25. Art It Out
Art It Out
HENRY
The GOING OUT OF BUSINESS sign went up on the twenty-seventh and by the twenty-ninth we’d sold through a lot of our remaining inventory.
Collectors, fellow shop owners, bargain hunters, and antiquers trekked out to our humble place to score vintage goods for low, low prices even I couldn’t believe Great Aunt Isla let me post. But a sale was a sale, and I was going to need the money if I was soon to be jobless, houseless, and in credit card debt, thanks to the gifts Aidan bought for me.
It was difficult to be mad or issue a charge-back for fraud when I missed him as much as I did.
Besides, I kind of wanted his sweet gifts—though I didn’t know what I was going to do when ten drummers inevitably paraded down Anchor Avenue.
“Better that our inventory go to a good home than get lost to a dump,” Great Aunt Isla had said when I called her the night of the twenty-sixth to thank her for telling me about Georgine and to ask what we should do about the store.
Really, I craved a distraction from the Aidan-sized absence in my apartment.
“Speaking of good homes, Aidan is here at mine and being well taken care of.”
“Taken care of?” I asked, frantic and hopeful in the same measure.
“He’s ill. Nothing serious. I’m tending to him,” she said.
I was halfway to the door, stuffing my feet into the easiest shoes. “I’ll be right over.”
“I’m sure he doesn’t want you to see him in his state. He’s absolutely buried under a pile of blankets and tissues at present…” she explained.
I grabbed the closest coat. “I don’t care. I need to talk to him. I need to—”
“No, doll,” she said with certainty, halting me in my steps. “He doesn’t want to see you right now.”
Urgency streamed out of me. In its place coursed upset. “But he won’t respond to my messages, and we might not have much more time together given the—” I zipped my lips. Alexa believing the magic was already a miracle. I couldn’t count on two of those in a row.
“He already told me,” she said into the ensuing silence.
“Everything?” I asked.
“Everything.”
I shut the door to my apartment, resigned. “Okay.” I had to respect his boundaries, despite my head buzzing with thoughts, my chest surging with emotion.
“He’ll come around when he’s better. I’m sure of it,” she said, even though I wasn’t.
I wasn’t sure that he’d come around or come back at all. Why should he? I hadn’t given him a convincing reason to. And when I really considered it, he still had so much to learn and so much of the world to see. So much that didn’t include me…
Alexa came to collect Aidan’s clothes the next day, so he wasn’t shuffling around in his Christmas outfit and the same pair of socks.
It pained me to pack them up in a suitcase I rarely used and roll them out to Alexa’s car.
The space where his clothes had hung mocked me in the mornings when I opened my closet.
Missing him was my own sickness, and I was down bad.
On the twenty-seventh, I received a box of three beautifully painted ceramic hens postmarked from a craftswoman in the south of France, but no word from Aidan.
On the twenty-eighth, the postman delivered a certificate stating—thanks to a whopping $2,000 donation—I was now the sponsor of a new blackbird enclosure to be built at a zoo somewhere in Massachusetts, but he brought no word from Aidan.
On the twenty-ninth, a handsome UPS driver wandered into the shop while I was in the back working on an art piece.
Aidan’s absence tore down the dam holding back my inspiration.
The flood of ideas swept me up, and I decided, instead of fighting it, I’d let it carry me away for a while. Who knew where I’d end up?
“Nice birds,” the man said, jutting his chin toward the enclosure for the doves—Presto and Chango—I’d set up in the back corner.
I had to leave them in the shop otherwise Topher would be too tempted to do away with them like poor Pickles.
A cat that killed once I could live with, but I could not in good conscience dwell beside a serial killer cat.
Besides, I liked the company the birds provided.
I wiped my plaster-crusted hands on my coveralls when the driver asked me to sign for a small parcel. He tipped his hat and was on his way. I settled on a stool and tore into the box. At this point, I knew the score.
The five rings were certainly gold-ish, but obviously not real gold. My credit limit would not have allowed for that.
Still, the rings made me think of the engagement ring I’d bought for Cam. Aidan still had it, and despite the initial upset that he’d stolen it, I was frankly relieved that it no longer haunted me from the depths of my underwear drawer. I could grab a pair of briefs in the morning without fear.
Thoughts of Cam lingered as I sold more goods from Isla’s Attic and crafted more art pieces. I donned the five rings, each sized for a different finger. They winked from my hand each time I grabbed for another paintbrush or a pencil.
My true love gave to me…
God, could love ever really be true? Not in my experience. But Aidan had that fresh optimism that my dating history didn’t allow me. Perhaps, like with my art, I needed some new perspective.
Tuesday, December 30, 2025
I took my lunch a little early. I drove to the shiny silver building that held the dermatologist’s practice where Cam worked and I asked to speak to him.
“I’m sorry, you can’t see the doctor without an appointment,” the bespectacled man behind the reception desk said.
“He’s a nurse practitioner.”
“Same difference. We’re in post-holiday flare-up season. He’s swamped.” The receptionist answered a phone call as if I weren’t still standing there, or better yet had never arrived in the first place.
I calculated my chances of sneaking past the waiting area undetected.
The odds didn’t appear great, but I would be damned if I didn’t get what I’d come for which was…
confirmation? Closure? I still wasn’t certain what I searched for as I dashed past. The receptionist was immediately hot on my tail, phone call abandoned.
Cam emerged from an examination room right as the receptionist caught me by the sleeve.
“Lyle, babe, I’m taking my lu—Henry? What are you doing here?
