office door. It was closed with an old-fashioned bolt lock and only Matt and Seb had the keys. I knocked while Domino clambered onto Brax’s shoulders - the kitten was at Seb’s eye level when he opened the door.
“We’re not in the market for any catnip, sorry,” Seb said deadpan and went to close the door, but Brax stopped it with the toe of his yellow Doc Martens.
“Take note,” Brax said to me. “This is a good joke.”
“That’s not outdated?” I grumbled.
Seb reopened the door and picked up Domino from Brax’s shoulders, and I peered inside the dim room to find a wall of screens, the hum of a heavy—probably a server—and a blast of cool air. Polly meowed from the middle of the room, and immediately pounced on her brother when Seb set him on the ground.
“Kitten daycare is in session. You two going out?” Seb asked.
I nodded.
“Where to?” He squinted.
I winked, looped my arm over Brax’s shoulder and urged him toward the stairs. “Top secret.”
A cold wind cut between us as we walked through the back streets, and Brax wrapped his pastel lavender faux-fur jacket around himself tighter.
“It’s not much further.” I pulled him under my arm and kept him warm as we picked up the pace.
“Can you tell me what it is yet?” His teeth chattered a little.
I took us around a corner toward an alleyway between warehouses. “I thought you liked surprises.”
“I do but—wait, no, don’t tell me. Oh, hm, maybe I do want to know—”
“Surprise.” I eased us toward a bright red wooden door beside a warehouse, decorated with two golden letters — SA.
“What’s this?” Brax sounded excited, and ran his fingers over the gold.
“Street Artists.” I pushed the door open, and we stepped into the huge warehouse. The roof was cut up with skylights so the whole space was well-lit from the overcast sky above, illuminating the show of art by teens on the street.
Brax stopped and gasped. He tightened his grip on my arm as he looked around, his dark blue eyes flicking between the wall-sized street art pieces to the framed portraits on the movable walls in the middle of the room. “How did you even know about this?”
“I have some leads on things happening in DC.” I grinned and steered him over to the trestle table set up as a reception desk where three teens were talking amongst themselves but looked up and smiled at us as we approached.
Brax immediately started chatting with them about their art and I wandered off to look at the pieces. Raw, emotional pieces hit my heart— a self-portrait of a girl living in a dumpster; an abstract painting of joint pain from sleeping rough, all inflamed reds and freezing cold blues; a sketch of a celebratory picnic of street kids feasting on all of their favorite foods, dancing, and laughing.
Brax joined me and looped his arm through mine while I was looking at a wall-sized recreation of Botticelli’s Venus.
“Remind you of something?” He squeezed me.
I hummed in agreement. It was just like the forged piece we thought was by Monet, but Brax had insisted was by someone else.
“Got a name for the artist?” I motioned to the pamphlet in his hand.
“Anonymous, duh. And anyway, you’re not allowed to do any work while we’re on a date, especially if it involves trying to bust some street kid who happens to make decent forgeries.”
“Decent?” I nodded to the work of art. “Looks flawless to me.”
He pulled up the original on his phone and started to point out the differences, of which it turned out there were many. I was impressed by his eye for detail. Hell, everything about him impressed me—how easily he chatted to the teens putting on the show on our way out, the way he pointed out the beautiful angles the sunlight hit on the warehouses as we walked to the cafe, and how he ordered for me while I answered a work email at the table. He was the easygoing, passionate man of my dreams with the sweetest elfin features I could have ever imagined.
We shared a big pan of shakshuka with eggs, chickpeas and thick-cut toast at a hipster-ridden diner, and I noticed the slightest downturn of his lips.
“Something the matter?” I asked.
“Survivor’s guilt.” He wiped his mouth with a napkin. “Nothing new. I feel awful I get to eat this amazing food while those artists are literally starving.”
I let out a deep breath and nodded. “I know the feeling. It’s hard