My Kind of Woman

39. Without Her, I Am?

AN; Yes, this chapter needs a serious edit. But hope it is enjoyed! 

We stayed in the same motel for two nights more, solely because I'd taken to painting her. The night we'd first stayed there, I'd started a drawing of her, whilst she was laying, tired in bed, telling me little things about her childhood. And I was listening, but at the same time, I had begun to sketch her. Her hair was smoothed sideways across the pillow, upper body bare and tanned back exposed where she hadn't pulled the covers up high enough. In the front section of my suitcase, I had bought my pad, pencils and basic paints, just in the case of boredom. But I wasn't bored, I was overwhelmed with love. I had only planned on drawing something sweet and simple, just her down to very bare details. But the more she talked and told me who she was, who she had been, the more my pencil stroked, outlined her on the page, filling that shell of her with all the details I could see. And I sat there, at the end of the bed, for a few hours. The next night too. That was the night I decided to give the picture colour. I mixed paints for her skin tone and her hair and the hue of the shadows that the creases in the duvet created. Mio scrunched her nose up at the smell, but still sat close and watched me as I worked.

"Do you remember that book you gave me?" I asked, adding colour to her hair on the paper.

"At Christmas?"

"I have it in my bag," I said softly, "it's lovely. I loved it."

She smiled at that, rubbing the shape of my leg under the duvet. I was slightly worried about getting paint on the hotel covers and having to pay a fee, so I was being extra concentrated, and trying not to be distracted by Mio's touches. Mio was reading as I painted, an old copy of a book with a foreign title. She had her hair knotted loosely at her nape, and had been living in her robe. Though it was a motel and we had run away, it felt as if we had moved, that it was our shabby apartment, and we were two, slightly skint, jobless young women, living on love. But soon we would move again, and I would have to mould that idea around another unfamiliar hotel room.

We were close to the coast. Sometimes I smelt it, the sea, when I cranked down the window to feel the breeze. But I couldn't find it. I leaned over Mio at red lights to see if it was just on her side, to no avail.

It was on our fourth day away from Twin that we finally found it. We stayed off the highways and drove in the direction of the smell and eventually came up alongside the beach.

I didn't even have to ask her to stop. I knew she wanted to be there as much as I did. I was glad then as she was parking up that I'd packed my swimsuit, hoping to come somewhere near the ocean. I helped Mio sift through the bags, looking for the towel she'd packed. We'd been using the ones in hotel bathrooms, but she'd packed one for herself when she left.

"What about you?" Mio asked, eyebrows lowered with worry.

I smiled and shrugged. "I can brush sand off."

"I can go get one quickly. I'm sure there's a shop around here somewhere," she said.

"I'll lie on top of you," I said, grinning.

She took that very seriously and nodded, straight-faced.

I burst out laughing, clutching my stomach."I'm joking," I said and to that her face relaxed and she smiled sheepishly, "I'll just dry off in the sun and lay on the sand."

"Are you sure?" She asked, frowning, thumb brushing my jaw.

I nodded against her hand, and her fingers stroked up against my cheek, eyes skipping down over my nose and mouth. To be affectionate in public was something I was only just starting to get used to. Hiding felt like it was becoming a thing of the past. Nobody knew us. I could touch her modestly, she could touch me, I could kiss her. So, I did. I bowed my head to her mouth and kissed her, chastely. She liked that. Her towel-worry evaporated and she smiled broadly. I think she had been thinking the same thing as I had, that we could be whoever.