The Art of Appreciation (27 page)

In the end, though, he discovered he didn’t have the balls to show up completely unannounced. His mother’s warning kept drifting through his head at odd moments, and he gave in to the urge to check his plan with Abby’s schedule.

Abby’s phone rang only once before she answered. She sounded both pleased and rushed. “Matt! You must have been reading my mind. I was just thinking about you.”

“Good thoughts, I hope? Full of nudity?”

Abby laughed. “Always. Perv.”

“You know it. Listen, Pretty, I have a question for you: How would you feel about a guest? I miss you. I have a good start on the fifth statue, and I thought I’d take a break this weekend.”

“Oh, Matt.” Abby’s tone was heavy. “I can’t this weekend. That’s why I was thinking about calling you. I’ll be in New York. Our sister gallery is wrapping up a display of some artifacts that we show next. I’m escorting them here on Monday. I’d invite you to meet me in New York, but I’ll be working the entire time. I’m sorry.”

“So am I.” Matt closed his eyes and concentrated on the breeze that was stirring his hair away from his forehead. “We can’t seem to catch a break, can we?”

“Nope,” Abby whispered. They were quiet for a minute. “I miss you.”

“Yeah.”
Doesn’t change anything, though, does it?

“I want—I really need time, even just a weekend, with you.” Abby sighed. “Can we try this again in a couple of weeks? I swear to God, no more weekend work plans after this.”

“Sure,” Matt answered, vowing to pay more attention to his mother’s advice in the future.

They talked for a few more minutes before Abby was called away by her intern. Matt was sad to hear her tone go from warm and relaxed as they chatted back to tight and harried right before she hung up.

“Well, fuck.” He tossed his phone onto the desk and crumpled up the list of activities he’d been planning. Childish? Absolutely. But the dull thump of the paper as it hit the bottom of the empty trash can echoed the feeling in his heart, so it seemed right.

When Claire entered the studio on Monday morning, she found Matt working on his sculpture with absolute concentration. Pearl Jam crashed in the background. His hair lay lankly against his head, his eyes were ringed in shadow, and five days’ growth of beard roughened his cheeks. Empty plates and glasses were stacked on his desk with one of the glasses covering his phone, and the whitish rouge of dried terra-cotta daubed his bare chest and lower legs. Evidence of a weekend spent almost solely in the company of clay. Crossing to the stereo, Claire snapped it off.

“Hey, Van Gogh! I’ve been trying to get hold of you since yesterday morning. Answer your damned phone.”

Matt never took his eyes off the shoulder muscle he was detailing.

“Don’t you mean…I don’t know—Michelangelo? Van Gogh was a painter. I’d fail you in my class for not knowing the difference.” He measured his progress with a glance at his photograph of Zoe and applied the wire loop again.

“Van Gogh was the crazy one, right? I think I made the correct comparison.” She was rewarded for her weak joke when Matt chuckled. He wiped a bit of dried clay off the side of his nose with the edge of his hand, unintentionally depositing another, bigger, clump in his eyebrow.

He dropped the loop to the table and nodded toward the statue, which was now fully roughed in. Its upper portion was beautifully finished. “Progress, right?”

“Right. But at what a price. You need a shower, mister, and something to eat. Then I have something pretty to show you.”

She refused to say another word until Matt reentered the studio a half-hour later in clean shorts and a tee, with his wet hair swept back from his forehead and a sandwich clutched in his hand.

“Much better.” She threw open the windows of the studio to a brisk breeze. Matt stared toward his statue in concern. Claire laid a gentle hand on his arm. “Taken care of. I haven’t forgotten how to cover a fresh clay.”

She tugged him toward the desk and started his computer. “I have something you’ll like to see.” She typed in a web address. After clicking through a couple of windows, she pushed away from the desk with an air of triumph. “There you go.”

Claire’s explanation of how she’d spotted the picture during her daily perusal of art news passed in one ear and out the other. It was a picture of an Abby he’d only had a small glimpse of in Santa Cruz. His eyes jumped from one detail in the picture to the next, from Abby’s perfectly fitted dress, highlighted with tiny jet beads, to her shapely legs, lengthened by high heels. Her hair was no longer in the loose waves he’d enjoyed shaping around his index finger, nor was it in the loose chignon she’d worn both times they’d gone out together. Now it was a shoulder-skimming expanse of shiny, straightened hair, smoothed back into a clip that glittered with stones. One hand balanced a wine glass and a canapé while the other rested on the forearm of an impeccably dressed, dark haired man. She was laughing up at him, leaning into his side.

