If- Nina G. Jones Page 0,45

. . PSSST.” I woke up to Ash brushing my hair out of my face.

I startled a bit. “Is everything okay?” I asked, groggily.

“Yeah, yeah. I just wanted to show you something.”

“Uh . . . okay . . .” I answered, feeling around for my phone to check the time. It was just past three in the morning.

“This better be good Ash,” I said, playfully. I didn’t have an early wakeup the next day, but I did just have a long day at work. I sat up, expecting him to present something to me.

I turned on a lamp and watched Ash head over to the kitchen area, shirtless and barefoot in just a pair of jeans. His auburn hair was wild and despite showering, a few strands had some dried bright green paint on them. The cuts of his abdominals seemed more prominent and his waist and hips narrower, as if he had lost some weight just within this past week.

“Do you have a flashlight?” he asked. Luckily I learned shortly after moving to LA and experiencing a rolling blackout, that a flashlight was important.

“Yeah, in the cabinet by the window.” I gestured over lazily. “Wait, why do we need a flashlight?”

“You’ll see,” he said with a smile. Despite being woken up in the middle of the night, his enthusiasm excited me. In fact, since we first hooked up, Ash had opened up. He became energetic and inspired. He spent all day painting, though he said the work was a surprise and he wanted to wait to show me. I had no idea where he was storing it, but I assumed at his brother’s. He seemed to be caught in some vortex of artistic inspiration. He wasn’t eating much, and these past two nights, he hadn’t slept much either. In fact, I caught him coming back from a walk right before dawn just yesterday. I asked what was wrong, he said he just needed air, that he had a lot of ideas and liked to walk to collect his thoughts. Despite all that, he still had so much energy and passion during the daylight hours. That included sex. He made me feel desired and sexy, like he couldn’t get enough of me. Sometimes Ash was patient and slow and intimate. Other times, it was almost animalistic.

Ash had spent the last few nights at my place. I knew it was fast, but I just couldn’t send him back out on the street. Ash argued with me, saying he didn’t need to sleep and he didn’t want to impose, but he wasn’t an imposition. We’d end up in my bed at the end of the night anyway. What was a few more hours of lying in it before I went to work and he spent the day where ever he was going for his secret project?

He glanced up and down at me. “You might want to throw on some pants.”

“Are we going out?”

“Sort of. You don’t need to get dressed up, just don’t be naked.”

I puffed out a small laugh. “The suspense is really killing me.”

“We’re not going far. You don’t need to bring anything.” Ash snatched the afghan from my futon. “Except this. It’s cool tonight.”

I slid on some flip flops and he grabbed my hand and practically dragged me out of my apartment to the stairwell.

“Where in the world are you taking me?” I asked, as we ascended the stairs.

We climbed flight after flight until we could go no further and reached a metal door: the door to the roof. I had never been up here before. There was never any reason to. Ash gave the heavy door a hearty heave with his shoulder and it creaked loudly as it jarred open. Whatever we were doing, it felt mischievous, and I kind of liked it.

He pulled me around the small brick housing for the door. The tar underfoot had some give to it and I wondered if roofs like this are designed to hold people’s weight. Before I could ask that out loud, I saw it: an entire section covered in squares of color. So many of them. Even in the darkness they were bright.

Ash flipped the flashlight and swept it over the roof. “This is what I have been working on. There’s a theme, but I don’t want to tell you what it is until I am done. I just couldn’t hold it in any longer.”

“You’ve been up here all that time?”

Ash nodded proudly.

“Can I?” I asked, motioning for