Levi's Blue: A Sexy Southern Romance (5 page)

Levi does as I ask. I feel the tendons in his wrist working because I’m still lightly holding the base of his hand.  I can’t seem to make myself let go.

“Feels sort of like toothpaste, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah, it does.”

I take a towel from the table and wipe his fingers clean then dip one into the black paint.  “Now tell me how this one feels.”

“It’s a lot thinner, like oil.”

“Exactly!  Some people can’t tell the difference at all, but most can.  I’ve just done this for long enough, and my tactile senses are so developed, that I can tell the difference between dozens of colors.  The whole process is called ‘haptic painting’. It just means to use touch.”

“So
that’s
how you mix your paints to get such beautiful colors.”

My face heats, and I know I’m blushing.  “Yes.  That’s how I get what I
hope
are beautiful colors.”

“They are.  Trust me. I’ve never seen anything like them.  They look like they could leap off the canvas.  Become a part of the air, part of the
real
world.”

I fall quiet, as does he.  As we stand facing each other, neither able to see the other, something happens.  Something shifts. Something changes. 

I don’t know what it is or how to describe it, but I know it’s significant. I can
feel
the difference.  The irrevocable plunge into something deeper, more meaningful.  Like some invisible cog clicked and fell into place, and now we just…fit.

Maybe it’s that, for the first time since losing my sight, someone has bothered to come into
my
world to find
me.

Maybe it’s that he was looking for me,
searching for me,
as much as I was looking for him, even though I thought I’d given up.

Maybe it’s that he seems to understand me now. 
Really
understand me. 

Or maybe it’s just my overactive imagination.

It could be.

But I hope it’s not.

For a woman like me, hope is a dangerous thing.  For people with disabilities, dashed hopes can be crushing. They’re harder to recover from. 

I know as surely as I’m standing here, as surely as I feel his body heat gushing toward me, that this man could destroy me.  That this—whatever
this
is—could be devastating for me.

I should run.

I know I should run.

But I know that I won’t.

I know
that
without a doubt, too. 

Because some things are worth hurting over.  I just hope Levi is one of them.

I shake my head to clear it, forcing myself out of the moment.

“Now try the brown,” I urge in an unsteady voice, moving on as if nothing happened, even though my every nerve and sense is trained solely on him.

We repeat the process and he tests the brown, but rather than wiping his finger, I guide it to the canvas.  “Use your free hand to feel the outline of the flower. Find the long line of the stem.  Can you feel it?”

“Yes.”

“Now take the finger with the paint on it and swipe from the bottom of the stem upward, toward the center in smooth strokes.  Go slowly.  Stay inside the line.”

I lead Levi and the rest of the class through filling in the stem, and then the leaves, right down to the thin veins that run along them. Then we move on to work on the large, velvety brown center.

I feel every movement of Levi’s body as it brushes mine.  The lift of his arms, the shift of his legs, the way he lists toward me when he speaks, like he’s as drawn to me as I am to him.

I show him how to work the paint and the canvas, touching him freely, unabashedly while I can. 

In my mind’s eye, I can
see
the flower taking on life and breath as clearly as I can
feel
the awakening of something between us.  Suddenly, like the sun breaking through the clouds, I realize what it is, and what it
can be
.  Something fresh and beautiful—simple, uncomplicated attraction. Nothing more, nothing less.

No pressure.

No motives.

Just attraction. 

That
I can deal with. 
That
I can fall into. 
That
I can let myself go to.

Relief and excitement run through me like a river, flooding the dry creek bed of my soul. Filling that part of me that never really stopped longing for
this.

The feelings he evokes in me… They’re as thrilling as painting is.

I refuse to think how scary that should be.

How scary it
will
be when I wake from this dream.

My painting is all I have.  For years, this has been it.  And for years to come, this will be my life.  What would happen if something (or someone) stole that from me like the accident stole my vision, stole the life I had planned out?

I would die.

I would wither and die.

I would have nothing. Nothing to live for, nothing to contribute. No way to breathe.

That thought functions like a spritz of ice water to my dreaming face.  It reminds me that,
for that reason alone
, I have to keep a tight grip on myself.  I can enjoy this, but only so much.  I can’t let this man get under my skin. My skin is all I have protecting me from the world, from the sharp objects of life.  From utter destruction.

“You do the petals,” Levi finally says to me as I absently mix bright yellow into a rich gold.  “I want to see you work.”

