Tyler squinted a little and grinned when he saw a few faint streaks of paint on Linda’s arms. “You can take the artist out of the overalls, but you can’t get the paint off of her for anything.” Beside him, Precocious smothered a laugh.

Linda looked out around the room and gave a mostly genuine smile to the crowd. “Hello, everyone. Thanks for coming. I’m not particularly fond of making, ‘this is what my work means to me’ speeches, so I’ll just ask everyone to enjoy the show. And, if it looks like a chicken, go ahead and think it’s a chicken. The point of abstract is to decide if three squares and an oval are just three squares and an oval or some deep, significant commentary on the deity of your choice. Thank you.” Linda stepped down from the stage to light applause and immediately headed for Precocious and Tyler. She grimaced when she got to them. “I hate that.”

“You did just fine.” Precocious hugged Linda and pecked her on the cheek. “Also, you look hot.”

Linda smiled and seemed to relax. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

“What’d you think of it?” Linda directed her question at Tyler.

“You kept it short, sweet, and to the point. I know a number of presentation givers that I’d like you to teach that set of tricks.” Tyler smiled at her.

“Fantastic.” Linda was suddenly accosted by two women in matching white tunics and pulled away to the far end of the room.

“Is she going to be okay?”

“She’ll be fine.” Precocious slid her arm through Tyler’s and started moving him in the opposite direction. “Have you seen anything you’ve liked, so far?”

~Just you.~ Tyler kept the extremely cheesy thought to himself. “I haven’t really had a chance to look.”

“Ice breathing asshats can have that effect.” Precocious looked surprised when Tyler broke into a sudden fit of laughter. “As much as I appreciate the compliment, it wasn’t that funny.”

“No…” Tyler trailed off so he could finish laughing. “It’s not that. It’s just…” He trailed off to get a deep breath to call the last of the laughter from his system. “Zachary said ‘asshat’ today.”

“You’re kidding!” Precocious sounded absolutely gleeful.

“I’m not.”

“Oh, this is too great!” Precocious spun suddenly, almost knocking Tyler off-balance, since her arm was still linked with his, and looked around the room for Linda. “Hey, Linda!” She ignored the number of offended looks she got from the other people in the gallery. “You owe me ten!”

From across the room, Tyler heard a muffled, but distinct, “Goddamnit.” He was officially having the most fun he’d had in *months*. “You know you’re not supposed to yell in a gallery, right?”

“Eh.” Precocious shrugged. “It’s Linda’s show. If she wants me to be prim and proper, she’ll tell me.”

“I doubt that’s ever going to happen.” Tyler shared a grin with Precocious as they stopped in front of a painting done in a half-dozen shades of blue. Tyler cocked his head at it and could have sworn that it started rocking back and forth a little bit. He blinked, and the picture returned to normal. “I think the painting just moved.”

“Really?” Precocious cocked her head in an imitation of Tyler and let out a small sound of surprise. “It *did*. Tell Linda when we round her up again. She’s been working with layering to make the paintings look like they move *forever*.”

“It’s like one of those magic eye things except, well, interesting.”

Precocious chuckled and took a few steps over to the left to look at the next painting. “I haven’t seen this one before.”

“How much of her work do you see before it goes up.”

“All of it, usually.” Precocious squinted at the bottom right corner of the canvas, where Linda had painted in the date and her signature. “Looks like this one just got done this morning.”

Tyler looked over the painting, searching for some hint that it had been finished hurriedly. “It doesn’t look like it was finished this morning.”

“Linda works best under massive panic and pressure.”

“It shows.” Tyler heard a snort of disapproval from behind him and turned around to see where it had come from. He wasn’t overly surprised to see Julia making a disgusted face at a painting that looked vaguely like three wine bottles and a plastic container of pills. She appeared to be tearing the painting apart for being ‘unoriginal’ and ‘cheap’.

“Is she always such a ray of sunshine?” Precocious sounded disgusted.

“I have vague memories of her being a perfectly fine human being when we got married. I honestly couldn’t hazard a guess to tell you how she became what she is.”

“A shrewish banshee?”

