Chapter V

It didn’t take long for April to get accustomed to Juliette and Glenn’s work environment. The room was longer than it was wide and most of the cubicles that filled it were packed with mindless drones who spent all day crunching numbers.

 

Juliette would send April to give out memos and get her coffee. There was little work that Juliette was willing to give up, she still needed to be in control over this girl who she knew literally nothing about. The element of mystery made her uncomfortable, she wanted to know everything, what made her tick.

 

Juliette felt as if she had a responsibility for this girls’ future, that was the way it sounded in the phone call with Glenn anyway. As much as she tried to keep a professional boundary between them, April would make suggestive statements and joke around, sometimes Juliette would find herself pushing April’s shoulder or touching her arm to make herself stop laughing. She had to admit, this was the most relaxed she had ever felt with another woman, a younger one at that. It was easy to get to know April, she was basically an open book; she was an artist, and all artists ever want is to get you to notice them.

 

Juliette was used to seeing April every day, she became the enticing force that made work enjoyable, but she wanted more; Juliette always wants more.

 

Conversations were intentionally a one-way street; Juliette would ask a question and get a response, but any time April would ask something personal of her, there would just be another question or silence. April was not one to be ignored, nor was she going to push the envelope; the following days became sort of a test for both of them, see how many times you can get the other person to say “I.”

 

“I love your paintings. They’re so cool.” Juliette said with an enthusiasm that was unusual to April.

“Aw, wow, thanks! Yea, I like painting; it unravels my brain from all the bullshit during the day.”

“You know, I’ve actually been trying to find an artist to commission for a painting of the area where I have a house in New England. Do you think I could bribe you with a trip up there to maybe do a painting for me?”

 

April was taken aback by the offer. She knew this was perfectly reasonable to anyone who was either a real artist or an adult with the ways and means of traveling on their own. But her? Why? No one ever cared that much about her paintings and certainly not a stranger who she just recently met under strange enough circumstances.  It was all too exciting and curiously titillating.

 

“Sure, I’d love to. What is the area like?”

 

“You’ll just have to go up there and find out.”

 

April’s gut did a somersault; this was a double-sided offer, it had to be, right? But why?

 

Why did she even care about her?

 

It should have made her uneasy, it should have been an easy answer, ‘no thanks’. But it wasn’t, it was unnecessarily overwhelming for reasons unclear to her at that moment.

 

April adored Juliette’s company, to the point she found it almost painful to look her directly in her cyan blue, crystalline eyes when having a conversation. The simple gestures would have been seductive to anyone else, but what did it mean for her?

 

Just the thought of this woman was driving her mad.

 

‘Killing with kindnesses’ was never truer than in this instance.