One More Day Read Free Page B

rubbing her shoulder gently.  "Washcloths are in the cabinet.  Sorry, most are stained with ink, but they're clean, I swear."
    She chuckled a bit, and smiled at him as well as she could, while she wiped at her eyes.  Pulling herself to her feet, she followed the directions, and found it.  The washcloth wasn't as bad as he made it out to be, not until she wiped the black rings away from her eyes and onto the pale fabric.  Giving up any hope of looking decent, Mack just scrubbed at her face, removing everything.  She might look plain now, but at least she didn't look like a plain raccoon.
    She found her way back into the break room to see Ryan pouring two cups full of coffee.  He glanced over his shoulder.
    "Cream?  Sugar?"
    "Yeah, lots."
    He nodded at that and mixed it in.  Carrying both cups back, he sat beside her again, gently sliding the paler coffee toward her.
    "So how'd you get started in art anyway?"
    She chuckled.  "Yeah, there was a cute guy in high school who was in the art classes.  I signed up my senior year.  Found out I liked it, and I've just stuck with it."
    "You're really good," he said.
    "I really got mascara all over your shirt."  She gestured to his shoulder.
    "Kinda not worried about it."
    "Why are you being so nice to me?" she asked suddenly.  "We've been going to the same place for a year, and you've never talked to me before.  Why now?"
    Her day had been too weird, and she just couldn't take it anymore.  She'd been in town for eleven months.  She knew, because her lease was coming due soon, which meant rent would go up.  In all that time, she'd managed to drop out of school to work full time, just to pay her bills.  She was slowly sliding downhill, and no matter how hard she tried, she wasn't winning.
    A year ago, she'd been so hopeful.  She'd finish her degree, become another starving artist, but have enough skills to make a living at what she loved most.  She studied advertising art as well, knowing that it would at least give her a career, and had struggled to build a portfolio good enough to get a showing in some local studio.  It never happened.
    She knew she was being ungrateful, but she didn't know how to care anymore.  Not today.  Today had officially topped the list of worst days ever, and even the very attractive man sitting across from her made it only marginally better.  Maybe worse, because she couldn't stop worrying about why he even cared.
    "Look, you were always in the middle of a sketch.  I thought about it a few times, but I hate it when someone breaks my stride, ya know.  I just, I dunno, I figured if you wanted to be friendly, you would have said hi to someone there."
    "What?"  His words just weren't making it through her brain.
    "Yeah," he looked at the floor.  "Um, I don't really just jump up and talk to people.  I mean," he sighed.  "I don't know what I mean.  I just wanted to see what you were working on, I guess."
    "Yeah," she said, brushing it off.  "I gotcha."
    That's when the door chimed.  With an apologetic look, Ryan stood.  "Work calls.  Draw something?"
    "Like what?" she asked, not feeling anything inspirational.
    He shrugged.  "Tribal flowers, or dragons, or something.  I dunno.  I always need girly tattoo ideas.  Yeah, and drink the coffee before it gets cold," he said over his shoulder as he walked out.
    She heard him greet the potential customer, and pulled out her sketch book.  Tribal flowers?  She hadn't tried that before.  The sharp lines contrasted with the soft idea of the flowers, and somehow fit her mood perfectly.  It seemed as good of an idea as any.
    She unzipped her bag, set a tin on the table, and opened it.  It wasn't high end supplies, just colored gel pens, charcoal sticks, and other basic art crap.  Flipping to a clean page, she grabbed the first thing that came to her hand, a pen, and started.  The rose began to bloom on the page in sharp angles of red and green, shaded liberally with black, hints of