“That’s about as apt a description as anything I’ve come up with.” Tyler looked from Precocious to Julia and wasn’t surprised to find her glaring at him coldly. “You know, this whole situation is a bad romance novel in the making.”

“What’s that? Dashing man falls for lovely woman when evil ex-wife slips back in to take back the dashing man?”

“Something like that.” Tyler was so involved in watching where Julia was going that it took him a minute to fully digest what Precocious had just said. “Wait, you think I’m dashing?”

“Sure.” Precocious said it with an off-hand tone that, by some small miracle, wasn’t insulting. “You’re smart, you can hold your own in a conversation, you enjoy my company, and you’re handsome. I think that adds up to ‘dashing’.”

“Um…okay. Thank you.” Tyler was a little flustered. He’d been described a lot of ways, some of them not particularly flattering, but ‘dashing’ had never been used. He was tempted to go out and buy a fedora to celebrate the occasion. “I’d like to say that ‘lovely’ fits you, but it doesn’t. If I’m dashing, then I think you’re a broad.” He was hugged suddenly.

“Yes!” Precocious pulled away from him with a blinding smile on her face. “I’ve always wanted to be a broad.”

“We’ll have to get you a set of elbow-length satin gloves.”

“I have a pair.”

Tyler raised his eyebrows. “You have a pair?”

“Oh, yeah. Every broad hopeful does.”

“I suppose that makes a certain type of sense.”

“Of cour-“ Precocious cut off suddenly, and her face went pale for a second before turning a shade of red that would have put Linda’s reds to shame.

Tyler turned his head to follow her gaze and saw that it rested on a thin man of medium height with shaggy brown hair, green eyes, and a slouch to his shoulders that easily conveyed that he was not pleased with his surroundings. Something about him radiated a need to be in power at all times. “Chad?” He wasn’t sure why he phrased it as a question. He was pretty sure he was right in his guess.

“Yeah.” Precocious took a step back from Tyler and straightened his shoulders. “I guess this *is* a bad romance novel.” She wrapped her hand around Tyler’s arm again and pulled him towards a painting that moved them further away from Chad. “I’m going to pretend like I don’t know he’s there.”

“Sure.” Tyler let himself be led halfway around the room and around an artfully placed corner. The walls had slits in them that were just right for his eye line, and he kept watch over Chad’s movements while Precocious looked at the paintings and made small talk with the people around them.

”Oh, yeah, Linda and I have been friends since high school. We live together.”

“No, I don’t think I’ve ever been an inspiration past the occasional color scheme that she steals from my clothes.”

“She’s painted two others, as well. One’s used by a bakery in town. The other got shipped off to Poughkeepsie. Vassar bought it to use in their dining hall. It gets stolen once a year as a frat prank. They want her to come up and paint a few of their tables for a fundraiser. She’s considering it.”

“Tyler,” Precocious touched Tyler’s shoulder to get his attention. She knew what he was looking at, and it wasn’t the paintings. “I’m going to get something to drink. Do you want something?”

“Whatever dark soda they have is fine. Do you want me to come?” Tyler saw, by the dark look that flashed in Precocious’s eyes, that he’d insulted her. “Forget I offered.”

She smiled a little. “Just don’t do it again.”

Tyler couldn’t help but watch her as she wove through the crowd. He couldn’t help but notice the other people who were also watching. He was tempted to point to himself and announce that he was her date, thank you very much, and anyone who attempted to prove otherwise would be subsequently tracked down and hurt. He managed to ignore his baser instincts and turned back to look at the painting he hadn’t actually seen yet.

“So, did you get permission from her mommy?” Julia had sidled up out of thin, frosty air, and she looked like she was prepared for a fight.

“Did you get permission from your sugar daddy?” Tyler, even with months of not actively looking at her, could tell by the flush on Julia’s face that she was, in fact, in Hugoton without giving notice to whatever poor bastard was putting up with her on a regular basis. “What are you doing here, Julia, honestly?”

“I came for the art show. It’s a big event every summer.”

