Bonding Over Bad Art (III)
Since she had first met Tom a month before at the County Museum of Modern Art, Claire had to admit that she hadn't feel so alive in years.
It was with a laugh that she recalled that Tom had been forced to introduce her to his family when Elsie had barged into her brother's bedroom the very next morning after she had crashed in a guest bedroom.
Granted neither of them had been doing much other than watching TV together, trying to wake up.
However Elsie had drawn her own (wrong) conclusions and had left, singing the refrain of 'Mrs. Robinson', much to Tom's irritation.
His parents, Angier and Kay Sloane took everything in a weary sort of stride, though Tom's explanation was clearly taken as though they believed he was lying but they would pretend he wasn't just to save face.
After that awkward breakfast, Tom had driven her back to her apartment where they discovered her roommates had apparently run out of steam in the early hours.
She just wished that they had kept it in the bedroom and not the living room where everyone else had to see them.
But after getting over the shock, Tom managed to scribble down his number, and Claire gave him hers.
Later that day he had swung by, and had politely declined the joint offered by one of the nameless roommates, and had found her with a bunch of freshly developed photographs and a big canvas.
His offering of coffee and donuts was very much welcome and to her surprise Tom had a good critical eye as she went through the pictures, planning out ways to cut them up and how they should be positioned on the canvas.
Through the week things between them held to a pattern, Tom would come by, deliver color commentary on her roommates latest antics, then either he'd watch her work on her projects, or he'd whisk her away to do things like snag food from some pretty fancy restaurants, or explore the depths of Dega Street and ponder the mystery of how such a seedy place had emerged in a town like Lawndale.
But what exactly it all meant was a bit uncertain, were they friends, or were they going to become something more?
Then, during a nighttime stroll at High Hills Park, they had watched the local Satanists invoking the Beast (while waving around their old gardening tools), and she had found herself staring into Tom's bright green eyes.
They had seemed like two dancing emeralds and in that moment were the most captivating thing she had ever beheld.
Before her mind caught up to it, Claire found herself wrapping her arms around the young man and kissing him.
Time seemed to slip away and she wasn't sure when she had pulled away. But when she did all she could say was, "I- I shouldn't have done that."
Tom had suppressed a sigh, having expecting something like this to occur.
He replied, "Why not? We're both adults, and there's a mutual attraction, right?"
At some point Tom had put his arms around her waist and they were hip to hip in the middle of the (mostly empty) public park.
Claire nodded, "True but you are much younger than me, it wouldn't be right for me to take advantage..."
Tom cut her off with a kiss of his own, and it was one for the record books.
Afterward he gave her a content little grin, "Trust me Claire, neither one of us is being taken advantage of. We are very much equals, otherwise there wouldn't be much point."
That had made her smile, and had marked the end of the ambiguity.
At the end of the first month, with the sunshine pouring through the big bay windows, Tom admired the slumbering figure of Claire Defoe, her only clothing the sheets of his bed.
"God she's beautiful." he thought to himself as he climbed out to slip into the bathroom to deal with nature's call.
After that business, Tom slipped into one of his bathrobes and watched Claire still sleeping, leaning on the doorsill as he did so.
He couldn't help but muse on the irony that it had been much easier to convince her to sleep with him than to take the job at Rutherford B. Hayes High School.
Then Tom's inner voice reminded him that Claire had some ties in Lawndale, not many but certainly more than he did.
"But," Tom thought back, "This job will pay better, give Claire more time for her art, and the apartment she'll be living in won't have a bunch of unwanted parasitic roommates."
The fact that the apartment was about fifteen minutes from Bromwell didn't hurt either.
Tom knew that his parents liked Claire, his mother in particular had bonded with her due to their mutual interest in Art.
But he suspected that they viewed her as a fling, or as Elsie had so crudely put it, "Thomas Sloane's own personal Mrs. Robinson, just add penis!"
It had taken every fiber of his being not to deck her for that.
However as Claire slowly woke up, with the sunlight making her nude form seem to glow, it confirmed once more for Tom that this wasn't a fling.
This was forever.
THE END