Page 18 of Merrick

“Not as much as I should.”

Wilder took the bottle back from him and set it on the table, even though Merrick could have set it down himself.

“No self-preservation, then?” Wilder asked. “Dehydration until nine and then free use until one?”

Merrick’s cheeks burned at the call-out, but Wilder was a little too close to the truth for comfort.

“It’s not like that,” he said quietly.

Wilder made another meat and cheese roll, handed it to him.

“No,” he said back. “I imagine it’s not. Tell me then, how is the sunset coming?”

Merrick’s eyebrows shot up toward his hairline. “Huh?”

Wilder said nothing until Merrick took the food and put it into his mouth. “The sunset. You said you were painting a sunset.”

He chewed. Swallowed. “I…I say a lot of things.”

“Were you lying about it?”

Merrick was many things, but he was not a liar. “What? No! I just meant…I say a lot of things. I’m used to most people not even listening, let alone remembering.”

“I’m not most people.” Wilder handed him a rolled-up slice of capicola.

“It’s coming along,” he said after swallowing. “I’ve been struggling to get the gradient on the sky the way I want it.”

“Tell me about it.”

“It’s…it’s boring, really.”

“You think painting is boring?” Wilder raised a disbelieving brow and leaned against the back of the couch, bringing one leg up and resting his forearm on his knee.

“Most people do.”

“Again,” he began.

“Not most people,” Merrick repeated Wilder’s claim from earlier, then decided he had no real choice other than to take the man at his word. “When I started it, I thought a graded wash was obviously going to be the right way to paint it. You probably don’t know what that is. A graded wash is like…graded. I don’t know, more color at first and then less. But it looked too choppy when I layered different shades in, so I thought wet on wet might work, but that’s like… you get the paper wet, and I can’t re-wet the paper with the paint because it’ll make everything run. This morning I tried to pull some color, which is where you use a separate brush with just water to drag the color down. That worked a bit and the colors started to bloom, so I think that might be the best way to get it right. It’s all pretty technical and hard to understand.”

“Graded wash into wet on wet into dragging and then blooming.” Wilder leaned to the table and grabbed Merrick’s water bottle, handing it to him. “Sounds pretty simple to me.”

It had been years since anyone had listened to Merrick talk about art. Sure, Holden listened when they were at work, but that was because he was a captive audience. Bryce had never been really good at art, at least not as good as Merrick was. It wasn’t something the two of them had ever been able to commiserate on because Bryce would get so frustrated when things came easier to Merrick than to him. Merrick understood, but he couldn’t be anything other than who he was. He couldn’t bebadat something just to make his brother feel better.

“It’s always been simple for me.”

“Do you have pictures of your art on your phone? I’d love to see some if you feel comfortable sharing.”

It was hard to breathe, impossible nearly. Wilder set the plate on the table, took the water back from Merrick’s hands. He moved closer until their knees touched, Wilder’s eyes bright and expectant.

“Is this okay?”

The question snapped Merrick out of his frozen haze, and he moved around to get his hand into his pocket. He had a message from his brother, a reminder that Bryce worked at Rapture Thursday through Saturday of that week. Frowning, he swiped it away and opened the gallery on his phone. He’d actually taken pictures of the sunset and that was the one he brought up first.

“Holy shit,” Wilder said under his breath, taking the phone from Merrick’s hand to bring it closer to his face. “You painted this?”

“I’m painting it,” he corrected.

Wilder handed him back the phone and Merrick waved him off. “That album is all art, you can scroll freely.”