Jamison (Beautiful Mine #3) (13 page)

JAMISON

I stepped out of Sophie’s shower and quietly toweled off before slipping into my suit for the day. The clock on the wall told me Mia had exactly eight minutes to arrive before I was officially running late for work. I refused to leave Sophie alone for two seconds. The hospital tended to release people too early, in my opinion, blaming pressure from insurance companies.

A light rap on the door spooked me, and I quickly popped the lock and pulled it open. Sophie stood, arms crossed and half asleep, staring at me through the dark hair that always seemed to make itself at home right in front of her pretty doe eyes.

“You shouldn’t be up right now,” I said.

“Can I brush my teeth?” she asked.

I stepped out, giving her privacy, and slipped into my loafers as the apartment door swung open.

“Morning,” Mia said, tugging her scarf from her neck and gripping a small coffee with her free hand. “She still in bed?”

“Nope.” I nodded toward the bathroom. “Say, Mia, when do you think your renovations will be done?”

She scrunched her nose. “Hopefully by next week. Why?”

“You planning to have an exhibit, or anything?”

“We’d talked about it, but nothing’s set in stone yet,” she said. “Hopefully soon.”

I stepped closer to her so I could lower my voice. “Mind if I plan one? I’d like to surprise Sophie. Invite a bunch of people I know. Maybe invite her parents?”

Mia’s tan face turned a shade of pale ash at the mention of Sophie’s parents, and I suddenly remembered the blank space on her emergency contact sheet.

“I was wondering if I could get their number from you?” I asked.

Mia twitched her lips, studying my face. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”

“You and I both know she needs them right now.” I pretended to know more than I did.

“You’re right,” Mia sighed. “I’ve been trying to tell her that for years. Anytime they reach out, she just pushes them away.”

“I’m inviting them,” I said, tugging my phone from my pocket and pulling up my calendar. “She needs all the support she can get right now. How does the first Friday of February work?”

“What are you guys talking about?” Sophie interrupted from the doorway of her bathroom. She gripped the frame to steady herself as her eyes searched our faces.

“I’m running late. I’ll see you tonight,” I told her, slipping out the door. Mia had just confirmed exactly what I’d suspected. Sophie had pushed her parents away because she blamed herself for her sisters’ deaths.

***

I slipped into my office between patients that afternoon and dialed the number Mia had texted me earlier that day. The upstate New York area code was a direct line to the home of Ken and Julie Salinger.

“Hello,” a gruff man’s voice answered in the middle of the fourth ring. I was shocked that anyone was home in the middle of the day on a Wednesday.

“Yes, is this Ken Salinger?” I asked.

“Who’s this?” He slurred his words together.

“This is Doc—” I caught myself. “This is Jamison. I’m a friend of Sophie’s.”

Silence met my response.

“You still there?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said. The receiver muffled as if he were placing his hand over it as I heard a woman’s voice asking who he was talking to on the other end.

“Hello?” she said. From the sounds of it, she’d wrestled the phone out of his hand. “This is Sophie’s mother. Who is this? Is Sophie all right? Did something happen?” Her voice was ripe with the panic of a mother who’d gotten
that
call before.

“Sophie is fine,” I said, unable to elaborate beyond that. “I’m a friend of hers. I’m throwing her a surprise art gallery exhibition the first Friday in February. I’d love if you could be there.”

“Oh,” she said, her relief like air escaping a balloon. “I’m sorry. You had me worried. What is this about an exhibit?”

“Sophie is a painter,” I said. “You knew that, right?”

“Of course,” her mom said. “She’s a beautiful painter.”

“Would you like to come to her exhibit?” I asked once again, glancing up at the clock on the wall. I had exactly two minutes to get to my next appointment.

“Does she want us there? I don’t know if she wants us there,” her mother waffled. “Last time we tried to see her…”

“First Friday in February,” I said. “Seven in the evening. Beacon Art Gallery.”

“I don’t want to upset her on her special night,” her mom said. I barely knew Julie Salinger, and already I got the sense that she loved her daughter, but only from a distance. Sophie didn’t need passive love. She needed real love. She needed all the real love she could get.

“Please,” I said. “I need to go now, but I hope to see you both there.”

“Hey, stranger.” I rounded the corner by my office, only to run into Daphne. She always seemed to know exactly where I was going to be and strategically planted herself in all the right places.

“Daphne,” I said with a nod, charging forward to the neurology clinic.

“Tried calling you last weekend,” she said, her long legs going stride for stride with mine. “Didn’t know if you wanted to go get drinks sometime?”

“No, thanks.” The less I tried to engage with her, the better. She refused to let go of me, of the possibility of a future for us.

She slinked her perfect hair, an expensive shade of ash blonde, over her shoulder and smiled, hiding any trace of disparity as she nonchalantly inched closer to me.

“Maybe we can get together sometime soon?” she said. “Valentine’s Day is coming up. If you don’t have anyone to spend it with…”

Even if I didn’t have Sophie, I’d have much preferred to spend that horrid holiday alone in the comfort of my apartment than doing anything with Daphne.

I grabbed my patient’s file from the file box and flipped it open, charging ahead to Exam Room One.

“Jamison,” Daphne said, placing one thin hand on her narrow hip. Her blue eyes searched mine for an ounce of anything that might give her hope.

