Before Jace knew it, he found himself at Fort Greene Park. "How about here?" he asks Clary. "There are beautiful old buildings surrounding the park and lots of greenery blooming because it's spring."
"This is a great first stop." she replies as she unbuckles her seat belt and hops down and out of his truck as he pulls up to a curb. She digs in her bag for a second while Jace is putting together his camera equipment and she pulls out a hair tie. He stops what he is doing and watches as she gathers all of her hair together and pulls it on top of her head and winds it into a bun. This is the first time he gets to see her neck which is somehow the most beautiful neck he has ever seen. Which is weird because he has never paid any attention to women's necks before, but something about hers is graceful and feminine and soft.
When she is done, she digs in her bag again and quickly checks to make sure she has a sketchbook and a few pencils before she steps away from the door and shuts it leaving him behind in his truck. He looks down at his equipment and finishes quickly attaching the right lens before swinging his camera bag over his shoulder. By the time he is over to where she is waiting on the sidewalk, she is grabbing his hand again and pulling him behind her.
"There is this great spot just over here." she tells him. "You get a good vantage point of the whole park and some of the brownstones just on the other side of the it. It's the perfect place to start."
Jace smiles at her taking complete charge and replies with, "Yes ma'am." and a salute.
Clary then laughs quickly and looks back to where she is going. After a short walk, he starts to see where she is headed to just up ahead. There is lighthouse looking structure that sits on top of a long row of numerous steps. He is sure that they are likely to get a good view from there.
Clary then raises her hand and points to an area off to the side. "I like to go there and sit under the trees when I come here. People don't notice you easily there. I get to sketch the park and them in their most unguarded state. They come here to relax and play with their kids or dog and you can just see the stress of their everyday lives melting off of them the longer they are here."
Jace, who has been watching her as she talked, is caught up by the way she moves her hands while she speaks. It's like she is trying to convey what she is saying through her hands and body language and she looks even more beautiful when she is talking about sketching. The way she opens herself up, without knowing she is doing it, and shows him herself through the ungaurded look in her eyes has him completely enraptured.
"Do you come here often? You said this is your favorite spot." he asks her and she bursts out laughing, taking him by surprise. They get to the grass then and she is still pulling him further under the canopy of the trees as her laughing quiets. "What?" he asks sounding confused.
"You just asked me if I come here often." she tells him with another small chuckle. "That has to be one of the worst and oldest pick up lines in the world."
Jace then starts to laugh at himself as he realizes she is right. He did ask her that. "Wow." he says after he stops laughing. "I really am losing my touch. I am reverting back to cheesy pick up lines that I haven't used since I was twelve."
She finally stops under one particular tree and lets go of his hand, much to his disappointment, and she cranes her neck to look up at him. "Well, just to let you know, twelve year old me wouldn't have been impressed with that horrible one liner. I was way too smart for that."
"I believe it." Jace tells her with a smile. She then reaches around her body and lifts the strap of her army green messenger bag over her head and then plops down onto the ground. She pulls out her sketch pad and then looks back up to Jace who is just standing there and watching her. "You know, to take pictures, you have to actually pull out your camera." she says as she looks pointedly down to his camera bag. He shakes his head and snaps out of the thoughts he was having about what it would be like to kiss her.
"You're right." he says sounding a little embarrassed.
Jace sets his bag down next to Clary and starts to pull out his camera. She turns and watches him as he pulls out the memory card he has in it and puts another, bigger one in. She doesn't take her eyes off of what he is doing until he looks over at her. She then looks up to him and he swears he sees a slight blush creep up on her cheeks. "You have nice hands." she tells him. "They look like artists hands. You have long pianists fingers."
He lets out a little chuckle as he smiles at her. "I actually play the piano. My mother taught me. She was a music teacher before she married my dad."
She looks up at him with her intense eyes and seems to study him for a moment. Her brows furrow slightly with thought as she tilts her head ever so slightly to the side as she looks at him. After about ten seconds, he starts to feel like he is naked and she is looking right through him. He then actually starts to feel blood rush to his cheeks and is taken back because she is causing him to blush. He has never, not once in his life, blushed. "You aren't at all what I expected you to be like." she finally says after an intense period of study.
"What did you expect?" he asks her as he escapes her gaze and looks down to turn on his camera.
"I don't know." she says wistfully. "I just know that I didn't expect...someone who isn't...shallow. No offense."
