Jamison (Beautiful Mine #3) (4 page)

JAMISON

The wind howled and whipped my plaid scarf in fifty different directions. A late night New York blizzard was making for a formidable ten o’clock walk, but I needed it after pulling a twelve-hour shift at work. I glanced up at Sophie’s apartment. Pitch black. Trudging forward, my eyes watered from the cold and my cheeks froze solid with impending windburn. Given the sub-zero temperatures, it had been a dumb idea to go for a walk.

The normally less-than-busy sidewalks were completely desolate. Everyone with half a brain was nestled warm in their apartment. A neon sign flashed the words “GREAT DUETS” in pink and yellow against near-whiteout conditions. The neighborhood karaoke bar I’d passed by a thousand times before and never thought twice about was going to soon become my refuge from the storm.

Using all my strength, I pulled the door open, fighting the wind that blew against it. Dark warmth and the jingling of the bells hanging from the door hinges greeted me as my eyes adjusted. A handful of folks situated at the bar and couple of girls seated at a table by the stage were the only patrons.

Eyes still adjusting, a small figure with long, dark hair brushed past the front of the stage, hopping up and taking the microphone as music began to play and lyrics flashed across the screen behind her.

Sophie?

Her big brown eyes closed and her delicate hands wrapped around the microphone, her lips parted and out came the sweetest, softest voice I’d ever heard. Perfect notes, one after another, floated from her pretty lips. She was in her own little world, the way I imagined she was when she painted.

I headed toward the bar, pulling off my hat and scarf and ordering a Glenlivet 18 on the rocks, unable to keep my eyes off her for long.

“She’s got a great voice, don’t she?” the bartender asked in his thick, Brooklyn accent. “Sophie Salinger. Comes in here every Thursday night.”

“It’s beautiful,” I said, my eardrums flooded with the kind of richness and talent that only could only come naturally.

Each night that week I’d walked the neighborhood hoping to run into her again, and each night I had to settle for watching her from afar as she painted up a storm in her loft. I shook my head, realizing she’d completely disregarded my orders to stay off her ankle.

The bartender placed my Glenlivet on a thin paper napkin, and I wiped a rogue trickle of the golden liquid off the clean glass with my thumb.

The song finished and Sophie climbed off the stage, retreating to a small table where she sat across from a blonde who resembled the girl from the art supply store.

“You wanna sing somethin’?” the bartender asked.

My head whipped around, and I about choked on my drink. “No, no. Definitely not.”

My gaze honed in on the girls again, Sophie specifically, as I nursed my drink. I didn’t intend to stay long. I had to get up at five the next morning for work. I turned back toward the bar, hunched over my drink, and tried to finish it so I could head back home.

“Vinny! We need another round!” a girl’s voice said, sounding more than buzzed.

“No, no,” another girl’s voice argued. “I have to go home. I’m done, Vinny. No more for me. Cut her off, too.”

“Hey,” the first girl said. I ducked my face down, hoping they wouldn’t notice me. “Aren’t you that guy from the other night? Oh, my God. You are. Sophie, it’s that guy!”

Sophie looked past her, instantly recognizing my face and looking surprisingly pleased to see me, though it may have been the alcohol.

“Sophie, is it?” I asked, knowing damn well exactly who she was.

“Jamison,” she said. “How’d you find this hole in the wall?”

“Flashing neon sign.” I took a sip of my scotch and sat the glass down carefully, with intention. “Storm’s bad out there. I’m heading out soon.”

She glanced out the windows. From where we sat, the streetlights were whited out. We were going to need a North Star and a dog sled to get home.

Sophie bit her lip. “Mind if I walk with you? I don’t know if I should walk home alone in this.”

“Not at all,” I said, hiding my shock.

“Mia, you going to be okay?” she asked, turning to her friend who nodded drunkenly. “She lives upstairs. She’ll be fine.” Sophie patted Mia on the back. “Vinny, make sure she gets upstairs, okay?”

“Always,” Vinny said, eyeing me like he was trying to memorize my face, as if he were some kind of bodyguard for his two little regulars.

I tossed back the rest of my drink and stood up to button my coat, dreading the cold as Sophie ran off to get her things from their table.

“Ready?” she asked, coming back fully dressed and appropriately bundled up for the blizzard we were about to face.

The jingling of the doorbells provided a jolly send off into the blistering cold and whipping winds. Sophie’s hood flew down, blowing her dark hair every which way as she squinted to see through the blowing snow. Every step forward brought us closer to our street, and the heavy winds provided more than their fair share of resistance on our journey.

Sophie struggled to keep her hood up, and I reached over to grab her arm. “Walk behind me. It’ll block the wind.”

She tightly gripped the back of my coat as we forged ahead, looking like a two-person conga line, but I didn’t care.

Several long, freezing cold minutes later, we’d arrived at our street.

“You going to be okay from here?” I asked, barely able to see her face through all the flurrying flakes that swirled around us. She nodded, her dark eyes blinking and glassy from the cold. Her place was just up ahead. I still had to jet across the street, hoping not to get hit by blinded cars, and make it to my building’s entrance.

“See you around,” she said, lingering longer than she had to. We were both shivering blocks of ice, standing in a wind that bit through our layers and froze us all the way to our bones.

I nodded, turning to look for traffic.

“You want some hot chocolate, or something?” she asked. “I have some. If you want.”

I’d fully resolved to spend my night alone, like I did most nights.

“Yeah,” I said. “I could come up for a bit.”

