.”
“Yeah. I guess. But what about you? What’s your ‘fun fact’? Any special talents or secret hobbies?”
I hesitated. “Nothing impressive.” Nothing I wanted to talk about now, anyway.
“I didn’t ask to beimpressed.” She smiled. “I asked because I’minterested.”
Right. Well. I guess there was no harm.
“When I was a kid, I used to spend whole weekends at those trading fairs. Cards, comics, that kind of thing.”
She tilted her head and looked at me. “Oh, cool. Like Comic Con?”
She’d heard ofComicCon?