Matt sank down into the chair, reading the caption below the picture:
Fiona Grant Shaw curator, Abby Reynolds, celebrates her successful presentation of ancient Indian terra-cotta panels.

“Isn’t it wonderful, Matt?”

“I had no idea her position was so…” Matt’s mind was blank.

Claire opened another window. “You should look at this, then.” The site for the Fiona Grant Shaw museum popped onto the screen. “This is a fantastic museum, Matt. Didn’t you guys talk about this stuff?”

Matt shook his head. Pages of exhibits of both ancient and cutting-edge art were listed, many of them curated by Dr. Abby Reynolds. Special note was made of her curation of a display of Etruscan terra-cottas the previous March, her research for which had earned the museum a special award.

Lost in the museum’s website, Matt didn’t even notice when Claire kissed the top of his head and left.

It was dinnertime before Matt was finished tracking Abby online. He was ashamed that he’d never thought to research where she worked and how important she was there, though he’d been fine shaping their relationship around
his
work.

He shut the computer down and sat in the waning light, thinking about Abby and the life she’d built in Boston. Nothing he could do or give her could compare to what she already had—and what was ahead for her. Abby was worried about what Matt would give up if he skipped out on Baker for her, but that was a joke. Boston Abby was gorgeous and smart, with more to lose than she would gain by coming back to Santa Cruz to hang out with a beachcomber-slash-artist.

To come back to him.

No matter how badly he needed her.

A
BBY
J
ERKED
F
ROM
S
LEEP
when she realized that the banging she heard was real and coming from the door across the room. She drew her hand from between her legs with a moue of disgust, and her building orgasm curdled to a sour pain in the pit of her stomach.

Another hard knock rattled the door in the frame, and Abby recognized Sarah’s anxious voice. “Abby, damn it! Open the door!”

Stumbling over the afghan that had been tossed onto the floor during her dream, Abby yanked open the door. Sarah pushed past her, looking around the room with worried curiosity.

“No one here?”

Abby closed the door. “Who would be here?”

Sarah wandered from the living room to the kitchen, peeping down the hall on the way. “How do I know? It just took you forever to answer, and it was your idea to go for coffee this morning. And the noise you were making?” She returned to the living room to collapse onto the messy sofa. Her shoulders were relaxed, and she even laughed at Abby’s horrified face. “I couldn’t decide if you were being boinked or strangled. I was going to get Mrs. Case’s passkey, but I was afraid what I’d find.” She ruffled her own hair and puffed out a breath. “Neither other people’s nudity nor death is any way to start the day.”

Abby dropped into a chair, groaning.

Giving her friend a minute to collect herself, Sarah rose and began straightening the cluttered room, tossing papers into the recycling basket and clothes toward the bathroom hamper. She stopped at Matt’s sculpture, and her eyes softened. “Good for you, Matt,” she whispered, tracing the glowing pink marble with one hand.

She straightened and fussed around the room until she paused again next to a sheet-covered form. “What’s this?” she asked, not waiting for Abby’s response or permission before tugging the cloth off what turned out to be a canvas on a stand. The swirl of color and shadow was wild and uninhibited, passion and pain and anxiety plain in every stroke.

Sarah stepped back, drawing a slow breath. “Abby…this is—”

“Nothing.” Abby dismissed Sarah’s sentence with a wave of her hand.

“No. It’s not.” Sarah turned to face Abby, her mouth set in a firm line. “You know better, and so do I. When did you start painting again? Because I haven’t seen you touch a brush in forever.”

“Matt tricked me into starting again after you left Santa Cruz.” She smiled at the memory. “Then the other day…well, you know what a bitch work has been. I had another ‘discussion’ with Gretchen, and I had to get out of there. I got on the T, and the next thing I knew, I was at Blick’s with my arms full of painting supplies and my credit card out.” She shook her head. “Impulse buys.”

“A good impulse.” Sarah perched on the arm of Abby’s chair. Wrapping her arm around her friend’s shoulders, she squeezed. “Regardless, you need coffee and food, and I need the full story on why you were making sex and death noises on your couch, all alone on a Sunday morning.” She dodged Abby’s elbow jab.

