The Art of Us Bonus Scene

I’m fucked.

It’s the two words that swirl around my head as I drive home from Mom’s house—from saying goodnight to Quinn—and back to my own place. 

I’m royally fucked.

I like Quinn a lot more than I thought. And, I don’t think I realized how high my hopes were for her to stay in Sunset Springs until I saw her making her temporary room into a home. Decorating. Becoming friends with Randy. Collecting momentos of her friends, things she can look at when she unwinds after a long day. Memories she can wake up to, first thing in the morning.

I knew what I was getting myself into the first time I saw Quinn. I knew there was no way that my body wouldn’t ache for her in the way that it does, now. That a kiss from her would create a new emotion in me. A new sense of yearning for a shelter that only she can provide. I knew it when I kissed her at the Gala, and I knew it when I brought her to the forest. When I told her about my ex, Rebecca. 

Being with her makes me feel like I have hope again. That maybe life isn’t meant to be spent as a lonely, reclusive, son of a bitch. Maybe, life is worth enjoying—worth laughing, worth smiling, worth something a whole lot grander than what I’ve been doing with it.

I spend my drive back home categorizing all the different parts of Quinn. Her smiles, her warmth. The way she blushes when I make her nervous. The sounds she makes when she climaxes and how alive I feel when I hear them.

So, it isn’t until I throw my headlights down my driveway that I notice a body sitting on my front steps.

I pull in my truck next to a familiar one and quickly shut the engine off.

“Everything alright man?” I ask.

My youngest brother, Tucker, stands, leaning his head against the support beam, like it's simply too heavy to hold up. He sighs. “I’m in love.”

That makes two of us, I think. I laugh, and walk up the steps past him. “And who are you in love with?”

“Sam, obviously,” he says, as if I’m the dumbass who doesn’t know. “She’s perfect for me.”

“Quinn’s best friend? The girl who’s been here for twenty-four hours total?” I unlock the door and let us in, turning on the lights and slipping off my shoes.

Tucker follows me. “So you’re familiar.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

Tucker sends me a serious look, though I can never take him seriously. “I would never joke about this, Parker Grey Bates.”

“Parker Grey Bates,” I reiterate. “Full government name and all.”

He points to me, following me as I turn on every light switch in my path on the way to the kitchen. “This is serious enough to constitute first and last name.”

“Okay, I’ll bite, then.” I grab a glass out of the cabinet and fill it with cool water, hoping that’s enough to shock my system. Make me not want to beg Quinn to stay. Not dwell on how hard it will hurt when her and Tucker’s, apparent, other half leave. “What is it about Sam that makes you think she’s your perfect match?”

His blue eyes fill with small, floating hearts. He leans his arm against the counter. “Besides the fact that she’s, quite literally, the hottest girl I’ve ever seen? Well,” he says, pretending to think. “She’s awesome, first of all. Secondly, she is so quick-witted. Thirdly, she’s kind of mean to me?”

I take a sip, listening to him list off all of the amazing qualities of his better half. “You say that like it's a question. And like it’s a good thing.”

Squinting, he thinks. “I don’t think it’s a question. But it does make me question what I know about myself, if you catch my drift.”

“Aw, gross, man. I don’t want to hear about what turns you on.”

He taps the counter. “The list is long, brother.”

Palm out, I say, “Please, don’t start listing it.”

“I won’t, I won’t,” he promises. “But I feel like she’d be into some of that freaky shit too.”

Like phone sex? Like Quinn telling me she thinks of me when she masturbates?

“So, what is your master plan, then? Please don’t tell me you’re going to sleep with her.”

“I cannot promise anything, Parker. If she lets me, I’d do everything.”

“Everything?”

“Anything and everything.”

“Again, gross.”

“But,” he steamrolls on, pacing around the kitchen. “I do have a plan to court her. I definitely like her. I want to see where this will go.”

“It’ll go as far as next Sunday, I’m pretty sure.”

“Mhmm. But!” He points to me. “She’ll come back. And, when she does, she will be coming back with me. Cumming back with me? Cumming with me?” He raises his brow with a smile. “Get it?”

I decide that I cannot ask him to not make the conversation sexual any more than I already have. “What’s going to make her come back?”

“Quinn, obviously.”

“Quinn’s not…” my voice cracks on the word, and I hope Tucker didn’t notice. “Quinn’s not staying. She’s going back at the end of the summer.”

“And that is also part of my master plan. Getting Quinn to stay. It shouldn’t be too hard.” Tucker stands in front of me now. He fixes the hat I threw on while driving home, pushing it down on my forehead.

“And how do you plan to do that?” I ask, genuinely because I would like to be a part of this plan. That I, resoundingly, would do anything to get Quinn to stay. That the fact someone else wants her to stay means the feelings I have toward her—the feelings she makes me feel—aren’t crazy.

“Simple, really,” he says with an all-knowing smile. “You just keep doing you, and she’ll fall in love. She’s practically halfway there already.” He wipes off invisible dust from my shirt, the causal motion adjacent to his statement shocking me. “She’ll meet you where you’re at soon enough.”

I shake my head. Quinn doesn’t love me. Not…not yet. Quinn might love the town, sure, but me? I think she thinks I’m nice. That I treat her well—I try my damndest to. But…love? “You’re crazy, Tucker.”

“I never said I wasn’t.”