But that was a subject I wasn’t about to go into. For one thing, I was sitting in the living room of Mr. Sandars’ house, which I instantly reminded Timothy. Suggesting I find another job while I was sitting on the couch, inside my employer’s own house, was certainly not appropriate. And, for another, I didn’t have the educational background for working in art. No art courses, no BA in Art History. Everything I knew was self-taught, spurred on by my interest in what Cara was working on and then by my friends’ and my joint explorations of the various local art museums.
(We’d taken every tour they offered in multiple museums from San Jose to San Francisco. We’d even planned a trip to the two Getty museums in Los Angeles and were going to go to LACMA, as well, but then Sammy got the offer for Bakersfield and Carmel with its artsy lifestyle had drawn Cara’s attention, and she’d suddenly hitched a ride with one of the guys in her art class and just like that, they were both gone.)
My stomach suddenly growled, reminding us that we’d come for dinner.
“Sorry,” Timothy said. “I guess I need to apologize to Judy and Ed. I was very discourteous to them, but something hit me at the sight of you. I couldn’t hold onto politeness at that moment. I had to get to know you.”
My brain was in a haze of endorphins, the kind that come from the first stirrings of infatuation. I didn’t know how that had happened. I hadn’t even liked the man an hour ago. I’d thought him cruel and rude, but in our conversations, in his appreciation for my sharings, something had wedged itself inside me. It was an awakening, an opening up of secret wishes and the buried hope for a relationship that I’d never suspected I possessed.
When Timothy reached out and took my hand, I didn’t quibble. I accepted his fingers enclosing mine. There was a rightness to it, a feeling that this was the way life was meant to be. I abruptly felt like I needed to spend the rest of my life with my hand inside Timothy’s. A strange thought struck me, coming out of nowhere. It said that the two of us were now bound by this simplest of touches, the warmth of our hands, our entwined fingers, the contact of skin against skin. How ridiculous.
Besides, none of this made sense. Love at first sight. No — it most definitely hadn’t been like that. I’d been repelled at my first glimpse of Timothy, his sophisticated and arrogant attitude, his hair, his David nose, his full lips . . .
Did I mention that his body matched that of Michaelangelo’s David, as well? Burly shoulders, bulging arms, a stomach flat as iron, and . . .