A short time later I was sitting on her couch, trying to warm my bones as she scuffed around the kitchen in big, fuzzy slippers, heating a kettle of hot water on her stove and rambling some sort of small talk about the weather.

I relaxed back into the sofa. Something about Sophie made me at ease. Not a lot of women had that effect on me. My entire life I’d always played roles: the overachieving son. The picture perfect boyfriend. Sloane didn’t place any expectations on me. She was who she was. I was who I was.

The kettle whistled and she grabbed it, quieting the high-pitched screech and filling two mugs before dumping in two powder packets of hot chocolate mix with miniature marshmallows that dissolved on contact.

“Here we are,” she said, bringing them to her coffee table and taking a seat next to me. “If this doesn’t warm us up, we’re screwed. Super hot. Be careful.”

I palmed the warm mug. “How’s that ankle?”

She rolled her eyes. “If you must know,
Dr. Jamison
, it’s fine now. Doesn’t hurt at all.”

“You’re lucky,” I said, blowing on the steaming liquid under my lips.

“How long have you lived here?” she asked.

“Just moved in last year,” I said. “I’m from Kansas, originally. Went to school at Johns Hopkins. Moved here for work.”

“Kansas, eh?” She looked me up and down. “Nothing about you screams ‘Kansas’ to me.”

I smiled. “That’s a good thing, right?”

She held up a hand. “Your words.”

“What about you?” I asked, bringing the mug to my lips for another careful sip.

“I’ve lived here a couple years,” she said. “I rent this place from Mia. She gave me a hell of a deal, or else I’d never be able to afford it in a million years. I graduated from Taylor Art School in upstate New York.”

“What brought you here?”

“Art,” she sighed dreamily. “Thought I was going to make it big. Sell a bunch of paintings and live the life.”

“You’ve still got plenty of time,” I chuckled. “You’re young. Nothing’s stopping you.”

Her eyes dropped to the floor, and for a moment, she appeared lost in thought. “My future’s unwritten, at this point. Anything could happen.”

“Your paintings are beautiful,” I said, eyeing them from across the room. Even from the street at night, they were beautiful. Abstract. Colorful. Dreamy.

“Thanks,” she said humbly.

“You ever try to sell them?”

She blushed. “I thought it’d be easy to ask people to buy my work. I mean, I studied art in college. I went to art school. I’ve been painting since I could hold a brush, but… here, in this city, it’s hard.”

I scrunched my face. “Your paintings are beautiful, Sophie. I don’t say things I don’t mean. You have real talent.”

“I used to paint things,” she said. “Still lifes. Portraits. Now I just paint those.” Her eyes drifted to throngs of abstract canvases leaning against the brick walls. “Somewhere along the line, I lost my ability to paint anything real. No one wants to buy shit that looks like the stuff their three-year-old brings home from preschool every day.”

I shook my head. “You’re selling yourself short.”

She stood up, mug in hand, and headed to her makeshift art studio. I followed. “Mia’s renovating her store, adding a high-end gallery to the front and moving the supplies to the back. We’re going to put our stuff on display and see what happens.”

“Are these for sale?” My gaze honed in on a piece covered in streaks of grays, blacks, and blues, reminding me of a stormy Kansas summer night. “This piece was made for my living room.”

“Seriously?” she said, peering at me from the corner of her eye. “Make me an offer.”

“A thousand dollars enough?” I asked.

Her jaw dropped and she tried to stifle a smile. She reached down and pulled it out from the wall. “On the house.”

“On the house?”

“Since you helped me the other night,” she said, biting her lip. “With my ankle and the paint and everything. And you walked me home tonight. Just—please. You can have it.”

“I can’t,” I objected.

“Your money’s no good here.” Her eyes gazed over my shoulder, peering out the windows that led directly to a view of my place. “Storm’s getting worse. Listen, I’ll just keep this here, and next time the weather’s better, I can drop it off at your place.”

“There’s no arguing with you, is there?”

She set the painting against the wall and traipsed back to the living room, plopping down on the cushy sofa. “Never.”

I followed her, opting not to sit back down as I stared into the bottom of my empty hot chocolate mug.

“I’ve got to work early tomorrow morning,” I said, walking my cup to her kitchen and rinsing it in the sink before returning to her living room. “We can’t all be bohemian painters.”

“Funny,” she said with a wink as she scrunched her nose at me. She stood to walk me to her door, lingering in the doorway for a moment as I buttoned my coat. Her brown eyes drank me in, whether or not she knew she was doing it. “Which apartment is yours over there?”

“3A,” I told her, knotting my thick scarf around my neck and tucking the tails into the front of my coat.

“You doing anything this weekend? I can drop it off sometime,” she said.

I shrugged. “I should be around.”

My proper upbringing told me I should kiss her cheek as we parted ways, but I had a feeling we had two completely different upbringings and she would find my gesture awkward and hollow.

I reached my hand out, brushing it against hers. “I’ll see you around.”

SOPHIE

“I’m glad you decided to come back,” Dr. Strong said as I took a seat in her office that Friday afternoon. “You’re doing the right thing, Sophie.”

Of course I was. At three-hundred bucks an hour, she was delighted to have another client to fill her schedule. Those pretty diamond earrings dangling from her ears weren’t cheap, and someone had to pay for those red-bottomed shoes. As much as certain things about her annoyed me, I promised Dr. Bledsoe I’d give therapy a try, and since Mia was my only sounding board, sometimes it was nice to bounce things off other people for a change. I wasn’t paying for a friend, and I certainly didn’t have to like her.