Chapter 18
Brittany
All my fears realized, Dalton’s words came crashing against with me. After he had come clean about dating my sister and getting sent to jail for assaulting my sister’s killer, I didn’t see him for a week after that. I was still working through the information bomb he had dropped on me.
I felt an odd mix of fear, anger, comfort, and attraction. I was afraid of Dalton, and what other secrets he may still be keeping. He did tell me that he had one more thing to fix, which had sounded quite ominous.
I was angry that I hadn’t known about him and my sister and that Dalton hadn’t said anything when I had mentioned Talia’s name in front of him. I didn’t know if my parents also knew, but I would soon find out by confronting them about Dalton. Strangely, I was also very comforted knowing that Dalton had rearranged my sister’s killer’s face. I felt safer knowing he was down the hall, and I couldn’t help but love him even more knowing that he’d cared deeply for Talia and that Talia had seen something in him that I also saw.
Yet, I vowed to myself to never talk to him ever again. I brought out my painting of Dalton the Bulldog and began to add in paws and claws, coloring them red and dashing what looked to be blood by putting in splatter patterns down the chest.
A voice came from deep inside me. You’re still painting for Dalton. It was not my voice that said it, but it seemed to come from far off as if my sister were pointing out how I still loved him.
I rescinded my previous vow of never speaking to Dalton again, and modified it to only be platonic friends for the rest of our lives. I wanted to love him less, wanted to be free of my attraction to him so I could get on with my life and not be so distracted from the path I was already so far along in, but the voice bubbled up again. You love him more now, don’t you?
I ignored it, and continued my painting. I added a fence around the bulldog, and started to add another animal outside the fence. It was going to be another bulldog, and I thought I was going to paint it with cuts and bruises littering the fur as if Dalton the Bulldog had mauled the poor creature.
Instead, I found myself painting a hole in the fence, and blood dripping down the edges of the small opening. Inside the perimeter of the fence, Dalton the Bulldog sat as a captive. I added bits of chain-link sticking out of his paws to represent how Dalton the Bulldog had bloodied himself while freeing the other bulldog that now roamed free.
“My mad, crazy dog,” I whispered, petting the bulldog on my canvas. Fresh paint from the fence around him brushed off on my fingers, and I spent some extra time fixing the smear I had created. I washed my hands, and then went to bed while banishing all thoughts about Dalton and how he was only inches away next door. My friend, I forcefully told myself, and nothing more. A protector of the weak, but a monstrous animal nonetheless that I must avoid or risk endangering my future even further.
In my dreams, Dalton had me bent over my bed. My mad dog was on top of me, reaching over to remove a leash I had around my neck. In my dream, I didn’t know how it had been clasped to my neck, but I knew Dalton had released it and that it was a representation of my controlling family. As he slipped it off my neck, I could feel the pressure my father had put on me to obey his blueprint for my life get relinquished. With the leash gone, dream-Dalton started to disappear, but my dream-self grabbed his hand and placed it back on my neck, begging him to squeeze.
“You are free, I do not want to leash you.” Dream-Dalton said.
“I know,” I told him, “this is how you let me be free. I’m asking you to take me, not to capture me without permission.”
“I can’t let you be anything, you let yourself be.” Dream-Dalton’s words faded away as my dream continued. He pushed me into the bed and he took me from behind. “No wait, I want to see your eyes.”
Dream-Dalton flipped me over and let his weight fall on top of me, his chest pressed firmly against mine so that I could feel his heat over my entire body. His brown, wild eyes were riveted on my face. We drowned in each other, not coming up for air the rest of the dream.
When I woke up, I reached down into my pajama bottoms as I remembered the dream. Closing my eyes, I tried to recapture the look he had given me, full of fire and thorns, willing to lay his life down for what he cared about. He had cared about Talia, and now he cared about me. I was interrupted by my second alarm clock I always set for emergencies, just in case I overslept and missed class on a test day. Realizing in a panic that my first alarm hadn’t gone off, and that the existence of this alarm meant that I had a test today, I leapt from my bed and hurriedly got ready.
Even in my dreams, Dalton was a dangerous distraction. I had forgotten to study last night, spending all my time in the bulldog piece. Quickly, I ordered a car to drive me to campus from my phone, and then sent a text off to my father. I wanted to meet him and confront him about Dalton and find out how much my father already knew. Since my father was friends with August Jones, I’d be surprised if he didn’t already know everything about Dalton’s criminal record. August, Dalton’s father, would have been the only one to divulge this information to them since Talia hadn’t spoken much about her personal life with my parents the few years before leading up to her death. Perhaps they truly were ignorant, though, since Dalton was in jail when Talia was still with her murderer, and was still in there when the murder occurred. I hadn’t seen him in court when they tried my sister’s killer, and the incident was never brought up during the trial. He must have been forbidden from going to the funeral, too, and I concluded that because of that my parents must know about him and his past. They must have known in order to ban him from appearing to pay his respects and mourn her loss, unless there was another reason he hadn’t attended.
My father agreed to meet with me tomorrow, and my car brought me to campus with only a few minutes to spare. I scrambled to my chair, and took one of the worst tests I’d ever taken in my life. I failed the test and didn’t even attempt the essay question.
To clear my head and calm down, I walked down to the harbor. As I was gazing out at the ocean and contemplating what I would do if they kicked me out of school for the terrible score I would get from the test I had just turned in, a man called out my name.
“Ah, once again it is the beautiful lady with smart taste in art,” he said, approaching me where I leaned on the railing. It was the artist I had met with Dalton, the one who had sold him the painting now hanging in the apartment complex hallway.
“It’s you,” I pointed to him, not remembering is name.
“That it is.” He let loose a Cheshire grin and hugged me, making a pecking sound as he mimed kissing me on both cheeks without actually making contact. “Marty,” he introduced himself, deducing that I had forgotten his name.
“Hello again, Marty.”
“Where is your hunk?” he said, giving me a wink and looking around.
“I don’t have a hunk,” I told him, chuckling. “I have an apartment manager.”
“And a fine one at that.” Marty took my hand, dragging me toward the nearby Bizarre Bazaar. “Come, come, I have something I know you’ll just adore.”
He brought me into the back of the shop where five paintings hung in a row. Each one had items other than paint adorning them: one had faux fish scales that were peeling off to reveal a man with a liquor bottle stuck in his gills, a second had fishing line wrapped around the painting of a woman who looked akin to Aphrodite, and the others had different things along the same theme. The one in the center held my interest the most, depicting a swordfish wearing a muzzle. Actual, physical straps from the muzzle warped the fabric of the canvas and distorted the image.
“The center one I did.” Marty said, beaming proudly. “The rest are all locals, it’s all part of a weekly viewing of nearby artists who want to showcase their work.”
“It’s lovely.”
“What piece are you working on now? I’d love to see your work sometime.”
I took a step back. “How did you know?”
“How could I not? Your man came in here when he bought my painting of Trapped Fire Yet Unclipped Wings. Pretentious title I know, no apologies.” He chuckled to himself, slightly derailing his train of thought, but then effortlessly switched back to talking about Dalton. “Your man would not shut his trap about you, about how talented you were and how you embodied fire. He said fire dripped off of you because you were so full of ferocious flame.”
“He told you all that?”
“Your bad boy is sort of a sappy romantic, did you not know? Like, in all serious, I did not paraphrase what he said. He literally told me you dripped fire. It was the cutest thing ever.”
“I don’t think he’s ever seen my work.”
“Honey, I don’t think it matters to him, he can see through to your fire.”