” Cam didn’t seem unhappy to see me, per se, but I did get the impression I was a bull who’d stomped into his china shop.
He didn’t want to make any sudden movements and spook me into a state. I was already hot-faced and winded.
“He was just leaving. I told him you were booked solid,” said Lyle, or rather babe, yanking me back toward the entrance.
“Did you get another one of those rashes in your—”
“No!” I shouted quickly before he divulged anything about one unfortunate skin condition I’d gotten in an even more unfortunate place while we were dating. “I was hoping we could talk.”
He stroked his perfect, acne-less chin. “You still like Indian food?”
“Of course,” I said.
“Lunch might run a little over. Keep the patients happy until I’m back,” said Cam to a slack-jawed Lyle as the glass door swung shut behind us.
Cam drove us in his Tesla to a curry spot we’d gone on a few dates to.
It was a hole-in-the-wall joint tucked behind a gas station.
You had to know someone who’d been there or really be willing to roll the dice with your digestive system to even think about trying it.
But I’d forgotten that’s just how Cam was, open to new places, new things, new people.
The restaurant was deserted aside from a few delivery people hauling away bags of takeout.
The air was thick with spice. We ordered at the counter, then sat in the corner to wait for the food to be delivered.
With Cam’s limitless hazel eyes on me, I regretted my impulsive decision.
Talking involved words and words had run away screaming from my brain.
“What did you want to talk about?” he prompted, swiveling to the side in his chair so his back was flush against the wall and his legs stretched out into the aisle. I wondered what it would be like to feel that confident in your body, to allow yourself to take up that much space.
Actually, I didn’t need to wonder. I knew, albeit fleetingly.
When I had sex with Aidan, confidence performed an ice-dance routine under my skin.
But right then, Aidan didn’t want to see me.
And he wasn’t guaranteed a future after Wednesday.
It dawned on me that, no matter what happened with Aidan, I was going to have to find that confidence again within myself for the future.
“I wanted to apologize for the way I acted when I caught you—no, sorry, found you? I don’t know what word I’m looking for.
I’m sorry for when I walked in on you and Sam and freaked out and everything ended,” I said so quickly I was certain that he hadn’t understood a single syllable and was going to ask me to repeat myself even though I knew that wasn’t possible.
“Merry belated Christmas to you, too,” he said with an easy, good-natured laugh as our food arrived. Not that he celebrated the holiday himself. “Jumping right in here, aren’t we?”
“I don’t want to take up too much of your time.”
“The moles and pimples and pustules of the world will still be there when we’re done, I promise.” How did he do that? How did he deploy such effortless charm even with someone who deserved so much less? “Can I ask you a question?”
I swallowed some curry. Notes of ginger, chili, and tamarind swept across my tongue as I nodded.
“Please be honest here,” he said as a preface. “Did you ever really like me?”
I nearly spat out my next mouthful of curry. “Of course. I was in love with you. I was going to propose to you.”
“Propose to me?” he asked.
“I mean, yeah. Until you chose Sam,” I said.
“I didn’t choose Sam, Henry, and I think you know that,” he said, not unkindly.
“You were at work, I was off, Sam was hanging around, and we were both in the mood. I had told you two months before I wanted to open our relationship and you said, ‘That’s fine.’ I didn’t think I was doing anything wrong. ”
Aidan had been right. “Fine” really had no meaning to me.
It was a catchall I used to… what? Protect myself?
Little good that did when I’d lied to and deluded myself about Cam cheating.
It was an easier story to tell, a smaller pill to swallow, when in reality, I was the high-flying problem purposefully ignoring the facts.
“You weren’t doing anything wrong,” I said.
“I just felt like there must’ve been something wrong with me that you’d have asked, so I stepped up my boyfriend game.
We had more sex, went on more dates, I bought you an engagement ring.
You never brought it up again, so I assumed you’d changed your mind.
That monogamy was enough. I was enough.”
He set his utensils down. “Henry, it was never about you. It was about me. About the kind of relationship that I wanted to have, and at the time it was the relationship I wanted to have with you . Until suddenly it seemed like you were happy to trot me out for dates and family parties but the minute I said or did something you didn’t like or thought other people might not like, you shut down.
You iced me out. I couldn’t live like that.
I was willing to try and work on it but the way you reacted with Sam, I just, I don’t know.
Maybe I acted hastily, but I needed to get away. ”
I’d done that to Aidan, too, hadn’t I? That’s why he was hiding out at Sunshine Meadows and not spending his possible final days with me. “I understand.”
Because at last, I did. People were not art projects. I could not collage over their imperfections. Especially when I was flawed. Exceptionally so.
“I’m sorry I treated you that way. You didn’t deserve that,” I said before taking a sip of water.
“Maybe not, but…” He threw up his hands half-heartedly.
“I could’ve checked with you. You were downstairs in the shop.
It probably wasn’t even busy. Even if I couldn’t have seduced you into stock room sex or talked you into a threesome, the least I could’ve done was tell you Sam was coming over.
Instead, I snuck him in like he was a secret I had to keep from you, and I’m sure that hurt you, which I’m sorry for. ”
Aidan had been right. Human relationships were invariably complex. People could bring each other immense joy and immense hurt, and there was no way to have one without the other unless you moved through the world as an unfeeling slab.
And if hurt and love truly were that intertwined, then I knew for certain that Aidan loved me—humanly, and not for show—because I’d hurt him. Which meant it was time for me to figure out a way to earn his forgiveness and become a person who could be deserving of his magical love.