“Bullshit. You hate art shows. You always avoided the gallery shows in San Francisco whenever you could. You used to have me make excuses. You’re not here for the art.” Tyler watched her, waiting for her to flinch. When she didn’t, he pushed another button. “What’s the matter? Did you get ostracized from that barn yard of hens you called a social group?”

“Actually, they love me more than ever. They always said that you brought down my social standing.”

“So sorry I’m a self-made millionare.” Tyler’s voice was thin but heavily sarcastic. “I would have loved to live off my grandfather’s money, but we can’t all be brought up sleeping on mattresses stuffed with hundred dollar bills.” ~Oh, great. I sound like an overdramatic off-Broadway play.~ “And I doubt you’re here because you’ve missed me.” Julia bit her bottom lip, and Tyler felt like he’d been hit by a truckload of bricks. “Oh, you’ve got to be *kidding* me.” Her face was impassive, but there was a tremor in the hand that held her wine glass. Tyler still knew all of her tells. She’d never been any good at poker, no matter how much he’d tried to teach her. “Why would you possibly miss me? My money is certainly easier to manipulate.”

“You-“ Julia shut herself up and pressed her lips together hard. She wasn’t going to give anything away. “I loved you.”

“For the first four seconds of our marriage, I’m sure you did.” Tyler caught a glimpse of Precocious at the drinks table. She had a drink in each hand. He looked back at Julia. “The problem is, I loved you until I realized that I was the only one was trying to *find* love in our relationship. You’d stopped trying to find it way before I had.” He moved to step around her. “If you’ll excuse me, I think Precocious needs some help with the drinks.”

“She’s half your age.” It was meant as an insult.

Tyler shrugged. “Sometimes numbers don’t mean a damned thing.” He walked away without looking back, and was approaching Precocious from the back when he spotted Chad moving to intersect. For some reason, Tyler stopped his forward motion and eavesdropped while the scene played out.

“Pre, there you are.”

Precocious turned towards Chad, eyes flinty, mouth set in a firm line. “I don’t want to talk to you.”

“Pre-“

“And if you’re going to insist at talking *at* me, at least use my full name. You know I hate the nickname.”

“Precocious,” Chad saw that she was ready to walk away, and he grabbed her by the upper arm. “Would you fucking *listen* to me? You keep hanging up when I call.”

“Take the damned hint, then.” Precocious looked from Chad’s face to his hand on her arm. “If you want that back, I suggest you remove it.” When Chad did so, she took a step back. “I don’t want to talk to you. Not now. Not ever. And, just so you’re aware, I will be informing the police that you approached me and grabbed me.”

Chad’s face twisted in anger. “You’re a fucking bitch, you know that?”

“Yeah, well, I’m not yours to insult anymore, so go stick your dick in a kiln. I think there’s one in the back.” Precocious saw Chad’s hand move towards her arm, and she slid away from it. “Do *not* touch me. I’ve told you that already.”

“You used to like it when I touched you.” Chad had changed tactics from menacing to charming.

“When we *dated* I let you touch me. We’re *not* dating. So, don’t touch me. And calling me also applies to those new rules. We’re not dating, so don’t *call* me.”

“I’ll call you if I want. You can’t do shit about it.”

Precocious raised her eyebrows. “Did you just *threaten* me?”

“If I did?”

“Then, you’re going to get a restraining order.”

Precocious glanced over her shoulder and shared a humorless smile with Tyler. “There you are.”

“Here I am.” Tyler stepped up beside Precocious and took his drink. He took a sip. “Thanks for getting the drinks.”

“My pleasure.” Precocious heard Chad curse and turned to face him. “Get out of here. You never came to these things when we were dating, and the fact that you’ve shown up tonight after we’ve been apart for three months might give me just enough evidence to prove I’m being stalked.”

Chad opened his mouth to protest, but Tyler gave him a hard stare until he shut his mouth and turned away. He walked away muttering dark things under his breath and took the back door out of the gallery. Tyler looked at Precocious and saw her shoulders relax. He hadn’t even realized she’d tensed up. “Do you think he’ll stay gone?”

“I don’t know.” Precocious shrugged and sipped her drink. “As long as he’s gone for tonight, I’m happy.”