After a shower, Abby felt as ready as she ever would be for a trip out. Residue of her dream clung to her, making her feel dirty in a way that no shower could clean. She welcomed the dash to the car through icy October rain, hoping it would refresh her soul.

Within a short while, she and Sarah were ensconced at their favorite table at Red Barn Coffee Roasters in Faneuil Hall, warm mugs of coffee cradled between their freezing palms.

“So? Hit me with the gory details,” Sarah said, pushing her wet hair back from her forehead and smirking at Abby’s red face. “It can’t have been that bad.”

“You wanna bet?” Abby said.

Sarah sipped at her coffee and looked at Abby through narrowed eyes. “You know I’ll get it out of you eventually, right? And here—” she looked around at the almost empty shop “—is far better than Macy’s during a sale.”

“Fine,” Abby grumbled. She launched into her dream, finding that her embarrassment and horror mellowed into a wry humor and snorts of laughter as she talked.

“Good God,” Sarah snickered. “You don’t do these things by half, do you?” She broke into a belly laugh. “That was like a misguided mixture of a bodice ripper and a horror novel. What did you eat last night?”

Abby groaned. “My brain hates me.” They chuffed laughter into their cups until the barista looked at them curiously. “Everything about that was just wrong. It wasn’t Matt, for fuck’s sake. Not the sudden appearance, not the hokey words, not the rush to sex…”

“Not the Hawaiian shirt,” Sarah offered. “No, really. I’ve seen him in plain button-down shirts and plaid button-down shirts and T-shirts and, best of all, no shirt.” She laughed again when Abby threw a napkin at her. “But never a Hawaiian shirt. That would be too cliché for him. That’s the first thing that would have tipped me off that something was wrong.” She drained her cup and looked at Abby out of the corner of her eye. “Of course, you were sort of occupied…”

“Ha ha. Very funny.” Abby emptied her own cup and caught the barista’s eye, indicating that they needed refills. After the girl warmed their cups and stepped back behind the counter, Abby sighed. “This situation is a mess.”

“It sure is,” Sarah said. “You dreamed about Conor, Abby. This disturbs me on so many levels.”

Abby kicked Sarah’s chair. “I don’t see why it should. You’ve thrown us together at every chance. I’m not worried about him being in my dream at all—he was the anti-Matt for the most part. You’ve got to stop the matchmaking, Sarah. He’s a nice guy, but nowhere near what I want.”

Sarah threw her hands in the air and crowed, “She sees daylight!”

Abby grabbed her friend’s arm, jerking it down. “Would you hold it down, jackass?” she hissed. “What are you talking about?”

“Jeez, you can be dense.” Sarah lowered her voice for emphasis. “I haven’t seen anything as pitiful as the way you looked when you got home from Santa Cruz, but you refused to acknowledge that you’d made a mistake. You said you wanted things to go back to normal, so I thought, ‘Fine. If she wants normal, I’ll give it to her.’ Conor is
exactly
what was normal for you before we left for the summer: pleasant-looking, easy-going, and most of all, not interested in commitment.” She waited for Abby’s mouth to close before she continued. “I thought you’d see through me and hop the next plane to sunny California. It totally freaked me out when you let me keep throwing you together.”

Abby slumped in her seat. “That was a dirty trick.”

“Then why did you let me do it?” Sarah shot back. “You don’t want Conor, Abby. You just said it yourself.”

“Maybe I’m hedging my bets.” Abby looked down at her hands. “I’m beginning to hate everything about the museum. I have to work later and later, and all I can think of is getting home to paint or going back to Matt. But lately, all he talks about is his work. So maybe it’s a hint that I’m bothering him. I hate this.”

“Here’s a novel idea: talk to him. You’ll never know until you ask.” Sarah tweaked Abby’s cheek. “Buck up, lusty wench. All is not a loss.”

A laugh burst from Abby’s unwilling throat. “You really are a shit, you know? You will never let me live down that dream, will you?”

“Never.” Sarah rose from her seat and grabbed her coat. “And I’m
your
shit, and you love me.” She paused a moment and processed her last sentence. “Good lord, that sounded awful.” She stared at Abby expectantly. “Well? Don’t you have a call to make?”