Jace lets out a small laugh and looks back up to her with an amused grin. "You just thought that I would be a pretty face and have no substance."
She then shrugs her shoulders and purses her lips briefly before saying, "Pretty much." and then smiles playfully at him. He can't help the smile that then spreads across his face at her as he stands up. After a few seconds, she finally releases him and looks down to her sketchpad and twirls a pencil in her hand as she looks up and scans the park. Jace watches her for a minute from beside her as her eyes search for something that catches her interest to draw and brings his camera down to her level.
A few renegade strands of her bright hair has escaped from the bun she tucked it into and are blowing lightly in the spring wind of late April. Her legs are pulled slightly up in front of her where her sketchpad is propped up on and the soft yellow button up that she is wearing is hanging loosely off of her shoulders revealing the tight green band tank top underneath. The more she moves, the more it slides down her arms showing a small amount of her milky skin. The sun breaks through the tree above them then and lights up her hair and part of her face and his breath catches in his throat for a moment. Before he knows what he is doing, he is raising his camera up and snaps a few pictures of her. She is so engrossed in her search for something to draw that she doesn't hear the rapid snapping of the shutter of the camera as it candidly captures her.
Jace pulls the camera down and looks at the pictures he just took and smiles hugely when he sees that he caught the look on her face perfectly as her eyes scanned the park. He already knows that it will be one of his most favorite pictures of all time. The sunlight illuminates her hair and eyes to a more vibrant color and her skin looks warm and soft as it heats up under the sun. You can see the blank pad in front of her and the pencil in her hand that she is twirling as her other hand rests on the grass behind her, propping herself up slightly. It captures her effortless beauty perfectly. He smiles again as he looks at the picture one more time and then stands up looking for his next target.
An hour passes as the two of them sketch and take pictures. Jace had taken a spot on the ground about eight feet away from Clary and had been studious taking pictures of two elderly men playing chess and the three elderly women that surrounded them. Each one of their faces told a different story and each frame of the camera caught a slightly different emotion than the one before. When he was satisfied that he had captured everything that he would be able to from them, he hiked up a little way up the hill next to the massive set of stairs that lead up to the Prison Ship Martyrs Monument to take some pictures of people down below playing with their kids while Clary is in the forefront sketching away. She was driving him insane because she wouldn't let him see what she was drawing. After about five minutes of searching, she had started to draw saying that she found the perfect moment to capture and refused to let him see.
Another twenty minutes pass when Clary suddenly stands up while Jace cleans one of his lenses and she looks to him. "I'm done for now if you are. We can go and find somewhere else."
"I was just about to make that very suggestion." he tells her as he carefully places his camera back in his bag. She gives him a warm smile as he zips up his bag and tosses the strap over his shoulder and stands up. He holds out his hand down to her and she gladly takes it and he helps pull her up. She brushes the grass off of her pants and then bends over to pick up her bag and puts the strap across her body.
They both then start to head back towards where they came into the park and back to his truck. "You were taking pictures of the old men playing chess." Clary says making it sound more like a question than a statement.
"The elderly's faces tell such rich stories." he responds as he looks at her before looking up and ahead of them as he talks. "I always end up wondering what their life has been like. What stories they could tell me and who they've met throughout their life. If someone has a lot of crows feet, I always imagine them as having laughed a lot and that crinkled up their face more and gave them their crows feet. If they have a deep line in between their eyebrows, I imagine them having spent most of their lives thinking and worrying."
Jace looks back down at Clary who is listening very intently and makes eye contact with her as he talks. "Each line on their face tells a different story in my eyes." A small smile then pulls up his lips as he says, "My grandmother had tons of crows feet and a deep line between her eyes. She was a tough and stern woman but she could also tell a dirty joke like a professional."
Clary smiles and lets out a breathy laugh and Jace starts to think that he could never get enough of her cute little laugh and the way her eyes light up when she smiles. "She sounds like my kind of lady." she tells him.
"She was hands down, my favorite person on the entire planet." Jace says as he looks back ahead of him. It still hurts to talk about her in the past tense. Stage four cancer came knocking at her door and she was gone only a month later. To say that he wasn't prepared for that would be an understatement.
"You miss her a lot." Clary says softly and he looks back down at her. This is where people usually look at him with pity in their eyes, but not Clary. He only sees the conclusion that he misses her in her eyes and the kindness behind it. He doesn't want pity because he got twenty long years with her and he was a better man because of it.
