Running Lean by Diana L. Sharples

Author:Diana L. Sharples [Sharples, Diana L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780310734987
Publisher: Blink
Published: 2013-09-09T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 20

The graphite image, depicting an old man with a lined face sitting in front of a building with weathered siding, didn’t look like anything created by something as simple as a pencil. Stacey stared. The beautiful drawing confronted her. If she had that much talent, could make something look so perfect …

“That’s pencil?” Calvin leaned in closer.

Stacey pulled on his arm. “Stand back and look at it.”

He backed up. “It looks like a picture, I mean, a photograph.”

The artist had rendered the texture of the old man’s coat, individual broken threads along the tattered lapel. Amazing. And the eyes looked alive, like they would follow Stacey when she moved away.

Calvin slipped his hand behind her back and guided her to another frame filled with confidence-crushing perfection.

“Know what?” he said. “I’ll bet your drawings will hang here someday.”

How sweet was he? “Oh, come on.” She pressed her shoulder into the space beneath his arm and brushed her hand across his chest.

“Why not?”

Why not? Because Daddy would call it foolish. Mom would sweetly point out every little flaw. Even if Stacey worked alone, their voices would haunt her. What if she failed? What if all the people from her past had told the truth and she’d never amount to anything?

Besides, showing her work in a local art gallery meant she’d still be … here. Still in Stiles County or maybe living in an apartment in Rocky Mount. Her drawings weren’t good enough for New York galleries. Or Raleigh. Or even Rocky Mount.

Stacey sighed. “To be that good I’d have to study fine art, not fashion design.”

“Would that be so bad?” He gestured toward the next drawing. “You could do this.”

Stacey took the drawing in, though the gentle image clawed at her heart. An old woman this time, her gnarled hands knitting an afghan. She could envision the woman’s slow movements, stitch by stitch, and imagine the clicking of her needles. She could feel the soft yarn warming her lap.

A desire crept into Stacey’s heart, a longing to feel a pencil in her hand and the textured surface of a clean sheet of Canson paper beneath her fingertips. To fill the empty space with something meaningful, something worthy of Calvin’s awe.

She swallowed. “Daddy says artists don’t make much money.”

A soft grunt showed what he thought of this. “They should. How long did it take this artist to draw that?”

“Hours and hours. Days.”

“My dad charges seventy-five dollars an hour for labor. ‘Course, that pays for the building and utilities and all that other stuff too. Not just what he makes.”

“No one would pay me even twenty dollars.”

“I would.” He swung her around to face him. “More than that.”

She wanted to cry. He was so sweet. Although he’d gotten angry with her at the restaurant—she could tell from the way he pulled his hair at the table and his silence in the truck—bringing her to the Imperial Arts Center in Rocky Mount was an act of love. When she first met him, Calvin didn’t know a thing about art.

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