“I’ll be spending it with someone else this year,” I said, not knowing how else to tell her. Daphne was no saint, but I never wanted to hurt her.

I entered the exam room before I had a chance to see her face fall.

SOPHIE

“So good to be back.” I breezed through the front door of Beacon Art Supplies, which was officially Beacon Art Gallery, and stopped in my tracks, placing a hand across my chest. “Mia.”

In the long week I’d spent recuperating at home, Mia had refused to show me any progress pictures. She wanted to surprise me, and I was so glad she did. No pictures could ever do the new studio any amount of justice.

“This doesn’t even look like the same place.” I danced around the wide open space. Walls had been relocated and white-washed in shades of alabaster and ash gray, and pristine marble floors gave it the touch of class we could only hope would attract the right kinds of customers. Mounted lights showcased our art as it hung on the walls. Natural light flooded in the front floor-to-ceiling windows and our old, paint-stained counter had been replaced with a modern steel and granite desk.

“Isn’t it perfect?” Mia swooned, stars still in her eyes as if she were seeing the place for the first time.

“We need to have a grand opening,” I said, already picturing it in my mind.

“We will,” Mia said coyly.

“Like, as soon as possible, Mia. Come on, let’s get on this,” I said, nothing short of impatient. Our dreams were finally taking shape, and I didn’t want to waste a single moment.

“We will,” Mia said, emphasizing each word. “Come on. I have something to show you.”

She hooked her arm into my elbow and led me to the back of the store where her office had been converted into two separate, small studio spaces.

“This is where the magic will happen,” she said, watching my face as it lit up like the fourth of July. “We each have our own little studios, you know, to work while we’re here.”

“Mia,” I gasped. Everything was brand new. The easels. The paint supplies. The brushes. “You didn’t have to do this.”

“You know I get a supplier discount on all this stuff,” she said casually. “We have this beautiful new gallery, so I figured we needed beautiful little studios, too.”

I spun around and wrapped my arms around her. “Have I told you how amazing you are? Seriously, Mia.”

Not only did she nurse me back to health while Jamison was at work, she’d managed the renovation on her own and had time to put together two beautiful art studios.

“Oh, stop,” Mia said, not usually one for sentimental moments. “Okay, slacker, let’s get to work.”

I popped over to the pristine bar stool positioned in front of a brand new easel that held a blank canvas. Drawing in a deep breath, I closed my eyes and tried to imagine what I wanted to paint.

I grabbed a filbert brush and some red and white paint, squirting them onto a virginal wooden palette and mixing them into the most vibrant shade of pink. Big strokes, followed by small ones. When I was finished, a slender, abstract heart took center stage on the canvas. I loaded my palette with more colors. Yellows. Peaches. Whites. Lavenders. The heart wouldn’t be recognizable by the time I was done with it, but it would still be there, underneath it all.

“Nice,” Mia said in passing a short time later. She stood in the doorway of my new studio, admiring my work. She’d deemed me the queen of oil painting back in college, but she was the queen of watercolor. Watercolors were harder, in my opinion, and Mia’s ethereal paintings were extraordinary.

“Thanks,” I said, cocking my head to the side as I studied my work.

“No blue in that one,” she observed. She’d called my last two years’ worth of paintings my Blue Period. Everything was blue or had shades thereof worked into the details.

“Getting kind of tired of blue now, to be honest,” I sighed. A smile drew across my lips as Jamison came to mind.

“What’s that smile for?”

I shrugged and flashed her a knowing smirk.

“Him,” she said.

I nodded.

“He really cares about you, Sophie,” Mia said, brows raised. “I can tell you that.”

“I know,” I said, well aware.

***

“Hi, Sophie. Come on in,” Dr. Strong said the following afternoon. “Good seeing you.”

I sunk down into the loveseat, unzipping my coat and trying to get comfortable as Dr. Strong flipped her yellow legal pad to a fresh page.

“What brings you in today?” she asked, clicking her pen.

Sidewalk slush had seeped through my suede boots on the walk there that afternoon, and my toes were tiny, frozen icicles in my soaked socks.

I tried to speak, but the words got stuck once again.

“It’s okay, Sophie. This is a safe place,” Dr. Strong assured me, peering over her glasses.

“There’s this thing that happened a couple years ago,” I began, my voice timid and meek. “I’ve been told I need to stop blaming myself for it, but I don’t know how.”

Dr. Strong sat her pen down and situated herself in her chair, her eyes softening. “Go ahead, Sophie. Tell me everything.”

For once she appeared completely engaged, though she reminded me more of someone impatiently waiting to hear juicy gossip.

“Two years ago,” I began, “I was a senior at the Taylor School of Art in Upstate New York. I had two sisters. Nori and Rossi. They were twins. They were freshmen, and they were just nineteen.”

My throat swelled as I fought tears.

“It was dead week. I was finishing a project for finals. I’d been staying up late, and I planned to stay in that Friday night to finish my project,” I said, eyes darting to the ground. “They were invited to a party, and begged me to buy them alcohol. I wanted to be the cool big sister, so I did. I bought them alcohol, and I dropped them off at the party across town.”

Dr. Strong picked up her pen and began studiously taking notes.

“They were supposed to call me when they needed to be picked up,” I continued. “I didn’t want them getting in the car with someone else. I fell asleep. I missed their call. They got a ride home from this guy. And he’d been drinking…”