The Anatomy of Emotion

Chapter Seventeen

January—Cannes

Maeva leans so close to her canvas that the sharp paint smell turns in her stomach. So close she can feel the air stir as she blends highlights into Alex's curls. The rest of the canvas is covered, hiding the other four men. She has been shifting it bit by bit over the past weeks—a little left for Cameron, a little more for Quentin, right for Alex and Nathaniel. Corin's face stays covered in the middle. She tells Saria it keeps her focused on one person's features at a time, and Saria takes it in with huge, gullible eyes. Maeva knows she keeps the heavy curtain in place because she remembers his face every time she looks at the flawless rendition of it. Not the narrow, intense face that he had posed with. No, she sees his features pulled up into that grin, light and careless as summer bubbles. His poison blues glittering with humor, simmering with desire. The thick churn of pain in his eyes the day he had walked away from her, how they have become a little more toxic each time she has seen him since.

Maeva takes another dip into a sand colored mixture and adds highlights to Alex's crown. His soft cedar-bark curls are just starting to look like hair. She sets her brush down for a smaller one, and starts blocking out his lashes in a darker brown than his hair. His mouth comes next, in a soft pink, and she starts his tattoo in green.

Her headphones have sat untouched on the sofa for weeks now, so she hears the doorbell to the gallery ring, and is prepared for the hammer of Saria's boots on the hollow steps. Maeva still cringes and pulls her brush far away from the canvas.

"Miss Leroux, one of them," Saria makes a waving motion to the canvas, "is here to see you."

Maeva grips her brush a little tighter and flinches. But it is a half-moment reaction. Corin is 'Mister Olivier' on a good day and 'the singer with the blue eyes' on a scattered day. The person at the door is not him.

"Thank you, Saria," she puts her brush in water, pulls the cover back over the canvas, and follows back down the steps to the door.

The face she had just been painting stares back at her, but here with a proper range of color value and aviator sunglasses. Alex smiles as he sees her, but only a little, nothing of his usual cat's grin. Maeva schools her features to an even more advanced neutrality. It doesn't matter that it isn't Corin, that pitying smile tells her he is still here.

"What do you want, Alex?"

"I thought we should go to dinner. Talk, catch up, you know," he says.

"I'm a bit busy right now."

"I think you can make time for this. It's important to me."

His brows rise over his sunglasses, and she can see him blinking behind them. After a short consideration of his stance—straight, unmoving—and his jaw—closed, serious, she sighs.

"Fine. I'll be back, Saria."

Her assistant fusses back.

Alex's combat boots thump beside Maeva's clacking ankle booties as they walk. He asks her how she is, she says she is fine. When she asks how he is, he says he is good, happy to be home, happy to be working on another album. His chatter takes them all the way to a tiny restaurant a few streets over, but there is something off about it, like biding time, like preheating an oven. She watches him get charm all over their bubbly waitress, stalling a little bit more, and then he talks fondly over the menu and the music. Maeva orders a glass of wine, feeling herded as he pushes his sunglasses into his hair and chats to her about local fish.