"I do." he admits with a soft and wistful smile. He reaches out and grabs her hand and watches as she smiles back up at him. They then walk the rest of the way, pointing out things here and there to one another. Only a few short minutes go by before they get back to his truck and he is opening the door for her and helping her in.
Jace pulls away from the curb and just starts to drive aimlessly. They fall into conversation as he drives and she tells him about how she never knew her father but her mother more than made up for his absence. She told him about her 'uncle' Luke that her mother refused to admit that she was madly in love with and told him how she would spend everyday after school reading book after book in his book store. This excited Jace to no end because he too was a great book lover. He always grew tired of women who wouldn't get a joke he would tell or quote a line that would come from a famous book. She seemed to be an intellectual match for him and he found that the more she talked, the more beautiful she got. In his experience, the opposite would always happen when he would have a conversation with a pretty woman. After talking with her for so long, he was sure that he would never be able to go back to the unintelligent blondes that he used to want who used their looks to get by instead of their brains.
"Stop! Stop!" Clary suddenly shouts and Jace slams on the brakes. He hears the car behind him screech to a stop and then the familiar blare of a car horn blasting from it accompanied by a string of obscenities.
"What is it?" he asks looking around for any type of possible danger. The way she was yelling made it sound like she was being shot at.
"That building up there!" Clary raises her hand and points to beautiful cathedral looking building just up ahead and then she is unbuckling her seat belt. "I can't believe you found it." she exclaims as she point to a spot to park. He takes his foot off of the brake and pulls over to park, but before he can put his truck in park, she is grabbing her bag and practically jumping out of his truck.
He grabs his camera bag and quickly follows her. He sees her upturned face as she cranes her neck up to look at the early eighteen hundreds masterpiece in front of them. "I remember walking by this place with Luke one day when I was a little girl." she starts to explain. "I made him stop so I could touch the grey stone of it. He told me it was once used as a courthouse and then they turned it into a museum but it closed just a week before I saw it. It is one of my most favorite memories with him. He let me stay here for hours and found a small piece of paper and asked a stranger for something to write with. I sketched it the best I could, which wasn't very good, while Luke read a book. I never knew where it was and I never saw it again and I eventually forgot about it. Until now. When I saw it again."
She looks over to him, finally tearing her eyes away from the building, and she has one of the most radiant smiles he has ever seen on her face. "You found it." she tells him and he smiles back at her.
"I was just driving aimlessly, but I will take credit for it if you are willing to give it to me." he says in a playful tone and they both smile at one another. She looks back to the building and sees the heavy lock on the doors. "I just wish that I had been able to see inside of it. Luke said there was the most beautiful mural on the ceiling when you walked in of angels battling demons for possession of the earth."
"Well I think we just found our second location for the day." Jace says with a matter of fact tone and another smile warms up her face.
She opens her bag and flips past her first sketch from the park and brings her pencil to the paper and immediately begins to draw. He watches her as her eyes narrow slightly with concentration as they dart back and forth between the building and the paper. She tucks part of her bottom lip under her top row of teeth and bites down lightly as she studies a particular part of the front entrance where the steps meet the two sets of double doors and roses on a vine are carved expertly into the stone. "Do you see the detail in the leaves on the vines?" she says and points to the doors, never looking away from them. "There is so much detail in them. Whoever carved those there, was an amazing artist. To be able to have a steady enough hand to chisel it in with such precision with a tiny little hammer...I could never do that."
She returns to her drawing as Jace pulls out his camera. For the second time today, he crouches down beside her where she is leaning against someone's car as if she owns it, and he brings his camera up to catch her from slightly below. Once again, she is so completely entranced in her sketching to notice him taking pictures of her, which is the way he likes it. He wants to capture this moment and the look of excitement and concentration on her face without her knowing. People, no matter how hard they try, never look one hundred percent themselves when they are aware that someone is taking their picture.
After a while, he turns his camera on the building and climbs up the stairs and walks around the structure, snapping picture after picture of the small details that make it beautiful. He doesn't know how long he is in the small overgrown grassy area to the side of it when he hears someone else's soft footsteps approaching. He looks up from behind his camera and sees that Clary has taken off her yellow button up that was hanging on her shoulders and tied it around her waist. She smiles softly at him as she high steps her way through the tall grass and comes to stand beside him.
