All the cans were back in the duffle, and Jace was just about to head out when her heard someone comment on the detail of the piece. Glancing over his shoulder, his stomach sunk a little when he caught sight of who it was. The one person who’d taken issue with his choice of subject.
“Hey, thanks,” he responded, smiling in spite of the uneasiness he felt. Supposedly Marchand was an artist, so he’d take the compliment for what it was. “It was a lot more difficult than I was figuring it’d be.” Out of practice. He probably should’ve gone for a piece that needed less color variation and shading, but he liked a challenge. It kept him busy.
He slid the straps of the duffle onto his shoulder, and shoved his hands into his pockets. “The shading was a bitch too,” he commented, making conversation. Whether that was a good or a bad idea remained to be seen. He wasn’t getting hostile vibes off of Evan, so it probably meant that he hadn’t come out here to reprimand.
Or maybe he was a sneaky fuck and caught people just when they were starting to feel comfortable in a conversation. Jace hated when that shit was pulled on him. “You’re the first person that’s come by here since I started.” Well, maybe others had been by, but not when Jace had been working. He wouldn’t have minded an audience wasn’t something foreign to him. He used to chalk the sidewalks in the city parks when he had just showed up in NYC. Some of it hadn’t been bad either, but he didn’t have any proof of that. Any pictures he had taken had been left; sometimes he thought he should have tried better to keep some of that.
“Definitely haven’t seen any kiddos.” So maybe he was poking at the subject a little. Might as well get it over with if Marchand was going to give him an earful.