Sunflowers
Jane’s initial thought was that she probably should have brought someone with her. It wasn’t that she needed support; her determination had blinded her to how much pain she was going to be in while she was getting the tattoo and she really wanted to scream at someone. It seemed like a bad idea to scream at the man holding a needle to her hip, and she couldn’t scream at herself without looking crazy, so all she could do was wish she had dragged some friend with her to watch her get inked.
The tattoo artist was a skinny man with piercings all over his face and a long red beard. Jane was surprised to discover that he didn’t have any visible tattoos and considered asking him if he had any that weren’t visible, but changed her mind when she realized the possible answers he could give. He was a pretty nice guy; he smiled a lot more than she anticipated. He laughed a couple of times when Jane showed hesitation while looking at the various instruments that were going to be used to permanently mark her hip – not a scary “this wuss has no idea what she’s in for” laugh, more of a “I know what you mean, but it’s not a big deal” chuckle.
The only really important thing to Jane was that he was an incredible artist. He was copying the picture that she had brought him perfectly. He cautiously traced the looping shapes of the image while keeping his eyes focused on Jane’s flesh. Jane felt like it was a little strange to have someone stare at her like she was a fragile canvas. She tried to look away from what he was doing, but there wasn’t much to look at on the walls. Doodles of other tattoos hung all over the place, but they weren’t helping Jane take her mind off the pain.
“You should be fatter,” the tattoo artist said with a smile as he stopped to change to a different color.
“Excuse me?” Jane’s eyebrows arched in surprise.
“It was hurt less if you weren’t so skinny. You should try eating something.” He laughed at himself. Jane resisted smiling. “You a big daisy fan?”
“It’s a sunflower,” Jane corrected. “And, no. The picture is a mural a friend of mine painted. I just really liked it.”
The tattoo artist shrugged. “Well, just try to think about something else for a little while. This’ll be over before you know it.”
Jane nodded. She closed her eyes and tried to let her mind wander as the tattoo artist started in on her hip again. With her eyes closed, she could see the sunflower mural clearly in her mind. It was painted on a sky blue wall on the outside of a coffee shop not far from where Jane lived. If she really concentrated she could see Jack in his paint-covered blue jeans and white t-shirt smiling at her while he added some last minute touches to the spiraling shapes on the edges of the mural.
Jane went to that coffee shop every morning. She didn’t like coffee, but she did love the atmosphere. There was usually a group of twenty-somethings that sat in one corner with lattes that just sketched every morning. Several people sat in cushioned chairs and stared at their laptops through bespectacled eyes. Instrumental music from composers she’d never taken the time to learn the name of played through the entire shop.
Jane didn’t actually have any artistic talent. She would sketch occasionally, and she wasn’t terrible at it, but she wasn’t good enough for it to mean anything either. But she did like to be surrounded by art and artists, and that was something that this coffee shop seemed to attract in spades. People were constantly trying to convince the shop to let them hang their work or play their music or host a poetry reading. But the coffee shop was just a coffee shop, and had no interest in being anything else.
That’s why Jane was so surprised when she found Jack surrounded by the supplies he would need to paint his mural outside the shop one morning. He was focused on the sky blue wall in front of him – sizing it up carefully.
“Thinking about putting in a window here? Because I think that the bathroom’s on the other side of this wall,” Jane offered with a smile.
“Uh, no.” Jack seemed to be surprised someone was behind him. “I’m painting a mural here. Just wanted to make sure that I’m-”
“They never let anyone do murals here. And a lot of people have asked.”
“Really?” He looked like the average art student. He couldn’t have been older than Jane was – 20 or 21. He had razored chestnut brown hair and piercing green eyes. He was a little pale and a little short, but Jane still thought he was cute. “Must’ve changed their mind.”
“So, they’re letting you do this?”
“They’re paying me to do this. I showed them a painting I did a couple months ago and they asked me to do a mural of it for them.” He talked with an accent that was difficult for Jane to place. He definitely wasn’t from the part of rural North Carolina that he now found himself in. It definitely added to his appeal.
“The sketch club is going to be jealous,” Jane said with a smirk.
“That would certainly explain the looks I got when I was setting up.”
Jane laughed involuntarily. “I’m Jane.”
“Jack.” He picked up a pencil with his left hand and started to trace a circle in the center of the wall. “You an artist?”
“No.” Jane bit her lip. “But I am an Art History major at Andrews.”
Jack turned to look at her and arched one of his eyebrows. “Really?”
“Yeah.”
“Then you’ll have to be sure to let me know what you think of my mural when I’m done with it.”
