Aquarelle [h.s]

twenty-one

"What was that about?" I hissed at my boyfriend as soon as we entered our flat and closed the door behind our backs, clear annoyance in my voice.

He gave me a mildly confused glance, taking his coat off and hanging it next to the door with an innocent look on his face. "What was what?" He asked, as if he had no idea of what I was addressing.

"You know what I'm talking about, Nicholas" I told him quickly, definitely not feeling like playing that kind of game with him on that day. He'd been incredibly rude to Harry, and I knew I wasn't going to let it slide - in private. Harry was my model, and he had to understand it and deal with it, because I was tired of him always coming around and trying to pick a fight with him.

So far I'd been lucky, and Harry had never given in to his jabs, but I just knew it was only a matter of time until he would've said the wrong thing and the glass, already filled to the brim by his past rudeness, would've inevitably flipped over - and to be honest, I didn't want to be there when it would've happened, because it wouldn't have been pretty.

"I should be asking you the same thing" Nicholas said, to my surprise, sending me an accusatory glance. "Why didn't you defend me?"

I furrowed my eyebrows, simply not believing that it was a real question I'd just been asked. "Because you were being rude" I replied, and it shouldn't have had to tell him. It should've been obvious.

"I wasn't" he denied, which made everything even more ridiculous. I knew he could tell when he was being rude - he was much better than that usually, so there was no way the disrespectfulness of his words had been lost on him.

"You were. That was a very rude thing to say, not only to Harry, but to me too" I said, almost feeling like a mother scolding her child. I was pretty sure it wasn't how I was supposed to feel while trying to talk some sense into my boyfriend.

He scoffed. "Please" he told me, dragging the word out. "He's only there because he wants to fuck you."

I narrowed my eyes at him, taking the remark way more personally than I probably should've. "That isn't true."

I was tired of him always saying stuff of that kind. Harry wasn't like that, I knew that now. He was kind, and observant and gentle, and I couldn't have Nicholas speak of him in such a way. It just wasn't right. How could I even go to work and look at him in the eyes after not having tried to put a stop to the awful things my boyfriend said about him in private? He deserved so much better than that.

"He was naked, Sierra" Nicholas stated, acting as if he was talking about some kind of terrible sin he'd committed.

I raised an eyebrow. "He was wearing what I asked him to wear." I crossed my arms and looked at him, almost daring him to say something negative about Harry's look now that he knew I was behind it.

"Is that supposed to make me feel better? What the hell were you doing alone with him while he was almost naked?" He snapped.

"Art, Nicholas" I told him sharply. "That's what we were doing."

He shrugged, sending me a penetrating glance. "It looked like something else to me."

My mouth fell open in shock, I simply couldn't believe he'd said something like that. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing!" He exclaimed, his stress mirrored by the way he opened his arms dramatically. "I just don't think you should look at other men while they're that undressed. You have a boyfriend."

"Are you serious?" I said, lowering the tone of my voice all of sudden at the increase in the severity of the argument. "So you won't pose for me, but you also won't allow anyone else to? Should I just completely ignore an entire side of my art just because you can't find it in you to pose for a couple of hours per week?"