“He took off his blindfold, Ms. Evie!” Alana tattles merrily.

“It’s okay, Alana.  He’s going to watch me paint for a while. That’s all right, isn’t it?”

“Yeah!” she replies exuberantly.  Nothing gets that child down. Not even the hands she lost when an automatic van door closed and locked on them two years ago.  She is the very definition of resilience, and I won’t be a bit surprised to see her take the world by storm as she grows.

“Well, how does your part look?” I ask Levi as I dip my own fingertip into the bold golden mixture.

“Uhhh, like a dog wiped his feet on it.”

I chuckle.  “Maybe I can help.”

I raise my left hand and trail it from the top of the canvas downward, so as not to get into Levi’s wet paint. I feel the first of the petal outlines graze my fingertips, so I skim around the outside to familiarize myself with the shape again, to learn the edges and the design. I trace each line until I find one to the right of the center of the sunflower, and I sweep my finger along the top border, following the shape in a smooth arc.

I redip and go again.

As I wipe my finger and add different colors, yellows and whites and browns, I’m constantly picturing the subtleties of each petal in my mind, adding life and depth, highlight and shadow, feeling the flower come alive as I go.  Before I realize it, I’m lost in a world of color and shape and texture that only I can see. As if I’m alone in the universe, my fingers move in a rhythm that comes from deep within me.

Levi’s voice almost startles me when he speaks.

“This is incredible,” he whispers from just over my right shoulder.  He’s so close I can feel the heat of his chest warming my back. 

I smile, secure in my happy place.  I feel protected.  Unbreakable.  “Thank you.”

“This looks different from some of your other work, though.  Do you always use your fingers?”

“Not always. I use brushes, too, but it takes longer, and this class isn’t about perfection. It’s about expression and learning and healing.”

There’s a long pause, and I wish I could see his expression right now.

“What you do…” he begins quietly, his voice full of enough awe to make my heart swell.  “All of it…it’s amazing. 
You’re
amazing,” he adds even more softly.

Of all the accolades I’ve gotten since I began painting, of all the praise, both public and private, I’ve gotten in recent months, none have seemed quite as pleasing, quite as
genuine
as this.  None have thrilled me quite so much.

I smile.  “No. I’m just a good maker of lemonade.”

CHAPTER 6

LEVI

I DON’T quite know how I feel about things when the class is over and I’m left to watch Evie clean up as the kids leave with their parents.

Most of the children hug Evie before they go. 
All
of the parents thank her. And they mean it. It’s there in every line on their haggard, exhausted faces.  I imagine that many of them tried all sorts of things to help their sons and daughters find a way to cope with their disabilities before they found Evie. Maybe some worked.  Maybe some didn’t. 

But Evie obviously has.

I watch her as she moves about the quiet room, barely having to feel her way along the cabinets to store things away where they belong.  Sometimes I could almost forget that she’s blind.

She stops suddenly and whirls to face me.  It’s odd that she always seems to know where I am in relation to her, like she can feel me.  “What are you thinking right now?”

Her question takes me so off guard that I answer with complete honesty.  “That you move in this intuitive way, like you can feel things around you.”

Well,
sort of complete.

“Everyone who has a key to this room knows not to move anything.  Not only is it comforting for the kids to have familiar, expected surroundings, but it keeps me from busting my ass.”

She laughs at that, a self-deprecating smile wreathing her face.

“And what an ass it is,” I quip. I can’t seem to help myself.  She
does
have a phenomenal ass.

“Right?” she says, slapping her hand against it in a sassy way that makes me grit my teeth and go pleasantly rigid from head to toe.

I smile tightly so that I don’t groan out loud.

“You also have this way of making everyone around you feel happy and optimistic and…normal.”

She shrugs one shoulder, unseating the tip of her blonde ponytail and sending it slithering down her back.  “I learned a long time ago that people like me can’t let their guard down. We can’t stop
trying
. Not ever.  Not for one second.  It’s too easy to give up. To give in.  So I take my lemons and make them as sweet as I can. Every day. And hopefully, I can help others do the same.”

“I’m pretty sure my life is meaningless compared to yours.”

She chuckles.  “I doubt that.  You can tell me all about your amazing accomplishments at lunch. I’m almost done.”

“Are you sure there’s nothing I can do to help?”

“Actually, you can take that extra stool back to the corner and je suis fini,” she says with a flourish.