Jane looked at her watch; she had just enough time to grab a cup of hot chocolate from the coffee shop and head to work. No time to linger among the artists today. For a minute, she considered calling in sick so she could stick around and watch Jack paint, but she knew she couldn’t afford to lose the hours.
“I will. See you around.”
It took Jack four days to finish the mural. Each morning, Jane would indulge in talking to him rather than indulge in the artistic atmosphere inside the coffee shop. Each day she was more tempted to stay there the whole day. Jack was everything that Jane found appealing about artists – creative, focused, talented, and charming. The remark Jane had made on the first day about no one else being able to paint at the coffee shop also gave him a hint of arrogance that Jane thought fit him perfectly.
On the fourth day, Jane wandered back to the coffee shop after she was done with class. Jack was still there, his clothes covered in reds, yellows, and oranges, painting from the top of his ladder. Jane could tell the mural was finished; it was absolutely breathtaking. The sunflower in the center of the painting was tilted back, allowing the artist to focus on not just the various golds and ambers of the flower, but also the greens of the underside. Spiraling shapes surrounded the image in various shades of red and bronze. Jane could see why the coffee shop had let Jack paint the mural.
“Wow.”
Jack turned around. “What do you think?”
Jack’s smile distracted Jane for a moment, but she managed to pull her gaze back to the painting. “It’s beautiful.”
-
He had taken cocaine exactly one time. It was at a party his freshmen year of college and he had only moved to Andrews from Seattle a few weeks before. Some pretty girl was offering it to him, but it didn’t feel like peer pressure at the time. He had always been kind of curious about it, and he knew that a lot artists used it for the sake of their art.
Even though he had tried a hundred times to think of the words for how it made him feel, he never could. But the consequences were easy to recall. He stayed up for days, drawing nonstop until he had blisters all over his left hand. He painted people and images and shapes he had never even imagined before.
That’s what it was like when Jack saw her for the first time. The first day of a new semester he was listening to his iPod, waiting for some required literature class to start. He noticed her as soon as she opened the door. Her hair was being tossed back by the wind, she was waving to some passing friends, everything was moving in slow motion. Jack knew that she wasn’t really laughing, that her features didn’t really shimmer, that she wasn’t really moving in slow motion, but the romantic in him was willing to exaggerate every detail.
She was certainly one of the most beautiful girls Jack had ever seen, dramatic overkill or not. She sat down in one of the chairs across the room and Jack looked her over. She had medium length copper-colored hair which was accented by a small, bright yellow sunflower. She caught him looking at her and smiled at him. Jack immediately turned to look at the clock on the back wall of the classroom. When the class finally started, Jack was sure to pay attention when roll was called. Her name was Anna.
Every day he looked forward to that class. Anna always sat across the room. She knew a lot more about the material than he did. She liked to wear socks with sandals and was partial to dark red colored clothing. She came into class late every other Monday. She chewed on her pen when she was bored with the lecture. She always wore a sunflower in her hair.
It was difficult to concentrate on the material of the course when Jack couldn’t stop staring at Anna. He often found himself fixating on the sunflower in her hair, trying to decide if it was bigger or smaller than the previous one and counting the number of petals he could see.
When he got home, he was always inspired to draw or sketch or paint. Sometimes the inspiration wouldn’t leave him alone until he drew for hours. One night, he felt the cocaine surge again. He knew he wouldn’t sleep that night, so he got out of bed, found a canvas with something he didn’t like on it, whitewashed it, and started fresh. He painted all night and all the next day. The image of the golden sunflower surrounded by swirling auras of shape and color was burned into his mind.
Each day he was tempted to talk to Anna, but he never did. He told himself he was afraid, that he was sure no girl as beautiful as her could like a boy that looked like him, but he knew that wasn’t the truth. Jack loved the distance between him and Anna; she was anyone he wanted her to be. He didn’t want to ruin that with reality.
He bought a dozen new canvases and painted the picture of the sunflower again. And again. Each time he would make subtle coloring differences or tilt the sunflower to a different angle or reposition the accents.
The portrait he drew the night before the last class of the semester was perfect. He knew it was a sign.
-
It was a Monday, but it wasn’t one of the good Mondays. Anna checked herself in the mirror. She was wearing a deep red blouse and dark jeans. She fished a hairpin out of the glass bowl on her dresser and rushed down the stairs. It was a bright and beautiful day outside which made it perfect gardening weather. Not that it mattered. He was there at the same time every Monday, rain or shine. Anna jogged across the street to the neighbors’ backyard.
“Good morning, Leo,” she said cheerfully as she pulled the garden fence open.
