Available Darkness Season 1

foot of the stairs, their embrace tightening as though a taut caress could change the truth. At first, Hope thought John was simply offering her comfort. But, no, there was something else there. John seemed afraid— but of what?
    As John showered and got ready for work, Hope wrapped herself in the comfort of their bed, and wondered just how well she really knew John.

    **

    They had met during a sea change for both of them.
    Hope graduated from the Pratt Institute in New York in 1995, but found breaking into the well-paying end of the art scene about as easy as spinning straw into gold. After a vacation with a friend, she found herself in love with St. Augustine and its old world Spanish architecture. Though the art community was smaller than New York’s, it wasn’t much easier to crack. She’d entered and won a few contests, took part in some exhibits, but hadn’t exactly broken out or been able to translate her efforts into regular income.
    At first, she told herself she’d wait tables at Umberto’s to support her artistic endeavors. She considered herself an artist who happened to wait tables . Then, almost without realizing it, she’d nearly stopped painting completely. She was a server, who just happened to paint in the waning occasions when time and inspiration collided. In her experience, dreams didn’t die quick deaths. Each one suffocated through a slow and almost invisible demise.
    Then she met Sergei.
    He, and his boyfriend, Stephan, were regular customers at the restaurant. They were especially friendly and often pulled her into their banter, asking about her day with nearly identical smiles. Surprisingly, Hope had never thought to mention her artistic passion. One day, she overheard them talking about an old gallery that had gone out of business the year prior. Hope slipped into the conversation and discovered Sergei was also an artist. He’d made his money, quite a bit judging from his taste in clothes and wines, in real estate. He had decided to bankroll his true passion and open his own commercial gallery.
    Hope joked, “Got room to showcase an up-and-comer painter slash waitress?”
    She was kidding. She never thought they’d take her seriously.
    Stephan, suddenly excited as if they’d discovered a fellow artist among the peasants, said, “Oh? What do you paint?”
    “Oils, mostly—realism, romanticism, impressionism,” Hope laughed, “I’ve even tried pointillism. Take your pick of any -ism, really.”
    For a moment, she worried that perhaps she should have given a more sober response, but was so used to the carefree back-and-forth with them, that she found it hard to be serious. She felt like the world’s biggest dork.
    “Do you have any samples?” Sergei asked.
    “Yeah, I carry canvases wherever I go,” Hope joked again, before biting her tongue. Then she remembered that she’d given her boss, Umberto, a painting for his birthday. She practically skipped to his office and asked if she could borrow it for a second, then ran back to the table.
    “Ta-da,” she said, holding the canvas, tilting it forward into better lighting.
    It wasn’t her best work by any means, but it was good. The painting was of the diner, a pedestrian subject, but one she thought would please Umberto. The magic in the painting wasn’t in its subject, but in the beautiful mingling of light and shadow which cast the canvas in a romantic glow.
    “Oh my god,” Stephan said. To say he loved the painting was an understatement. Sergei echoed his sentiments.
    Two months later, Sergei featured two of Hope’s works at the grand opening of his gallery, The Loft. Little did she know one of those paintings would lure John into her life.
    The gallery was swarming with people. Hope shifted, uneasy under the glare of attention, doing her best to widen her half smile into a full one, while keeping the small talk flowing, between both those who wished to meet her and the money people Sergei sent her way.
    So this is what it feels like to be a rock star in training .
    Though the moment was everything she had always dreamed of—the launch of her career as a bona fide artist—part of her wanted to shrink away, run home and curl into the couch with a good book and a blanket of silence. She had to fight the urge to flee and find that social part inside her, incongruous with her more reclusive artist side.
    John happened to be passing by, “right time and right place,” as he would later say, when he happened to