“That sounds like a fun trip,” Samantha smiled after wiping salsa from her lips. “Do we go to the ultramarine mines in Afghanistan afterward?”

“Totally!” I joked.

“Perfect,” she said before biting delicately on more burrito.

“What was the other thing?” I asked my dad.

“The other thing is, I need to see your new work so I can figure out what made Wentworth say that. As much as I’ve always disliked the guy, he knows what he’s talking about. I want to figure out why he said what he did. But I can’t make any comments until I see your new paintings in person. Otherwise, I’ll be blowing smoke up your ass, and you know how much I hate to get my lips close to your puckered butthole.” He leaned over toward Samantha and whispered conspiratorially, “This kid was a fart factory when I used to change his diapers.”

Samantha blurted laughter.

“Puckered butthole?” I asked doubtfully.

“I hear how the kids talk. No reason why I have to sound like an antique.”

“No kids talk like that,” I laughed.

“So I’m a fucking trend setter,” Dad smiled.

He was that. You didn’t make millions by being an also-ran copycat or an idiot.

* * *

“I think I see what Wentworth was talking about,” my Dad said thoughtfully as we stood in front of my painting of Sophia in the studio at my grandfather’s house.

Samantha stood next to me. My grandfather was right behind us.

“Technically,” Dad continued, “it’s incredible. But it’s stale.” He said it with no judgment. It was an observation, like he was thinking things through out loud. I knew my dad well enough to know he would say more when he had a clear concept in mind.

My grandfather chuckled, “You should’ve heard the way Wentworth was telling Christos to change things on the now-defunct painting of Isabella. If I hadn’t walked out of the room, I would’ve thrown Wentworth out of the house.”

I rubbed my grandad affectionately on the shoulder, “Thanks, Pappoús.”

“I really wish you hadn’t trashed that painting,” my grandad said. “It was excellent.”

Boom. Silence.

My grandad had accidentally let the cat out of the bag.

My dad knew exactly what caused an artist to trash a painting. He’d had plenty of personal experience.

“I’m sorry,” my grandad said. “I shouldn’t have—” he stopped short. “I’m going to go make some lemonade. Anyone want a glass?”

“Uhh…” Samantha stammered, “I’ll help? Don’t we need to pick some fresh lemons first? I think I saw a lemon tree down the block.”

“It’s spring,” I said sarcastically. “The lemons don’t come in for another couple months.”

“We’ll wait?” Samantha said. “Let’s go, Spiridon, before we miss the lemons ripening?”

The two of them walked out of the room.

My dad raised his eyebrows at me. “When did you start trashing paintings?”

“It was just one,” I said with a combination of guilt and defensiveness. “The one Wentworth didn’t like. I had to agree with him.”

My dad pulled a couple of chairs in front of my painting of Sophia and sat us both down.

“Was it like this one?” he motioned to the painting of Sophia.

“Better.”

“So why’d you trash it? And what did your grandad mean by trash? You weren’t drinking, were you?”

I could’ve blown a smokescreen and denied it, but come on, he would know. He’d been through it all himself. “Yeah,” I sighed.

“How bad is it?”

“The drinking or the painting?” I joked.

“I’m sure your painting was terrific.”

I clamped my hand around my jaw and rubbed the stubble nervously, “Like you said, technically, it kicked ass.”

“And the drinking? Is it kicking your ass?”

“Nothing I can’t handle.”

My dad shook his head. “That’s what I told myself. Remember where that put me?”

My stomach suddenly felt like someone had run a sewer line right down my throat and it was pumping toxic waste into me by the gallon. I needed a tub to vomit in.

“That good, huh?” Dad said.

I hung my head and shrugged my shoulders.

“You’ve gotta make a choice, paidí mou. The longer you slide down hill, the harder it gets to stop yourself from crashing into the bottom. You’ve got to take the reins or the drinking will.”

If it wasn’t for the fact that my dad obviously knew what he was talking about, I would’ve written off everything he’d just said as a bunch of empty platitudes. But he’d lived at rock bottom for years. I’d seen it myself. It was sort of hard to believe he’d turned himself into the clean and sober man sitting next to me in a year’s time. But he had.

I needed to take what he said seriously.

