I’d said I couldn’t accept payment but that was a lie. Luckily Jack saw through my facade and insisted on filling out a set of post-dated checks for the whole school year right then. Maybe he could see the insincerity in my eyes. Or maybe he just noticed that I was eating beans and rice for my dinner when he and Ava called.

Stress leave ain’t without its stressors.

He’d written down far too much money for each check, but I couldn’t get him to agree on a more reasonable price. Somehow, “I’ve never taught painting in my life” wasn’t a good enough argument.

Stubborn, stubborn man.

There was something appealing about that. If I looked at him for too long, it felt like he could see the way I’d dreamed about him the other night. I was still breathing carefully, trying to calm my racing heart from the surprise of seeing him at the doorstep.

Ava provided an excellent buffer. She was kneeling in front of my paint box, reading the colors out to me. Or at least, she was trying to.

“Cadmah… Cadmie…” Ava said, holding up a tube close to her face to scrutinize it even further.

“Cadmium yellow?” I asked her.

She nodded. “Cadmium yellow. It’s pretty.”

“Do you want to try it on a new canvas?”

“Can we?” she said, asking me, not her father. Jack’s expression was unreadable.

“I think your father and I should talk about when a good time would be for your lessons,” I said. “Maybe Tuesdays?”

“You might be tired after your day,” he said. “How about Saturdays?”

He had to have seen that I was at home throughout the week by now. I knew that I’d seen him in his house at all hours of the day, so it stood to reason he’d seen me. Still, I agreed.

“Only once a week?” Ava said, her voice soft as if this were a cruel punishment.

“That can be our formal lesson time,” I said. “But you’re welcome to come watch me paint sometimes.”

This placated Ava. Her back was straight, shoulders held proudly, the poise of an eager student bubbling with excitement. She grinned at me, and then at her dad. I watched as Jack’s eyes seemed to fill with hope, as if she’d blessed him with something precious.

Really, she had.

I wondered yet again about the rift between them. Everyone knew that the Sargents were in a famous band; even I, with my complete ignorance of rock music had to know that… after some research on the Internet.

But I didn’t understand why Jack hadn’t been close to Ava in the past few years. While I pondered, my eyes drifted to Jack’s face, his brow furrowed by default.

Our eyes met for a brief but shattering moment. The darkness in those irises seemed endless. There had to be something else to him that kept him going. I wondered what.

Time seemed to have paused, and then Ava pierced the strange bubble. “Can we do the new canvas thing now?”

I smiled, grateful to have something distract me. “Sure,” I said. “Jack, if you want you can come back in an hour or so to pick her up.”

He nodded, went over to kiss Ava on the cheek, and left. Ava had let his lips touch her face, but her expression hadn’t changed when Jack did this. There was a palpable tension between them, distrust and sorrow combined in a strange brew.

New canvas wasn’t hard to find, given that the bedroom was full of them. I’d been sleeping in the guest room, unable to find the energy to clean up and sort through the clutter.

Plus, if I was being honest with myself, the main bedroom furniture reminded me too much of things best left in the past.

I chose a small canvas, one appropriate for a small painter, and returned to the living room nook. Ava was fiddling with the jar of brushes, running her hands reverently over the bristles.

“They’re soft, aren’t they?”

“Like a kitten,” she said.

I smiled at the simile. “Exactly. But I’d never dip a kitten in paint.”

Ava laughed, the idea so absurd that she wrinkled her nose at me. “I wouldn’t either.”

I picked a versatile brush and dabbed some of the cadmium yellow onto a palette.

“Do you want to try—?”

I didn’t even need to finish my sentence, because Ava jumped at the possibility of using my paints, touching things, and exploring. She gently dipped the brush in the paint and then turned to approach the canvas. I’d set it on the easel I usually used for work when I was sitting down, but it was the right height for a child.

Confronted with a blank canvas, paint on the brush, and excitement burbling inside her, Ava hesitated. She moved to apply paint near the top right hand corner and then stopped before the bristles touched the canvas. Again, she almost painted a spot closer to the center. Then she turned back to me, eyes watery with incipient tears.

“Where do I go?”

The familiarity of Ava’s uncertainty made me want to hug her. If only I could tell her that the sense of anxiety would get better. But I knew that breaking the seal, first touching the canvas in some way, always made me nervous.

“I know the feeling. Wherever you want, Ava. Do you know something you’d like to paint? Or do you want to put some colors down and then feel your way through it?”

She furrowed her brow in concentration. “It’s yellow like the sun, so maybe I could paint the sun?”

“That’s a great idea,” I said.

She dabbed at the canvas tentatively, growing more confident as she watched the color deepen with each movement of the brush. Once she’d made a roughly circular sun, she turned back to me.

“Can you show me how to do clouds now?”

“Definitely! What kind were you thinking of?”