“French?  Are you fluent?”

“Oh, hell no! I wish.”

“So, you never studied it?”

“I did in high school.  I was going to be a world class photographer. You know, go to college then study abroad for a few years. Paris, Prague, Italy. The regular.”

She’s trying to be nonchalant, but she’s not entirely successful. “But that didn’t work out like you planned.”  I verbalize the unspoken words that were left dangling from the end of her sentence like bodies from a hanging tree.

The twist of her lips turns wry, disappointed.  For a second, I can feel her sadness like a physical coolness seeping in to steal the warmth from the room.  “No, not by a long shot. Now my grandest travel wish is to go to the bayou.”

“The bayou? Like
New Orleans’
bayous?”

“Yep.  Pretty flashy, huh?”

“I would’ve thought you’d already been.  Are you not originally from Louisiana then?”

“No.  Pennsylvania.”

“With a last name like de Champlain?”

“My father was born in Louisiana, but we never visited.  Family issues. Harsh words, hard feelings.  You know how that goes.”

“Yeah.  I know how that goes.” 
All too well.
  “So, then how did you end up here?”

The melancholy deepens with her answer.  “My parents are the tough love kind. Cold fish.  When I lost my sight, they only let me leave school for one semester.  They didn’t want me to come home and be ‘babied.’ Once I went back to college, it was hard to go home very often. The logistics of a blind girl traveling by herself is harder than you think, so I stayed in New York for the most part.  It began to feel like home, the people there like my family.  Even after I graduated, I stayed. I had my friends and my painting.  A few years later, my best friend, Cherelyn, got an opportunity down here as an event planner. She’d been in a terrible breakup, one she still hasn’t recovered from by the way, and she needed a roommate.  I needed a fresh start, and I’d always wanted to visit Louisiana, but Dad would never come so… Here I am.”

I nod, but then stop myself, remembering that she can’t see it.  “So, why the bayou?”

“Are you always so nosey?” Her question is direct, but her expression is light. 

“Yes.  Always.”  I don’t tell her that it seems I’m only this nosey where
she
is concerned. For some extremely perplexing reason, I want to know everything about her—what makes her tick, how she sees the world, what she wants out of life. How to keep her talking and laughing and edging her way closer to me, even though she doesn’t seem aware of doing it.

Her grin is wry, but at least she’s grinning.  “When I was younger, I used to watch all the movies and read all the books I could about Louisiana.  I always hoped Dad would take me, but…he never did.  As I got older, the artist in me wanted to photograph it.  It seemed like such an interesting place. The culture, the landscape. The environment—it’s all very unique. Lots of unusual things in this state, especially down around New Orleans.”

“So, then why haven’t you been yet?”

There is a long, telling pause.  It looks like there are
some questions
she isn’t as comfortable answering as others.

“A lot of reasons.”

I decide not to push it and simply say, “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, me, too.”  As I watch, she abandons the moment of sadness, and I actually see her pull herself together. She straightens her spine, takes a deep breath, and smiles. Her guard is back up, optimism firmly in place.  “But I have my painting.”

“And it’s seriously amazing. It’s still hard to believe you can do it without being able to
see
it.  How do you
do
that?”

Evie moves the rest of the way to me, never missing a beat, and loops her arm through mine, saying, “Feed me and I’ll tell you all about it.”

“Done.  Where are we going?”

“I know a place. Come on.”

She leads me out of the building as though she has no trouble seeing where she’s going, then turns us onto the sidewalk.

Neither of us says anything as we walk. Oddly enough, it’s a comfortable silence.  She seems to be enjoying the walk, and I’m enjoying
her
enjoying the walk. 

It’s a warm autumn day and there’s a little bit of a breeze, just enough to ruffle Evie’s hair. She turns her face up to the sun often, and I wonder what she’s thinking. Is she remembering what it looks like?  Can she see anything at all?  The brightness of it, shapes, anything?  Is she feeling, smelling, hearing things I’m not aware of?  Or is she just feeling
me,
like I’m feeling her?

When we’re seated at a small table for two on the patio of a quaint bistro, Evie takes off her sunglasses and pins me with a stare that’s eerily
seeing,
even though it’s not.

“So ask me.”

“Ask you what?”

“All the things you want to ask.”

She pops a piece of the fluffy bread the waitress set on the table into her mouth, her lips curved into a sexy half-smile as she chews.

