I See Me by Meghan Ciana Doidge

paradise of the Brave couldn’t last. Could it?
    “Not today,” I said.
    “Okay.”
    We weren’t going to fit in the bathroom with me clinging to him, not unless I wanted to sit on the toilet. I lowered my feet onto the chilly vinyl floor and reluctantly peeled my body away from him. He stood half in the hall and half in the bathroom, keeping hold of me as he reached into the shower to turn on the water.
    I pressed my lips to his shoulder, shivering slightly everywhere he wasn’t touching. “I have to wash my new tattoo.”
    “Yeah? Time to take off the bandage?”
    “It’s nothing to get all excited about.”
    “It’s a part of you.” He grinned down at me.
    That smile lit up his face and tugged at my heart. Literally. I once again quashed the warning that was carried to the forefront of my thoughts in my shrink’s voice.
    Except that, brushing off those concerns as stemming from my out-to-lunch shrink was just a facade. Just me putting all my fears into the imaginary mouth of someone else.
    Beau touched my shoulders, prompting me to turn, so I did. I was happy to have an excuse to hide my face for a moment. He gently removed the bandage that covered the peony tattoo on my left shoulder.
    At some point, the facade would have to crumble. If I didn’t orchestrate the reveal, the hallucinations eventually would. I couldn’t hide my broken brain from someone I was sleeping with. Beau would figure it out. It was better if I told him.
    But not today.
    ∞
    We didn’t fit in the shower together, but we had fun trying. When I came out all scrubbed clean and fresh faced, I found Beau looking at my sketches. My collection, such as it was, consisted of a dozen or so 24-by-36 charcoal sketches, along with a few smaller sketches that I kept for sentimental reasons. Well, as sentimental as I got. Most of the larger pieces were unfinished, or needed a few final touches so I could list them in my Etsy shop. Beau had two of the bigger sketches on the table, and the others propped up against the windows, counters, and cupboards. Surrounded by my unfinished and half-finished art, he was hunched over a sketch that depicted the golden-haired woman who’d been haunting my hallucinations since last spring.
    I hesitated to close the space between us. My stomach was twisted in a knot from seeing him so arrayed and so intently focused.
    “Did you see this?” he asked quietly.
    “What do you mean?”
    He turned and looked at me then, and I wanted to pick up a piece of charcoal to sketch him. There … his eyes once again greener in the midmorning light, in that hunched, coiled posture. He was a massive presence over the tiny lime-green dinette table. Just him, surrounded by my charcoal-and-white art. Art within art.  
    But that was hugely cheesy. And I never drew real life, not ever.
    “This woman with the knife. And here…” — he gestured to another sketch propped against the bench seat to his right — “… the dark-suited man with the amulet. Do you know them?”
    “Of course I don’t,” I said, pushing by him to get dressed. “I make it all up.”
    “You didn’t see the magic you’ve captured here?”
    “Magic?” I scoffed. “That’s a generous assessment. It’s shading and smudging. It’s fantasy. It sells, so I draw it. It’s a tiny talent.”
    “The drawing is a tiny talent?” he asked.
    “Sure.”
    “Did you take classes?”
    “No more than you did, in school.”
    He nodded and returned his attention to the drawings, studying each one of them with heavy, super-serious focus. I dressed, hyperaware of him and his questions. My chest ached a little, as if somehow I’d lied to him with my answers. Lied about what I saw and didn’t see. Though I knew what he’d meant, and so I hadn’t lied, not really.
    “I’m a guest here, in your home. I’m the one invading your space, asking questions.” He spoke without looking at me as I zipped up my dark gray hoodie. “You can lie to me all you want,