"Thank you for this." Jace suddenly says without thinking. "I really needed today. I can't remember the last time I took a day and did anything like this. It was probably at least three years ago and I had forgotten just how much I love it."
Clary returns the warm smile he is giving her and then looks down and away from him when their eyes meet for a few seconds too long. "I'm glad that I could help." she says and then looks back up to him. She then holds out her hand for him to take and then nods back to the front of the building. "Come on. Let's get some lunch. I'm starving."
His returning smile is almost blinding as he takes her hand and lets her pull him around front. The feel of her small hand in his and the way it seems to fit perfectly with his own is something that he is sure he never wants to forget. In fact, he wants to make sure that he never will. He is also sure that he never wants this day to end. A beautiful and smart woman has chosen him to spend her day with and he couldn't feel any luckier because of it.
"Do you know of anywhere around here to eat?" Clary asks him as they step back out onto the sidewalk.
He looks around and realizes that he isn't that familiar with this part of Brooklyn. They are tucked back on a small street that connects two other small streets. "I don't think so." he tells her as he looks back down at her. "I did see a small diner on the street before this one. Do you want to just head there?"
"That sounds fine." she tells him and then walks over to his truck. They toss in their bags and he locks the door and grabs her hand again as they begin to walk.
He enjoys the feel of her hand in his as he smooths his thumb over the skin on the back of her hand. When he looks down to her again, she seems to sense it and looks back up at him. "Why do you keep looking at me?"
"Because you are so beautiful." he tells her with a warm smile.
She blushes lightly and then tries to blow it off. "You don't have to lay it on so thick, you know." she tells him as she looks back straight ahead.
"I'm not." he tells her. "If there is one thing that you should know about me, it is that I am not a liar. If you ask me what I am thinking, I am going to tell you. And right now, I am thinking about how I like the way the sun lights up your hair. In fact..." he says and then lets go of her hand and brings it to her tightly wrapped bun. His fingers find the hair tie that is holding her hair up and gives it a tug, releasing her long locks. She looks up at him with an amused smile as she runs her hand through her long hair a few times, working out the tangles, and pulls it over to one side. "Much better." he tells her and she rolls her eyes before she looks back ahead of them.
They turn the corner then and see the diner up ahead. The name 'Taki's' is in red, printed on the front window. When they get to the door and he opens it for her, the most wonderfully delicious smell hits them in the face. They simultaneously take deep breaths trying to pull in as much of the delicious smell they can. "It smells amazing in here." she says as she looks back up to him. He glances at a sign that says to seat themselves and he leads her to a booth in the back of the diner. She slides in on one side while he sits on the other. She picks up one of the menus that are sitting on the table and flips it open just as the waitress shows up.
"Welcome to Taki's. What can I get you to drink?" the older woman says without looking up from her notepad. She looks like she has had a rough life but her laugh lines indicate that she has had a lot of fun too. Her hair is dyed blonde to obviously cover up her graying hair and is tied up into sloppy french twist at the nape of her neck. She is wearing way too much makeup for the day time and enough perfume to choke you. I nod to Clary and she orders a water and a strawberry milkshake. The waitress finally looks up from her pad and her eyes land on Jace. She raises her hand and lowers her reading glasses to get a better look at him and smirks. "And what can I get for you, sugar lips?" she asks him with a brusque voice that tells of her smoking too many cigarettes.
"I'll have the same." he tells her and she winks at him before turning and sashaying away. When she is out of earshot, Clary leans forward over the table a little and lets out some amused laughter. "That old lady is a cougar and she has the hots for you. I can't believe she called you sugar lips."
He leans theatrically back in the booth and places his hands behind his head as he says, "What can I say? I do have very tasty lips. She has a very good eye to notice something like that."
"It's good to see that you don't suffer from low self esteem." Clary says as she leans back in her seat.
"Fortunately, I have never had that problem." he tells her back playfully. The waitress shows back up then and sets down their drinks. "Wow. That was fast." Jace remarks as he looks up to her.
"I am good at my job." she replies with an easy smile. She then leans into his side of the booth just a little and says lowly, "But that isn't the only thing I am good at." and then winks at him again and turns to leave. By the time he looks back over to Clary, she had disappeared onto the bench of the booth and is doubled over with laughter. He watches her for a few seconds as she sits up and wipes away the tear that rolled out of one of her eyes because she was laughing so hard. "I believe if I wasn't here, she would drag you into the back and destroy your innocence." Clary finally gets out after taking a couple of breaths.