“Good morning, Anna,” Leo replied without looking up from watering the flowers. Anna liked the way his blond curls bounced when he turned to water another row behind him.
“It’s a gorgeous day,” Anna tried again.
“Indeed.” Leo looked up and cast a knowing glance at Anna. “Here to steal more flowers?”
“I just take the little ones. It’s not a big deal.”
“The little ones could become big ones if you didn’t pick them all.” He was smirking. This was part of the game.
“You have to admit, they look better in my hair than they do dangling from that stalk.”
He laughed. “That’s like saying your fingers would look better in a trophy case than dangling from your hands.”
“Ew! Leo!” Anna plucked one of the smaller buds and used the hairpin to put it in her red hair. “What’s your schedule today?”
“Same as it is every second Monday,” he said as he turned back to watering the flowers. “Botany lab this morning. Class all afternoon.”
“Botany’s a wasted major.”
“So’s English.”
“New scary movie coming out Friday.”
“I don’t like scary movies.” He was smirking again.
This was why Anna liked Leo so much. There wasn’t a single other guy that played games with her. She hadn’t met one boy since puberty that hadn’t done exactly what she said without question. Leo was more dorky than the guys she usually liked. He was obsessed with his gardening and could name every genus of whatever. But he was also completely immune to her looks.
“What kind of boy doesn’t like scary movies?”
“I don’t know. I don’t grow boys. I grow flowers. Now I have to go do that at lab.” Leo pulled his gloves off his hands and headed toward the house.
“You have time!” Anna instantly wished she hadn’t said it. She might have pushed the game too far. She needed to sound interested, but if she sounded desperate it would be over.
“I don’t.” Leo shrugged without turning around. “I’ll have time next Monday. You can miss class to talk to me then. And I might have time on Friday.” He turned around when he got to the door. He was smirking. He walked inside without another word.
Anna plucked a petal from the flower in her hair. She loved the game.
-
Apparently, sunflower bouquets are awkward. They’re big and thick and hard to carry around. Still, Leo considered buying one as he stared at the different flowers in the shop.
It was all part of the fantasy he had been dreaming up for weeks. He would give her the bouquet and ask her to prom. She would say yes. He would get her a sunflower corsage to go with her gold colored dress and they would dance at the prom for a while and then they would make out for a while. The desperate romantic in him wouldn’t let him get any further than that, but the important thing was after that night Emily would be his.
But they wouldn’t make it that far if she didn’t agree to go to prom with him. And she would never agree to that without the perfect romantic gesture. Which meant he needed sunflowers.
Leo didn’t think sunflowers were really very pretty. They were gawky, awkward flowers with huge black spiraling centers and generic yellow petals. But Emily was obsessed with them. Everything she owned had a sunflower pattern on it.
He wandered down the aisles of the flower shop. The dark blue tulips would look better with her fair skin, blonde hair, and blue eyes. And it was hard to go wrong with roses. Even the lilies looked more appealing to him than the sunflowers. But his imagination had been very clear; the only way this would work would be if he used sunflowers.
He bought a small bouquet of them and raced through the rainy April weather to his car. The rain picked up before he could get to the school. By the time he made through the front doors he looked like he had just decided to take a dip in the school pool. His wet clothes clung to his chilled skin and his curls covered his eyes. The flowers seemed fine though.
The school looked abandoned, but Leo knew that dance team practice was just about to let out. He slowly made his way toward the school gym, careful not to slip on the water he was dripping all over the floor, and trying to ignore the squish sound his socks and shoes made each time he took a step. He only had to wait a few minutes before the gym doors burst open and a crowd of dancers shuffled out. Leo hid the flowers behind his back until Emily made her way through the doors.
She was wearing a light blue shirt with a yellow sunflower pattern across the breast and grey sweatpants with sunflowers down the sides. Even the duffle bag she was carrying had a sunflower on the side. Leo was instantly reminded why his imagination had been so insistent on sunflowers.
She walked like a dancer – unconsciously confident, graceful, each step more fluid and elegant than the average person’s walk. He was so distracted in his admiration that he let her get halfway down the hall before he realized what he was doing.
“Emily!” he called after her.
She turned around quickly. Her face was flushed and she looked exhausted but she smiled when she was his face. “Oh, hey, Leo. Is it raining outside?”
He brushed the wet hair out of his eyes and grinned slightly. “A little.” He felt like his stomach was on fire. He could barely breathe, but he couldn’t back down either.
“What’s up?”
Leo took a deep breath and brought the sunflowers around from behind his back.
“Uh, Emily. I was just wondering if you wanted to go to prom. With me. Because I want to go with you. If you want to go with me.”