Abby’s heart dropped when she heard the weariness in Matt’s voice. After asking about Sarah and David, he questioned her about how she was weathering the increasing cold and wet and seemed truly pleased to hear that she was painting again. Inevitably, though, the statues dominated his conversation. He seemed anxious that she understand how hard he was working. Hearing about new potential commissions terrified her—though it was great for his career, if he followed through with half of them, he wouldn’t have a free moment for over a year.

“Matt, are we okay?” Abby blurted. She expected him to ask what she’d meant, but when he didn’t speak, her heart began to pound. Nothing couldn’t be good. Nothing could mean he was gearing up to let her down easy.

“You have a great position at your museum, Abby. We spent so much time worrying about whether I’d be able to finish some stupid pool statues, you never thought to tell me you’d be giving up a job that some people only dream of?”

“Because…it’s no big thing?” His snort of disbelief strengthened her hesitant response. “I have a great title, yeah, but it’s in a small museum. I make a nickel an hour in one of the most expensive cities in the US, and I work sixty hours a week on a good week. Now I’m in the middle of planning an exhibit, and coordinating the different factions is adding at least ten more to that. My bank account regularly hovers around empty, no matter how many degrees I have. Dream life, right?” She ran out of steam and curled into the corner of the couch. She pulled her talisman from beneath her pillow and buried her face in its folds, mourning the loss of Matt’s scent. “Worst of all, I’m thousands of miles away from the one thing that feels real anymore.” She leaned her head against the back of the couch. “I miss you so much, Matt. What brought this on?”

“Claire. Not that she expected me to go nuts,” he added hastily. “She pointed out a picture of you on the Internet, at that party in New York.” There was wistfulness in his voice that Abby hadn’t heard before. “After I saw you in your element and your name all over the museum website, I guess I have to wonder what you’d want with a surf bum like me.” He hesitated before continuing, and the pain in his voice had brought tears to Abby’s eyes. “Maybe this isn’t going to work, Pretty.”

“No.” Abby clutched the phone like a lifeline. “I refuse to hear this. That woman in the picture is me, except she’s not. She’s who I used to be.” She thought of the sleek haircut and pallor she saw in the mirror each morning before she slipped into her city disguise and stalked out to cut the feet out from under her competitors and colleagues. “Who I am again, I guess. But she’s not all of me—the best part is who I am with you.”

“Abby—”

“All I want with you is love, Matt.” She burst into tears. “Just that.”

“Pretty…don’t cry, Abby. I know you do. I know it.” He made comforting noises until her sobs tapered off. When she finally drew a clear breath, he sounded more normal, like something within him had relaxed. “Abby, this is making me crazy. Christmas is too long to wait.”

“Agreed. This stupid exhibit opens right before Thanksgiving…” She left her sentence dangle, hoping he’d bite.

He did. “Good, because I’m ahead on Baker’s silliness. If I push, I can be done by the end of November. Just a little over a month, and then I’m getting on the first plane to Boston.” Abby could imagine him in much the same position as she was now holding: slumped into his couch, exhausted, eyes closed. “I never want to have to hear you cry on the phone again. It kills me.”

After a long while of sharing the sweet and silly thoughts that only lovers understand, Abby hung up her phone with a smile. Thanksgiving couldn’t come soon enough.

Or maybe it wouldn’t come at all.

Abby glared up from her notes, irritated at being interrupted by throat clearing just beyond her desk. She rearranged her expression for the museum’s director. “Sorry, Gretchen.” She tossed her glasses on the desk and rubbed her eyes. “Just going over the agreement with the French government again. They’re damn picky about loaning their treasures, and I want to be sure everything is copasetic before Thanksgiving.”

Gretchen Dahl smiled in commiseration. “Just what I wanted to talk to you about. Would you come into my office when you’re finished here? I think you’ll be glad you did.” Her heels click-clacked as she marched back down the hall.

“I’ll bet I won’t,” Abby muttered, a hard knot of anxiety forming in her stomach. She finished her task and posted her final notes via courier to her compatriot at the French embassy. Tidying her desk helped Abby clear her mind, as did a quick check of her makeup and hair in the mirror. When she couldn’t put the visit off any longer, she pushed her chair under her desk, smiled at Clint, whose expression was sympathetic, and headed out the door.