"I think you may be right. She is still smiling at me." he tells her and then nods to a couple a booths down from them behind Clary. She leans over to the edge and peeks out and sees the older woman blow a kiss at him which makes her start laughing all over again.
"Do you feel safe?" Clary says sarcastically. "Do you need me to protect you? I'll kick her ass if you want me to."
He laughs as his attention is pulled completely back to Clary. "Nah. If I play my cards right, I might be able to get something for free. Next time she comes over, I will show you how it's done."
"And what if you don't convince her to give you something for free?" she asks challengingly.
"Then I will show you some of the pictures I've taken. But if I do get something for free, you have to show me the first drawing that you did in the park and wouldn't let me see."
Clary narrows her eyes at him for a moment and then a wide smile spreads across her lips that slightly unsettles him. "That sounds like a deal." she tells him and then holds her hand up to flag down the waitress. She swings her hips as she walks over and asks, "Are you ready to order?"
"I am." she tells her brightly. "I would like a burger with everything on it and a fries and put his order on my ticket as well. We are celebrating because my friend here," she gestures towards Jace, "just came out of the closet to everyone. We were all so excited when he finally admitted it."
Jace is completely flabbergasted at her words. His mouth falls slightly open with surprise as she smiles evilly at him. The waitress cuts her eyes over to him and he can see the obvious disappointment on her face. "Well isn't that peachy." the waitress says dryly. "Good for you."
Jace looks across the table at her and narrows his eyes at the small red head. She is good. Really good. He can already feel the sting of defeat bruising his ego. "I'll have the same as my friend here." Jace says as he tries to smile flirtatiously at the waitress, but she has already begun to studiously ignore his stare. She scribbles down the order and turns to leave without looking at him again.
He lets his eyes look back over to the evil woman across from him and says, "That was cheating."
"You never set forth any rules. Don't be mad because I out witted you."
"Touche." he says as he reluctantly smiles back at her. He looks down at the table and picks up his straw and tears the paper off of the tip of it. He brings the torn side up to his mouth and wraps his lips around the straw and points it right at Clary. He huffs out a breath and the paper flies off in her direction and hits her right in the nose. She looks up to him in mock outrage and picks up her straw and tries to do the same. The moment the paper leaves the straw and sets sail towards him, he dodges out of the way earning a death glare from her.
"That was payback for playing dirty." he tells her and she smiles and seems to accept it as she sits up a little and rests her forearms on the table. When she shifts in her seat a little, he feels one of her feet touch his leg and he holds it there just so he can have some sort of contact with her. She isn't trying to play footsie with him or him her, they are just touching in the small area under the table. It is a lot more intimate that he thought something so seemingly innocent would be. He is super aware of every part of him that is touching whatever small part of her and it is surprisingly exhilarating. And the look on her face lets him know that she feels the same way. She is blushing ever so slightly and smiling warmly at him across the table.
"So Jace," she says with a serious tone, "when did you know you were gay?"
He rolls his eyes and picks up the straw paper and balls it up and then throws it at her as she laughs and it gets stuck in her hair next to her face. When it doesn't fall out after a few seconds, he reaches across the table and dives his fingers into her soft hair and pinches the paper in between two of his fingers. The mood suddenly drastically changes and then they are looking deeply into each other's eyes. She bites her bottom lip lightly and his eyes dart down to the movement. Without thinking about it, he starts to raise up and lean across the table to kiss her when the waitress shows back up and breaks the moment they were just having.
Clary looks down to her lap and Jace pulls his hand back to himself and smiles politely up at the waitress and mutters a thank you when she sets their food down on the table. When he looks back up to Clary, he sees the tiny smile on her face as her cheeks heat up and she grabs her napkin from atop the table. That is when he knows that if he doesn't get to kiss her soon, he will surely explode with frustration. She is going to either be the ruin of him or the rebirth of him. Which ever it is, he can't wait to find out.
I can't promise when the next chapter will be up because I am fixin to go on vacation for Thanksgiving. But I am going to try my best to get another chapter up before I leave but for now, I have to write another chapter for my other story, A Chance Meeting Between Enemies. Thanks for reading! Till next time!
