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Kyle parks the car smoothly with the rest of the cars. He turns it off and puts the parking ticket in his front pocket.
You get off and the warm air of your home hits you first thing in the face, making your hair a mess, making you nostalgic for a city you hadn’t seen in years.
Your mother would scream in the sky if she knew you were back and you hadn’t told her.
“It’s warmer outside”, he says suddenly, and you turn, closing the door.
“Welcome to the calentón”.
He stays with his sunglasses and his cap on. This time is a simple cap, though and it doesn’t make him look like a damn tourist at all. Even if he is one and he is enjoying this trip way more than you thought he will.
He closes the door and locks the car before the two of you start walking into the sun. He looks around, like a child discovering the world. You let him, not saying anything and just explaining when he asks.
You walk until you arrive at the white spectacular building. It has art on its walls so you stop a second to look at it from the distance. You aren’t wearing sunglasses, but you use your hand to stare better at it.
“I like this one already”.
“We haven’t even gotten inside the museum”.
“Take it as a good sign then”.
He smiles at you before he opens the heavy metal door for you.
The cool artificial air hits you in the face and you are suddenly very cold, even if you are wearing a jacket.
“This is more my type of weather”.
You rolled your eyes, opening the crystal door in the lobby. You leave it open for him to enter as if he was royalty.
The true lobby of the museum is rather full of different faces and voices. A man is talking in English with some tourists at the front desk, while a young woman sells the tickets to a rather large group of tourists to your right.
The walls are white and beige, and the ceiling reminds me of a glorious past that isn’t there anymore.
For a second you think this was a bad idea.
A museum date with Kyle was not a bad idea, but to revive your homeland through art so Kyle could understand a little bit more about you was.
Your stomach churns and your face goes pale, and is not until you feel warmth surrounding your hand that you return to the present.
“Tickets are this way”, Kyle says, and he softly drags you to the line.
You let him drag you. You see him let go of you once you are there, you see him remove his sunglasses and put them on the visor of his cap.
God, he was now looking like a tourist.
His eyes turn to you for a second.
“Are you alright?”
“Yes”, you whisper back, even if everyone is talking too loudly like they don’t have any respect for this place and the art inside it.
“You sure?”
“Just getting nostalgic I guess”.
“You have been here before?”
“Once or twice. A lot of time ago. Is my homeland you know, sometimes my mother was willing to travel to the capital to see art. She was an art teacher. Seeing her through these walls was like seeing a soul finding its place”.
He chuckles lightly.
“Your mother has good taste”.
“She knows, don’t worry”.
The line slowly reduces to just the two of you. The cashier smiles and makes suggestions until Kyle interrupts her and simply answers that he wants to see it all even if costs him a fortune. You had to intervene to tune him down, even if the girl looked rather amused.
In the end, Kyle paid a fortune to see every piece of art in the museum and they gave you a plastic neon pink bracelet that will give you access to everything. She made suggestions where to go first and then told you where to find the store and the bathrooms and stairs.
“Pictures are allowed without flash, and drinks and food aren’t allowed, except for the resting area. You can also visit the garden where we have a pond of goldfishes. Please enjoy your visit”.
Kyle and you decided to follow her suggestions and from the third floor (where the main entrance was) you ended up on the fourth floor looking at some religious art.
There was information on the wall about the painter and the paints, but Kyle asked you and you couldn’t stop yourself from telling him in your own words. You almost sounded like you were an expert when you were just very curious as a child and liked to read your mother’s books about art, just because they had cool and realistic “illustrations”.
He let you do the explaining while he simply nodded or watched intently. Like he was very interested indeed.
From time to time, he separated to watch the paintings on his own and threw one or two pictures because he was an amateur photographer, who would have gotten to the pro part if he didn’t have entered the military and ditched college.
When you finished that part, you moved to the permanent exhibition.
There were a lot of things to see, with different meanings, colors, and methods. There were paintings, but there were also murals, installations, sculptures, photographs, serigraphs, and a variety of other forms of art that told a piece of you without really saying it.
It told the history of your homeland and your humanity without really saying it. It told Kyle who you were without really saying it. It said all your fears and conflicts and problems in screams and vibrant colors and gloomy situations.
It felt like that first time you did something intimate with him, something domestic and you were later anxious because you opened up without warning and he enjoyed it all, he told you he liked you back and told you he was fine with it.
He didn’t make fun of you or judge you.
While you walked through the museum, he asked questions, even if the information was beside every piece of art. He also threw photos of the things he loved or liked, and sometimes he simply stared, trying to understand. You watched him stare at the art, like he was the art.
You let him and pretended you weren’t aware of his phone moving in your direction sometimes when he thought you were too entertained by something.
After exploring all the floors and drawing some stuff in the children’s area, where you were sure you weren’t supposed to, you exit to the garden.
He put the sunglasses back on and complained about the warm sun. You didn’t tell him anything and got your jacket off before approaching a pond. Some children were making cheerful noises while pointing at something in the water, when you approached and looked, you saw goldfishes and several water lilies floating around.
You smiled, before you noticed Kyle with the phone out again, taking pictures of the fish and then you looking and smiling at them.
You turned to him.
“What are you doing?”
“Photographing the art”.
You raised your eyebrows, trying to play it chill, but you were burning inside.
