“Shit, here’s our stop!” he said, grabbing my hand and pulling me off the bus. It all kind of happened so fast I didn’t have time to object, not that I would have, but then we were on the footpath and there was no reason for him to be holding my hand. He’d actually held my hand a few times, so I was sure he had no issue with it. “Oh, sorry,” he said awkwardly. “I should have asked before now. I don’t know if you have issues with holding hands. Some people don’t like it, and if I made you uncomfortable—”

“Ask me.”

“Ask you what?”

“If you can hold my hand. You said you should have asked before now, which might be true, I don’t know, but you’ve held my hand like three times already.”

“Three times?”

“I’ve been counting.”

“Oh, sorry.”

“I’m not. But you still haven’t asked me.”

He smiled, more relieved than happy, I thought. “Would you mind if I held your hand? Do you like holding hands? I don’t know what you’re comfortable with because we haven’t got that far yet—”

I held out my hand. “I like hand holding. I actually like it a lot. And the nervous rambling you have going on right now is kinda cute, but I have the nervous rambling market cornered. There are trademarks and patents pending. In case you were wondering.”

He took my hand, feeling the weight of it as though it was quite a monumental thing, before threading our fingers. Then he looked at me with the dopiest grin on his face. “I like holding hands too.”

Then we stood there on the footpath for a while holding hands and smiling at each other like a pair of idiots. “Should we?” I asked, nodding toward the stairs to the art gallery.

“We should.”

So we did, holding hands. We took in the creations and masterpieces that adorned the walls. We didn’t speak much in the few hours it took. Hennessy would stop and stare at a particular piece and I’d wait patiently until he’d taken in every line, every stroke of paint or charcoal, every shade. Don’t get me wrong; I admired the artwork too. It really was amazing. But watching him process each piece was kind of amazing too.

“You love it, don’t you?” I asked him quietly.

He nodded, then turned from the charcoal artwork to me. “I do. I know the saying is a picture paints a thousand words, but it’s more than that. It’s like a book on canvas. Every stroke of the artists hand is a word, a sentence, a chapter. The whole picture is a story in itself. Don’t you think?”