The hour passed by so quickly I wondered if I’d misread the time on my phone. But no, the darkness outside showed me that it was definitely getting late. I ushered Ava back home, though she dawdled to an almost absurd degree.

Once she’d left, I went back to her canvas. It was clearly a child’s painting, but there was such feeling in it. I could see that Ava’s emotions were strong and that she had talent. The sun took up a small portion of the sky, the rest of which was puffy clouds laden with darkness at the bottom: a sky full of stormy potential.

Just like Ava. Maybe just like Jack, too.

* * *

A couple weeks later, we’d made progress. Ava’s brush work was much more skilled, though she still hadn’t learned to fight the rising frustration of being unable to make the canvas look the way she wanted it to. That was the lifelong work of any artist.

As part of my leave of absence, I’d applied to have a small exhibition of my paintings at the Davies Gallery. The gallery was tiny, but it accepted work from less established artists, so I thought I had a better chance there than anywhere else. That thinking turned out to be true.

The night of the opening, I swore to myself that I’d never do this kind of thing again. I could be the type of painter who was prolific at home, did lots of work, and never tried to get the paintings out there. It was too much stress, and that was what I was supposed to be avoiding this year.

I doubted the work I’d done, whether it was worth people taking a look, worried about the snacks I’d bought for guests to graze on, wished I hadn’t invited nearly everyone on my Facebook friends list. Sure, most of them hadn’t said they’d come but I cringed at the memory regardless.

Two hours into the opening reception, though, I felt differently. That is to say, much, much worse. The bottles of wine mostly sat unopened, with the exception of the cheapest red, and that was just because I’d uncorked it for myself. I was several glasses into drinking the stuff because no one had showed up.

That wasn’t entirely true.

A couple of 20-somethings walked through cursorily glancing at the paintings and stuffed their pockets full of crackers from the snack bar, then left without a word, though they glanced at me semi-apologetically.

No one cared about my paintings.

And why should they? I was just some amateur. A Kindergarten teacher who couldn’t even handle her life well enough to keep her husband or manage her job. And her job involved a bunch of five-year-olds.

Knee-deep in self-pity, I nibbled at a few crackers, but soon found I had no appetite. Wine helped, at least a little, though I fought tears for the better part of twenty minutes while I stood, unsure of where to place myself in case someone did come in. I didn’t want them to see me on the verge of crying.

That dread was soon answered by a man poking his head through the gallery, and my heart leapt. I brushed crumbs from the front of my skirt and smiled, but when he saw me, standing alone among the paintings, he smiled apologetically.

“Oh, this isn’t the party,” he said.

And I was crushed again.

No one came.

I knew I’d been lonely as of late, but had my social circle constricted that much? Was my creative life so small? Just when I was about to pack up the snacks in their boxes, to be taken home and eaten at leisure, I heard a clatter of footsteps. Someone was trotting down the hallway, and by the sounds of their pace, they were excited.

My tears shifted from self-pity to shame-filled gratitude when I heard Ava’s voice, brightly exclaiming “here it is!”

There was no time to fix my reddened eyes, so I took a deep breath and hoped she wouldn’t ask why I looked so sad. Maybe I could pass it off as tired.

“Miss Travers,” said Ava, her voice hushed once she stepped into the gallery, “are these all yours?”

Ava approached the first painting as if it might run away from her, like a flighty wild animal that needed cautious handling. It was one of my landscapes, a rough and dark approximation of a forest near my parents’ hometown. The colors were more in line with my mood than the actual appearance of the area, but I thought the effect worked.

Though I don’t think she was speaking to me, I heard Ava breathe out “It’s beautiful.”

I choked back tears while her father stepped in, glancing around with a wild-eyed look until he found Ava.

“You shouldn’t run ahead like that,” he said.

“It’s ok, she just got here,” I said. I could hear the way my throat was still tight with sadness. Maybe Jack could, too, because his eyes lingered on me for a second after I spoke.

“Oh,” he said.

Jack was wearing a light blue button-up shirt, the collar stiff and pressed, with charcoal slacks and shiny black dress shoes. Now that I noticed it, Ava was also dressed in a girls’ party dress.

“Do you have somewhere you’re going after this?” I asked.

Jack tilted his head as if confused by the question. “No.”

“I just thought,” I started, but then I stopped when I realized they’d dressed that way to come to my reception. Not for someone else’s party. The thought made my tears threaten to come back, double time.

Through the bleary, wine-sodden mess of my feelings, Jack looked good. Familiar. His dark beard stood out against his skin, highlighting his stormy eyes. The eyes that were locked on mine, filled with an ocean of some unspeakable sadness. I found myself stepping towards him, imagining touching his solid, stoic body.

Before I could stop myself, I leaned in for a hug. Jack must have been startled enough not to protest, but I could feel that he was far from melting into the embrace. Still, the electricity of his touch was stunning, and welcome.

