Out of the corner of my eye, I watched Kylie pad across the room and pick up a shirt. She bent over unselfconsciously as she grabbed it off the floor. Once she had it on, I risked looking at her again. Her lone garment was only just barely long enough to give her some semblance of modesty.
“See, if you’d learn to knock, I could have put clothes on first,” she said.
“You never answer when I knock,” I countered.
“Well you could be anyone. Why would I answer if I don’t know who it is?”
I rubbed my face in exasperation. “Do many people knock on your door?”
“No.”
“Then is it really that big a risk?”
“Hard to say. I don’t have much data to work with.”
“Goddammit, Ky.”
She grinned a small, impish smile. I found myself mirroring it.
“Mom can’t be panicking about me again already,” she said. “I sent her a text only yesterday. No, wait.” She paused and stuck her tongue out of the corner of her mouth thoughtfully. “Three days ago? Four tops.”
“No, Mom didn’t send me,” I said. “You never got back to me about clothes shopping.”
“From what I know about boys, which admittedly isn’t much, you shouldn’t really be all that interested in girly clothes shopping.”
“And yet, here I am.” I shrugged. “Though to be fair, I’m mostly just hedging against walking in on you naked again. If you needed clothes that badly, you really should have let me know.”
“Pff, whatever. You know damn well my wardrobe isn’t quite that bad.” Kylie gestured to her setup. Only then did I take in the canvas and the mirror next to it. “I was just trying something out.”
“I see that. Is that… you? Naked?”
“Yeah. It’s not easy. I mean, I’ve never been great at people anyway. But doing myself’s even trickier. Mechanics-wise, mainly. I do like that it doesn’t involve interacting with an actual model.”
“Uh huh.”
I was trying not to look, and only partly succeeding. It helped that the nude girl in Kylie’s painting wasn’t necessarily a dead ringer for her. I could tell that it was her, of course, but I could also pretend that it wasn’t. It was less conflicting than staring at my sister’s actual body.
“Not bad,” I said.
“You think?” Kylie looked at her work more critically. “Not great either, though. If you like it, you can have it when I’m done. I’m not gonna sell it or anything either way.”
“Um… I’d probably rather not have a nude painting of my sister, actually. Let alone in a house with roommates.”
Kylie cocked her head. “Oh yeah. I guess that could be awkward. Oh well. Maybe I’ll keep it. I’ll have to decide if I like it when it’s finished.”
“Yeah, you do that.”
****
I wasn’t able to convince Kylie to go out. I’d had a feeling it was one of those days as soon as I’d found her painting a nude self-portrait. Her moods could often be telegraphed by what sort of piece she was working on, if one could decipher the connections, and in this case there was the obvious correlation of nudity to not leaving the apartment.
She was amenable to taking a break and eating an early supper with me. I assumed she’d missed lunch, but didn’t ask.