“I resent the fact that you would refer to Julia Roberts as a past diva,” I told him.
He laughed softly as he continued to work. “Just a few more,” he promised.
We sat there in silence, the only sound in the Tuscan nightmare room our breathing and the occasional clink of the tweezers.
The sun pouring in through the windows caught on his eyelashes and made his small diamond studs wink against his earlobes. It had never escaped my notice that Angel spent all his waking hours trying to make art when he was art already. All he had to do was smile or move or breathe, and he showed the world some ineluctable revelation about being alive.
“Okay,” he finally said. “You can look.”
I opened one eye to find him smirking as he tore open a new alcohol swab and started cleaning the cuts for a final time.
As he worked, I noticed a speck of color on his biceps peeking out from the sleeve of his T-shirt.
“That’s new,” I said, pointing with the hand not currently being tended to.
He glanced down, slight blush gathering in the apples of his cheeks.
I took the liberty of lifting the hem of his sleeve and laughed for what felt like the first time in months. “Is that . . . a reindeer . . . on ice skates?”
Right there on Angel’s arm was a vintage-looking mint green reindeer wearing an ice skate on each leg. Its legs were sprawling and wobbly looking, like it was skating for the very first time.
“It’s a character I developed,” he said, tugging his sleeve back down. “I . . . uh . . . the studio I was interning with this spring decided to use it for one of their children’s holiday specials.”
“Really?” Inside I was beaming with pride, but on the outside I maintained my nonchalance-bordering-on-disgust. “That’s sort of a big deal, isn’t it?”
He returned to his diligent work on my hands. “For me it was.”
“Is that why you were in France?” I asked quietly. “To intern with them?”
He nodded.
“Was it top secret or something?”
He shook his head. “I only found out when we were sitting there at the airport. I applied late . . . so I found out at the last minute.”
“And you just couldn’t tell me?” I asked.
He looked up from beneath his heavy, sun-drenched lashes. “I tried.”
“Did you?”
“I wanted to, and I’m sorry I screwed that up.” He shook his head. “At the airport. I was trying and then I couldn’t find the words and we were kissing, and you had to get on your plane. And then I was a total mess when I landed in Paris. When I showed up to my new place the day I landed, the pipes were rusted in the apartment Astrid had helped me find. She’d literally taken a tour via FaceTime while I was in the air. Luckily, my ride from the airport was willing to take me out for the day while my apartment was de-flooded. Not to mention that my phone wasn’t working because I couldn’t connect to a French carrier right away.”
“I guess the internet doesn’t exist in France then. I wouldn’t know. I’ve never been.”
Angel gave me a look. “By the time I got my phone figured out and settled, you’d blocked me everywhere.”
I narrowed my eyes, remembering that I hadn’t blocked him before I saw Blake’s post of them together at the Eiffel Tower. Blake must have been the ride from the airport, which was also kind of galling on its own, because an ex who you trusted to battle an airport arrivals lane for you??? That was barely an ex! That was someone you might still adopt a pet with one day!
And flooded apartments and phone carriers aside, he’d still boarded a plane to another continent without telling me first. It was ghosting of the highest order. Mon beau fantôme!
“And you can’t even remember your own email address,” Angel added to his last reply.
“Email addresses are pointless,” I reminded him. “There are a million other ways for people to get a hold of me. Texts. Calls. Direct messages. And I do know my email address. It’s written down somewhere.”
“God, you’re worse than my dad. He keeps a Post-it with all his passwords in his wallet.”
“I would never put a Post-it inside my Hermès wallet. The adhesive could compromise the leather.”
He grinned the same way he always had when he thought I was being adorably ridiculous. His hands slid up my forearms as he checked his work. Goose bumps followed his touch, which was all the warmer for how cold my alcohol-dabbed hands were, and I hated that it felt so good when I was still so upset with him.
How could he not tell me that Paris was on the table?
How could he just leave the continent with no word at all?
And why had Blake been there too? There was no way that windsock motherfucker had been interning at an animation studio too.
“You’d be shocked by how many people don’t realize they have a melon allergy,” Fiona said as she sashayed back through the sliding glass door of the pool house. “Oh, Angel! You’ve got him all cleaned up and ready for his bandages! And he was such a fussy patient. I’m impressed.”
“I’m sorry if acknowledging my pain is fussy,” I said in a venomous tone that rolled right off her as she shooed Angel out of her seat.
Angel watched intently as Fiona wrapped my hands in enough gauze and bandages that my hands were even more useless than they were before.
“How am I supposed to do anything like this? Especially my job!”
Fiona continued wrapping as she said, “Well, while you’re on set, you should be all bandaged up, but at home, let your hands breathe when you can. But be gentle with them! No heavy lifting. And be sure to apply triple antibiotic cream twice a day.” She patted my hands, which I couldn’t even feel. “All set.”
Slowly I lifted my bandaged hands. “My hands look like clubs,” I said. “My precious, genius hands. I can’t sew like this. I can barely even pick up a hanger.” The bandages were so thick that my fingers could barely move.
Fiona shrugged with indifference. “I can’t imagine a lot of clothing is actually involved on the set of a porn.”
I was on the verge of hyperventilating. Most days my job included thongs and ball gags—which were sometimes the prop department’s problem, depending on the scene. Also sometimes I was the props department. But with this movie, I had the chance to do something so perfectly suited to me. No one was out here trying to give me an award or any kind of recognition for my costuming, but this one was special. This one was something I could truly be proud of. But how could I possibly work without my—
“I’ll be your hands,” Angel said. “It can’t be that hard.”
There was no hiding the outrage on my face.
“No, no, no,” he backpedaled. “I just meant that the hard part is what you do in your head. It’s your taste and your vision. That’s the part you can’t teach me. But the sewing and the hanging and the organizing. That’s stuff I can do—with your help, of course.”
Fiona’s brows arched. “He’s got a point.”
How did I go from being so completely over Angel to being stuck with him on set to actually needing him? I wracked my brain for every possible alternative. Vanya was in Costa Rica for a breathwork retreat. Sunny was running this whole show, and Bee was on the set of her mainstream gig, Nun of Your Business.