Read One More Time for Free Online Page A

than it is. And that’s just not interesting to me.”
    “This show is different,” Matt insisted, struck that she’d expressed what had been bothering him in a more vague and general way. “It might change your mind.”
    She studied him steadily for a moment then nodded at the flyer he still held out to her. “What does that mean, then? Pandora’s Redemption? Why is it called that?”
    Matt looked at the flyer, hating that he didn’t really know. He struggled to remember something Sharan had said about blood, but knew he couldn’t express it coherently.
    “It doesn’t make sense,” she said. “Does the artist even know who Pandora was? Pandora opened the box that released all evil into the world, then closed it just in time to keep hope inside. What does that have to do with red and a line of black? I don’t get it.”
    Matt smiled, caught. “Neither, actually, do I. But that doesn’t mean it’s worthless, or that there’s no point in seeing it.”
    “Why are you doing this, if you don’t like this art either?”
    “I didn’t say I didn’t like it!”
    “No, but I saw the look on your face when you were looking at it. You didn’t have to say it.” She smiled then, really smiled, and he couldn’t help staring at her. She was much prettier than he’d realized. She tilted her head, eyes sparkling. “So, why do this?”
    It seemed inappropriate—or ignoble—to admit that he was doing it for sex.
    “Hey, Matt!” Sharan called from behind him at exactly the wrong time. “You’re doing a great job!” He turned to see her leaping down the steps, all long legs and loose hair, slender and sexy and headed straight for him.
    “Oh!” Book Girl said, and Matt didn’t miss that she sounded disappointed in him. “I get it.” She ducked over her books, letting her bangs cover her eyes shyly, and started to turn.
    “No, you really should come and see the show,” Matt insisted, not wanted her to walk away.
    She glanced over her shoulder, her gaze darting to Sharan. Her smile was gone. “I don’t think so,” she said then, with the surety that would become so familiar to him. Then she smiled again, polite to a fault, but this smile was a pale imitation of her earlier one. He wanted the first one back. “But good luck with it.” She paused, her gaze flicking to Sharan and back to him. “Good luck with everything.”
    Then she was gone, leaving Matt Coxwell staring after the one person in his experience who had the nerve to tell the truth. In a short conversation, Book Girl had been unafraid to speak her thoughts honestly.
    Sharan fussed over him and kissed him, apparently thinking that he needed sexual encouragement to persevere, but he kept thinking about the other girl’s smile. He kept thinking about how she had nailed exactly what had been bothering him, that she had dared to say the unspeakable. She was right: there was so much of the art game that was bullshit, just fancy talk covering a lot of emptiness.
    It was more than unworthy of interest: it was dishonest.
    Even his own involvement was dishonest in a way, because he wasn’t involved for any passion of his own. He just wanted to keep Sharan happy, to keep Art from wiggling in between them in bed. Sex with Sharan was his passion, not the art itself. And that made him wonder whether his passion was enough.
    He would never tell Sharan that truth, never be honest with her, because he instinctively knew that such a confession would cost him everything. But that other girl had been honest, honest as if she couldn’t imagine being anything else.
    What would it be like to be able to be so open with someone else? Matt could barely imagine such a thing, given his own family history, but was tantalized by the possibility. What would it be like to say what you thought, with no prevarication or gilding? Were there people who had relationships with no secrets, no hidden objectives and goals?
    Some twenty years later, Matt Coxwell watched as his