In that moment it hit me that I’d been trying so hard to convince everyone for the last couple years that I had my shit together, I’d started believing my own bullshit. Deep down, that same old self doubt still ate away at me. Time to change that. My dad’s successes, both as an artist and a human being, gave me the confidence to finally speak with total honestly. “I don’t know what I’m doing, Bampás,” I said softly. Saying that out loud was the hardest thing I’d done in a long time.

I noticed my father’s eyes moisten when I called him Bampás.

His voice caught when he said, “None of us ever does, paidí mou. All any of us can do is keep moving forward and hope for the best. Sometimes things work out, sometimes they don’t. But you have to keep trying until you run out of try. That’s all there is to it.”

“That sounds fucking stupid,” I chuckled as silent tears dripped down my face.

My father laughed softly. “I know, but it doesn’t make it any less true.” He placed a comforting hand on my shoulder.

The next thing I knew, I was opening up about everything to my father. “I’m running out of money, Bampás. I’m burning through cash paying Russell to work on my defense against that guy Hunter Blakeley. My paintings are shit, and Brandon is barking up my ass about having everything ready for my next solo show yesterday. At the rate I’m ruining paintings, I’m never going to finish them. Everything is spinning out of control and I can’t stop it.”

My father looked at me thoughtfully for a long time. Eventually, his eyes lit up and he nodded. “I think I figured out why.”

This was the point where my father always dropped some big piece of wisdom that made me think about what he’d said for weeks if not months afterward. He was good at that sort of thing.

“Why?” I asked.

He tapped two fingers lightly against my chest. “Your heart.”

“My heart?”

“You left your heart out of every one of these paintings.” He motioned at the canvases surrounding us in my grandfather’s studio. “These are Brandon’s paintings, not yours. Did you pick any of these models?”

“I approved them. I mean, I picked them out of a bunch of headshots Brandon sent me.”

“But you don’t care about any of them. It’s obvious. I can see it. I’m sure they’re all nice women. But you don’t care about painting beautiful young women like you used to.”

“Nope,” I grinned. He was right.

“You’ve changed. You know why, don’t you?”

I did, but he was going to tell me like he was reading my mind.

“When you were younger, all you did was chase skirt. You were obsessed. You were in love with the idea of beautiful young women and the thrill of the hunt. That’s why the nudes you painted in the past are still good. You put your youth into them. Being a horny young man is a fine thing any man can appreciate.”

I chuckled. He knew what he was talking about. He had a thousand stories about chasing girls before he met my mom.

He continued, “But at some point, that started to change when you started growing up, didn’t it?” My dad stood up and walked over to the painting of Tiffany that hung on the back wall. “When did you paint this nude of Tiffany? I haven’t seen it before.”

I stood and walked over next to him. “That? Probably six months ago?”

“Uh huh,” he nodded thoughtfully while looking up at it. “It’s not like the nudes you painted a few years back. You’ve grown as an artist. Tell me, why do you think this portrait of Tiffany is different?”

“The main thing is, I’ve been friends with Tiff forever. She’s not some girl I was chasing,” I chuckled.

“That is a substantial difference,” Dad said. “And let me guess, you painted Tiffany before you met Samantha, didn’t you?”

“Yeah. How can you tell?”

“Well, your painting of Tiffany has a clear, singular message. Despite Tiffany’s obvious beauty, the message that comes through the painting loud and clear to me is respect and caring. And love.”

I huffed a chuckle.

My dad smiled, “I don’t mean romantic love. I mean the love of genuine friendship. I know Tiffany has turned into a spoiled princess since she was a little kid. But she wasn’t that way when the two of you met in grade school. She was an innocent little girl with a big heart. You two were fast friends for years. And you put the purity of that friendship into your portrait of her. It’s unmistakable.”

“Yeah,” I nodded. When it came to art, my dad read me like a book.

“Anyway,” Dad said, glancing around, “all these new paintings of random beautiful young women you’re doing for Brandon don’t mean anything to you. Because now your focus has changed, hasn’t it?”

That’s when everything came together in my head. I said, “That’s why your painting of Grandad you’re working on is so amazing, isn’t it? He’s been going to your house every weekend for the last year, hasn’t he?”