Page 78 of Double or Nothing

And God, tonight, these three canvases before me are alive.

It’s still easy to see the roll and thrash of our bodies enjoying each other. The smudge of knees on paint. Jack’s cum still drying across all three as a dirty reminder. Kinky bastard.

On one corner I can see the imprint of my pussy, legs spread wide as I held Bryce’s face to me. It’s not only Jack who has dirty juices across the paintwork.

That’s where I start. On Jack’s side. The red comes first. They aren’t the red blends I’d usually opt for, carefully selected and layered with meaning. His red is wild, and it brings the wild out in me. I build on his energy as the paint smears under my palette knife, thick and glorious. Just like the night spilled itself across the canvas.

And now it demands to be remembered.

Next comes the honouring of Bryce’s purple. Deep, bruised, luxurious violets, folding themselves through the smears of Jack’s splotched red like a broken secret. Dreams, maybe. Want. Fear. The colour of things whispered in the darkness.

I don’t choose it so much as surrender to it, my hands moving before my mind has any comprehension.

Then come my yellows. Not soft, pretty sunshine yellows. Not dainty daffodils or sweet summer dresses. These yellows are sharper than that. Acid-bright. The colour of nerves sparking under skin.

I drag them through my section of the canvas with the heel of my palm, smearing paint into a pool of Jack’s drying cum like I’m trying to prove I was here. That I felt it. That I chose it.

I did choose it.

I chose every single second, and I’d choose it all over again.

Gold foiling follows next.

Of course it does.

Only this time the foiling doesn’t represent the double bind of affluence. Both a blessing and a curse. It isn’t Dad’s approval, or charity galas, or the glittering cage of Parker expectations offering me freedom at a price. It is something else. Something cracked open. Gold in bright, broken flashes, catching the dawn. Hope, maybe. Ridiculous, dangerous hope.

Fuck, I’ve needed this.

It’s been a long, long time since I’ve felt the true calling, right from the depths of me.

Soul Girl takes on its real meaning tonight.

I work until my shoulders ache and my fingers are cramping. I work until my knees hurt from crouching. I work until my paint crusted hair is sticking to my sweaty forehead, and then some.

That’s the miracle of flow. Real flow. The kind of oneness that self-help books try to describe in their tidy chapters. Sure, yeah. As though it can be summoned with breathing exercises and a glass of lemon water. What the fuck ever.

Flow is not tidy. Flow is being swallowed whole by a force far bigger than yourself and thanking it for the privilege.

When I finally step back from the canvases, the sun is coming up. The light lands on the gold foiling, and the whole trio of canvases seems to breathe.

Even after my hours of work, I can still see the outlines of obscenity. They are right there, in their imprints and smudges. The canvases aren’t obscene in the way Jack would make some filthy joke about. They are obscene because they tell the hidden truth of our adventures, unknown to the unknowing. But I know. I can still feel the excitement bursting through the colours.

Red slashes across the left, furious and alive. Purple curls around the centre like the night, refusing to let go. Yellow breaking through on the right, sharp and reckless.

And then come my signatures. My trademark stylings.

Gold foiling fractures through the whole trio in violent little bursts, catching the chaos and making it beautiful. And there, cutting down through the middle of all three, are the black lines.

My black lines.

Only these aren’t straight.

What the fuck?!

I step to the side to get another angle, and it’s true. They bend and warp with the paint. Barely. Just enough to see.

No fucking way. My hand clamps to my mouth.