“Thank you for coming,” I said, my voice muffled by the way my face was pressed against his chest. His warm, broad, muscular chest positively radiated comfort. Somewhere deep inside me, something was stirring, brought to life by this mysterious man.

“It’s…ok,” he said. Jack patted my back, one of the universal symbols for ‘awkward hug.’ Still, I held him, clinging to the feeling that someone, somewhere had made a night out of coming to see my stupid paintings. Ava had barely made it to the third piece, so enraptured by each canvas that she’d been moving very slowly.

The sight of her small, serious face contemplating the work I’d labored over for hours and hours was too much. I fought the tears, but I immediately felt myself losing. The teardrops streaming down my face moved at a pace that was completely unencumbered.

I pulled out of the hug, flushed with the memories of my dream about Jack and the recollection that he was just a neighbor, and the father of a former student. Not a friend, and certainly not a lover.

Did I want him to be? There was no time to be thinking that.

The stoic mask of Jack’s face faltered when he saw my tears.

“You’re crying,” he said, as if I weren’t aware already. But there was tenderness in his voice, surprise at seeing pain in another human. His hand moved up to my face, thumb swept away the trail of wetness on my cheek.

I couldn’t breathe. He was too beautiful, too welcome a presence, and I was certain that if I so much as blinked too hard, he would retreat.

Though he’d gently wiped at my face, new tears swelled over and undid his work.

“I’m sorry,” I said. There wasn’t anything I could do to stop them, though, the evening having been a complete humiliation. My only solace was Ava, sweet, strange Ava enraptured by my work. And Jack, here saving me from myself with the simplest of gestures.

“Don’t be,” he said. Although Jack’s voice was usually gruff, his diction stark and minimal, tonight there was such softness. It was as if seeing me this way had brought out a gentle, secret part of him.

I liked it.

Not that that stopped my tears, which kept spilling down my face insistently.

The sympathy on Jack’s face made me speak again, despite my better judgment. “No one came except you.”

While the dark blue of Jack’s eyes had been soft and kind moments before, this news made them flash. An angry edge replaced the tenderness.

“That’s bullshit,” he said. “Your work is great.”

I resisted the urge to point out that he hadn’t looked at my paintings yet. He’d been so focussed on me that it seemed hypocritical to protest that. He was here, Ava was here, and I wasn’t alone.

For now.

Jack watched as my eyes kept producing tears, freshly dripping down my face unimpeded. Although I took a deep breath meant to calm myself, the nerves coursing through me made it ragged and shaky.

“Why don’t you come back with us?” he said. The statement seemed to take effort, like Jack was lifting heavy boulders with each word. That made it all the more meaningful.

“Ok,” I said.

He couldn’t have known how much I needed that company.

He and I stood there silently for the remaining time Ava took to gaze at my paintings, scrutinizing each one close up before stepping backwards to observe it from afar.

She was a special person, and I was infinitely thankful for her enthusiasm, because it made the difference between my night being a complete failure and a touching, needed success.

* * *

Once through the door at Jack’s house, I regretted the amount of wine I’d consumed. Of course, I hadn’t drunk it intentionally, just sipped and sipped until—oops—there was a lot less of it than before. The cumulative effects of those sips fuzzed my brain and made me smile too much.

Now that the tears had stopped, it was all smiles. Or maybe that was the feeling of being around Jack. Something about him drew me closer, like a moth to some backdoor light, unable to look away even if it were lethal.

I hope you won’t hurt me, because I don’t think I could take more hurt.

Jack saw me staring at him and smiled faintly. I was struck by the paranoid thought he could hear what I was thinking. At least Ava was asleep, so I wouldn’t feel quite so lecherous.

“So this was your first show?” he asked, fetching a glass of water for me and a rum and coke for him.

I shook my head. “Not really, I’d been part of a group exhibition a year or so ago… But this was different. Solo. And the first one since my life fell apart.”

“You seem pretty together to me,” he said. I wanted to kiss him just for saying that. The rugged good looks and moan-worthy body was just a bonus.

I laughed. “Glad I’ve fooled you somehow. I’m a hot mess.”

Jack sat down next to me, and with him came the muted scent of rum, aftershave, and something uniquely him, a natural masculine smell that made me want to bury my face in his arms again.

Maybe I’d been alone too long now, and was losing all sense of perspective just because a hot single dad moved in next door.

The wine told my brain to shut up and enjoy it, so I smiled, clinked my water glass against Jack’s rum and coke, and resolved to stop feeling sorry for myself. At least as long as it took to appreciate the gorgeous company I had.

“Hey, at least a hot mess is still hot, right?”

I blushed until I realized Jack was joking, an unusual turn to humor for a serious guy. Maybe he was warming up to me after all.