“The art, seriously?”
He grins and you are even more taken aback.
He always had a perfect smile, not because it was the whitest or because his teeth were straight, but because it was always sincere and kind of juvenile, reminding you that happiness was possible, especially in the worst moments that was when he liked to use it the most.
“You are art, have always been, and always will be. Stop acting like you are surprised”.
And then, he turned to the rock path that will lead you to find the sculptures scattered around the garden.
After a while of walking under the sun, you found a bench and decided to take a break.
“This place is rather beautiful. I like it. It feels me with something I can’t describe”.
“The garden or the museum?”
“Your homeland in general”.
“You hadn’t seen anything except the capital”.
“Does that mean you are taking me to your hometown?”
You sigh.
“It’s a hard question”.
“You don’t want me to meet your family? Is that too much too soon?”
“Is not that, Kyle”, you say, between sad and offended. Your hand somehow ends in his thigh, and he doesn’t get it off.
He never does, even if you are over affectionate sometimes (most times).
“I don’t want to face my family”.
“Why?”
There is a pause, where everything you can hear is the other people in the garden, the breeze, and the city around you, like static noise outside of a bubble.
He doesn’t rush you or push you. He simply watches you, how you bathe perfectly under the midday sun. Apollo graces you with a tropical vibe he has never seen before and that he needs to catch in a photo. He always needs to catch you in a photo. You are too bright and too beautiful not to.
Aphrodite will be jealous of you at this moment. But he will adore you to the end of time.
He thinks you know that already. How in a museum full of art, you will always be the most beautiful of the pieces, how in a museum full of art, you will always be the truest and most realistic form of art of them all.
At least for him.
But that was his love for you talking.
“I just don’t. Does that make me a bad person?”
You turn to look at him again.
“No, no at all. I have done the same. I have arrived in London for leave and not seen them in the two weeks of it. I sometimes feel guilty about it, but others I’m too terrified”.
“Why terrified?”
“I sometimes don’t feel like their son anymore, especially when I come back from a mission”.
The silence settles again until you pat him several times on his thigh.
“War is dehumanizing”.
“And art humanizes me, that’s why I’m always with you, you are art and you humanize me”.
You let go of a laugh.
“You don’t believe me?”
You dismiss his comment with a hand gesture, but he doesn’t give up.
“It’s a shame you don’t see it. That you don’t see yourself as I see you. You are art, in its truest form”.
You shake your head but when you look back at him, you can see the seriousness in his eyes.
“You are serious?”
“Why on Earth will I lie to you?”
Something inside of you moves. Probably the fire that wants to make you explode after taking so much sun without a cap like him.
He stretches to take the hand still resting on his thigh before squeezing it tight.
“You are art, in and outside. I will close you in a building for others to appreciate you, but that will be a waste of time. You deserve to be free, so you can change the world and inspire others, or simply do what you love the most. People can be art too. That’s the truest form of art, being human. You are it for me. Don’t offend me with your poor self-esteem again”.
You chuckle lightly like a bomb that wants to explode.
“Now, if you finished being a breathtaking piece of art in denial, I would like to go to the loo and see what books we can find in the shop”.
“Alright. Let's go”, and you stand up.
While walking back inside, he gazes at you.
“I’m serious about what I said”.
“I know. Thanks for reminding me, I just lose track of things, especially when I’m here. Is hard to remember my history and see myself back in London”.
“London is lucky to have you, not the other way around”.
You smile.
“London is lucky to have you too”.
“The whole of UK is”.
You then roll your eyes, before he chuckles and pulls you close to him to kiss you in the head.
The heat burns his lips, but he does it again, again until he is a pile of ashes.
While Kyle uses the bathroom, you buy a water bottle from a bending machine in the resting area. You take several sips of it while sitting again. When he returns, you pass him the bottle and use the bathroom yourself. When you return, he is watching the museum’s shop window and the bottle hanging in his hand has less water than before.
You have always liked to share things, even before you were a couple.
He buys books about the museum, which are overpriced but he doesn’t care. He then buys you something you didn’t ask for but that he knew you wanted and before he could buy the rest of the shop, you dragged him to the exit.
Outside, you ask him to take you a photo with the art in the outside of the building and if he makes it his phone background immediately after taking it, you don’t ask questions.
“Is past thirteen hours, do you know a nice place where we can eat?”
You frown.
“Kyle, you can say one in the afternoon like normal people, thank you, and yes, I do know a few nice places where we can eat”.
He smiles.
“Force of habit”.
He then takes your hand, and you walk together to the parking lot. Then you fight over who will pay the parking fee in front of several tourists and a security guard.
After you win, you go back to the car. He turns it on, puts the A/C on full and you laugh.
“Welcome to the calentón”.
“Yes, yes, I will never underestimate your homeland ever again”.
And then the city gets lost in the two of you, going from one place to the other, eating and smiling, until you arrive at the hotel room, and you realize how wonderful is life when Kyle is getting you out of your comfort zone.
While Kyle is taking a shower and after you took one yourself, you scroll through your Instagram and find several new posts from him.
The one you liked the most was a photo of you, looking at a painting on the wall. There was nothing extraordinary about you just staring at a painting, but it stuck to you.
Especially when the caption said: “A piece of art watching a painting”.