“Okay, well… How do you do it? How do you paint like that?  How do you remember the details of things so clearly?”

Her answer is immediate and deadpan.  “Witchcraft.”

I eye her dubiously, forgetting again that she can’t see me doing it.  “Are you ever serious?”

“Is that a real question?  Because that was a real answer. Sort of.  I’ve actually been accused of that before—witchcraft.  People start getting
all kinds of weird
when they find out I’m blind and paint the way I do.”

“You’re joking.”

“Nope. Not even a little.”

“Well, that’s some bullshit.”

“That’s what I say.  With a smile, of course.”  She demonstrates just such a smile, and I find myself answering it.

“Maybe you
are
a witch,” I muse quietly, more to myself than to her.  Her hearing is far too sensitive to hide mutterings from her, though, and she grins in response.  “So really, how?”

She shrugs, tearing off another piece of bread and laying it on her tongue like it’s the best kind of cotton candy.  I’ve never seen someone savor food this way. Of course, I’ve never eaten with a blind person either.

I could watch her eat for hours.  

“When I lost my sight, my whole life had been centered on my vision. If I wasn’t taking pictures, I was looking at everything as though I was viewing it through the lens of my camera.  Everywhere I went, I analyzed color and shape and texture and shadow.  Details most people never notice.  So when I could no longer see those things, I had to dredge them up from memory.  That’s when I began to relate everything to something I remembered seeing.  The texture of burlap, the sheen of silk, the glow of moonlight.  Colors, too.  I imagine everything as it relates to something I’ve seen.  Grass green, clown nose red, Prince purple, denim blue.  There are thousands and thousands of pictures in my mind, all with subtle variations of color and texture. And all so vivid, like I saw them only yesterday.  So when I began to paint, I would think about them in that way, like how much Hello Kitty pink I’d need to add to taxi cab yellow to get sunset orange.  See what I mean?”

I nod slowly, even more fascinated by her now. By her talent and her tenacity.  By what she’s made of her life, herself, her talent.  Now I see what she meant about lemonade, see how she turned her life around. 

I have to agree with Evie. She’s a damn good maker of lemonade.

“So, you can’t see anything
at all
?”

“Bright light gives me a headache, so I can see that if you want to call it ‘seeing’.  I can…perceive brightness.  And darkness. Some very vague shapes if they’re backlit.”

“That’s why the sunglasses sometimes then.”

She nods. “That’s why the sunglasses.  Like the classroom. It’s so bright with natural light, it can sometimes give me a headache if it’s sunny.  But more than that, I try to be considerate of others. Looking into eyes that don’t look back makes some people uncomfortable.  I especially don’t want the kids to feel anything but at ease around me.”

“So, what you’re saying is you don’t care how
I
feel?” I tease.

She laughs. “Not in the slightest.”

“Well, just so you
know,
it doesn’t bother me at all. I love your eyes.  Whether you can see with them or not, they’re beautiful.” 

She merely smiles, making no comment. 

“You’re not like other women,” I contemplate aloud.

“Gee, thanks,” she replies dryly, still savoring her bread.

“I mean that as the highest form of a compliment.”

“In that case… Gee, thanks,” she repeats.  There’s amusement in her voice, though. And in her expression.

“You’re easy and relaxed.  Natural.  Fun. You make
me
feel that way, too.”

She pauses, her hand midway to her mouth with another pinch of bread.  “Did you just call me easy?”

I laugh. “God, you’re impossible.  That’s not what I meant at all.  I mean that you’ve just got this way about you.  Maybe it’s
because
you’re blind, because you’ve had to adjust and not take life and people too seriously. I don’t know, but…it’s a good thing.  A
very
good thing.”

“My only other choice is to let this make me bitter and depressed and unhappy.  And that’s not really a choice at all, is it?”

She doesn’t know it, but
that statement
just validated exactly what I was trying to say.

“Okay, enough of the compliments.  I don’t want to give you a big head.”

“God forbid we make the blind woman feel good about herself,” she exclaims acerbically with a roll of her eyes.  Her laugh lets me know she’s joking, though.  Seems like most everything with her is lighthearted.

Most
everything.

“So tell me about your life.”

“You know too much about me already.  Why don’t
you
tell
me
about
yours
?”

“Compared to yours, my life is boring.”

“How so?”

“I’m in shipping.  My days are mostly spent either on docks or in an office or traveling between the two.”