Emily’s face lit up. Leo decided in that instant that sunflowers were the greatest thing on the planet.
-
He carried that sketch around for two years. He had one of those binders with the cover you could put things in, and he had put the picture on the front. He stared at it at almost every free moment of every day. It was insane.
Emily knew the sketch as well as he did at this point. It was a crudely drawn sunflower. It wasn’t the worst work of art that Emily had ever seen, but it didn’t merit the amount of attention he paid to it, either. Emily knew Connor well enough to know that he didn’t have the artistic inclination to draw the flower himself, so she guessed someone else had drawn it especially for him. Someone that knew he liked sunflowers.
The summer before senior year Emily had bought an entirely new wardrobe. She didn’t mean to at first, but every time she saw something with a sunflower on it she was compelled to buy it. After her first dozen sunflower purchases, she decided to go ahead and make it a theme. It sounded a little desperate in her head, but if she could get Connor to pay half as much attention to her sunflowers a he did to the one in that sketch, she’d be set.
But the fall had come and gone with about as much conversation as usual. They were sitting in English with Connor absent-mindedly staring at the drawing through his glasses. The only thing Emily hated more than that sketch was Connor’s glasses – they hid his green eyes a little too well.
“Do you stare at it when you’re at home, too?” She had asked the question before her mind even contemplated what she was saying.
“No, just when I’m here.”
“Does it make you feel closer to her?” As long as she had come this far, there wasn’t much keeping her from going all the way.
“Closer to who?” Connor swept his brunette bangs away from his glasses as he stared over at Emily.
“Whoever drew it for you. Why aren’t the two of you together if you’re so close?”
“Emily…” Connor sighed. “It’s complicated.”
“Does she go here?” Emily could feel her brashness eclipsing whatever etiquette she should have been using.
“Yes.”
“Then you two must not be that close. She drew something for you. It’s not that big of a deal, Connor. I-”
“I know that you like me, Emily,” Connor replied quietly. “And I like you, too. You’re an amazing girl. But it’s not the same.”
“No, it’s not. Because we could actually have a chance. Because I actually wasted time thinking this was worth something.”
Connor didn’t say anything. He turned his gaze to the sketch. Emily could feel the eclipse ending; she was suddenly shocked at her own actions.
“Connor, I-”
“You’re right, Emily.” Connor took his glasses off and smiled at her. “We should both stop wasting our time.”
-
He loved her wrists. They were slender and delicate like every part of her, but he especially loved the way she moved them when she was writing. She was drawing something, and he found himself enthralled by the way she was twirling her wrist as she inked the shapes. Her face was contorted in a look of concentration. That face was framed perfectly by her long black hair.
Connor couldn’t remember how long he had been in love with her. They’d grown up as neighbors; they’d always known each other. But the exact day that she had gone from the weird girl down the street to the girl he wanted to spend every day with wasn’t as clear to him. He would lie awake at night and think about the two of them.
He imagined that she would become a famous artist and he would be a heroic doctor. They’d move somewhere far away from North Carolina – maybe live on the west coast, in Washington or Oregon. They’d have a huge, beautiful house with a big backyard. Sometimes he’d imagine that they had a couple of kids and a dog. But sometimes they were too busy and too wrapped up in each other for that.
He leaned over so he could see what she was drawing.
“That’s beautiful. You’re an amazing artist.”
She giggled. “Thanks, Connor. That’s not true, but I appreciate you saying it.”
“No, really. Everything you draw is incredible. I bet one day people will be paying an obscene amount of money for your stuff.”
She gazed over at him. “You really think so?” She gave her own sketch a quick glance. “No one’s going to be paying me much for this.”
“I think people would. I didn’t know you liked daisies so much.”
She laughed again. “It’s a sunflower. I ate a pack of raisins for breakfast this morning and there was a sunflower on the box; I thought I would try to sketch one. See? You can’t even tell what it is.”
“Just because I can’t tell the differences between flowers doesn’t mean you aren’t an amazing artist. I think it’s awesome you have such a great talent.”
“Well, thanks, Connor.” She was beaming. She turned back to the sketch and finished the stem and drew a few shading effects.
“It’s not the worst thing I’ve ever tried my hand at,” she observed when she was done.
“I think it’s beautiful.”
She carefully tore the paper out of her sketch book and held it up to the light. After a few exaggerated glances she held it out to Connor.
“If you really like it, I think you should keep it. You don’t have to pay for it or anything. At least, not this time.”
Connor took the sketch, a wide grin stretched across his face.
“Wow. Thanks, Jane.”
