“Really?” Cole raised his eyebrows and looked at Bri. He seemed to find that a surprising and appealing piece of information. Bri felt herself blushing under his gaze, and turned her head.
“Although,” Carly continued, not liking Cole’s interest in Bri, “it’s so small, it’s hardly noticeable. I don’t know why anyone would go through all that pain and practically hide it. I mean if you get a tattoo, you should want people to see it.”
Cole looked positively intrigued now, and Bri couldn’t help but smile as heat crept up her cheeks.
Suddenly a very loud, very annoying Kesha song started blaring from Carly’s purse.
“Oh!” she pulled out her phone. “Do you mind if I take this?”
“No. I’m almost done anyway. Go ahead,” Cole barely glanced at her.
Carly answered her phone with a loud “What up girl?” and moved down the beach, leaving Cole and Bri alone.
From the way Cole was eyeing her, Bri could tell he was trying to figure out just where her tattoo was. Seeing the suggestive gleam in his eyes, she decided she had better change the subject, and fast.
“So,” she began, feeling the need to apologize for Carly’s rudeness. “I’m sorry if my cousin is a bit...” Rude, obnoxious, frustrating? Her mind tried to find the best way to finish that sentence. “Much.”
He smiled at her choice of adjective. “Don’t worry about it. It’s not anything I haven’t seen before and won’t see again,” he finished a little bitterly.
“Well, I’m really sorry if she upset you,” she continued sincerely. “If you haven’t noticed, Carly is a bit of a self-absorbed snob. The fact that other people do in fact have feelings, never even crosses her mind.”
Cole gave a short laugh and some of the bitterness disappeared from his face. “Well, if you haven’t noticed, this is Los Angeles. And L.A. is overflowing with self-absorbed snobs. She fits right in. In fact, are you sure she’s not from around here?” he joked.
“No, thank goodness! That girl can’t go back home soon enough. She’ll be lucky if I don’t murder her in her sleep before she leaves!” Bri laughed. She managed to get another chuckle out of Cole and smiled.
“But seriously,” she said, wanting Cole to know that she meant this. “I really hope she didn’t offend you.”
“Nah, this city is crawling with girls like her. You learn pretty quickly not to take what they say personally.”
Bri nodded, relieved that he wasn’t angry.
“Alright, I’m all done here. Let me just get cleaned up and I’ll wrap it up for you.”
Bri stood, and unsure what to do with herself, she wandered over to Cole’s paintings. She found that they were even more amazing up close. She was stunned by their depth and detail. He was very talented, especially for someone so young.
“So, you must really love the beach,” she surmised, noticing that the vast majority of the paintings were of the beach or ocean.
“I guess,” he shrugged. “I paint it because that’s what the tourists want.”
“Hmm,” Bri thought about this. “But, you’re an artist. Shouldn’t you be painting what you want?”
“You make it sound so simple,” he laughed. “Even if I knew what I wanted to paint, no one would buy it.”
“Well, maybe you should figure it out.” She lifted an eyebrow at him. “Don’t give people what you think they want, give them what you want them to have. I think you’d be surprised at the outcome.”
Cole’s head cocked to the side as he considered what she’d said. Bri turned back to her perusal of his work, and stopped short in front of the sunset painting she had admired earlier.
“Oh, wow,” she breathed. It was even more amazing up close. She could see now that it wasn’t a sun about to set, like she’d thought before, but a sun that had already sunk halfway below the horizon of the ocean, and was perfectly reflected in the calm sea before it. The colors were more wild and vibrant than she had seen in any sunset before, and she was captivated by them.
“You like it?” Cole’s voice startled her. She hadn’t heard him walk over, and when Bri turned her head, he was standing surprisingly close behind her. Her first instinct was to step away from him, but she couldn’t make her body move.
“It’s breathtaking,” she replied softly
“Wow, you keep handing out compliments like that and my ego will get so big even I won’t be able to stand me!” he laughed. But in his eyes Bri could see the pride he took in his work, and how much her compliment meant to him.