Chapter 32 Muscle Memory – Elijah
MUSCLE MEMORY
ELIJAH
The studio feels too big when I sit down at the easel.
It's too bare. Too open. Too clean.
I should've set up in my room, but this will be quick, anyway.
I need to get her out of my head. This means nothing. It doesn't have to be perfect. It's just getting it out. I've dreamed of painting her almost from the first moment I saw her in the rain. Her eyes. That elegant curve of her neck when her hair is standing up after I've touched her.
Her hands.
My own hands are tight fists atop my thighs as I consider the brushes and myriads of paint colors on the wood palette I've set on the table next to the easel. I swallow and reach for them, but my scars and the bend in my finger make me want to be sick, and I recoil and stand.
I pace to the front window, scrubbing my hands over my face as my stomach turns and my chest is three seconds from caving in.
Dawn only broke twenty minutes ago, and the light is still soft and warm as I stand in its glow.
I don't know how long I stand there, but after a while, the itching in my blood recedes, and I sigh.
"Try," I mutter to myself. "Just fucking try."
I nod and spin on my heel, speed walking back to the canvas. This time, I don't sit down, I kick the chair out of the way, grab the palette, pushing my thumb through the hole to get a good grip, then pick up a brush.
My skin is electric.
"Do it," I say through my teeth.
I don't pay attention to how the brush feels wrong in my hand. I ignore the pinching sensation between my knuckles from where things didn't heal quite right. It may affect the outcome, but I'm not trying to replicate one of the greats. I'm not painting to impress Mom. She's gone. This is for me.
No one needs to see it.
I let out a shuddering breath and begin.
Mixing the colors and laying the first few strokes are awkward, but I tell myself the fact that they exist is enough. Art isn't art in the early stages.
It's Mom's voice in my head now. You can't fix a blank canvas, Eli.
After a few minutes, things start to take shape. Have depth. And I've almost gotten that shade of clear, bright jade just right. But a spasm in my hand makes the brush kick up, and I feel the pain I've been ignoring the last twenty minutes.
There's a little smear of multifaceted green going into her pupil now, and I grit my teeth.
"Fuck."
The brush snaps between my fingers, and I growl my frustration, chucking it across the room.
Seven watches it soar across the empty studio with a whistle from where he's standing in the doorway, arms crossed, leaning against the frame like he's been there a while.
I swallow tightly. "How long have you been there?"
He shoves off the wall like he might come here to get a closer look at the pitiful attempt on the canvas.
"Don't," I snap. "Just don't."
He holds his hands up. "I'm sure it's not half as bad as you think it is, E."
From this angle, he can't see the canvas, so he doesn't know what I was trying to paint, but I'm sure he can guess. Doesn't matter, though, because I'm still not showing him.
From his expression, I can tell there's a lot more he wants to say right now. His throat bobs, and he works his jaw like he's figuring out where to start, but when he stays silent, I'm glad.
I'm not ready to talk about what this is. What it means. It might not mean anything.
I might not ever pick up a brush again after I'm done getting this out.
If I can even get this out without the spasms and pain making it almost impossible.
The emotion I can see in the way he's looking at me is already enough to bear. It adds pressure, even if I know Sev doesn't mean to.
"You're up early," I comment.
I'd been trying to do this now so I could get it all cleared away before he was up, but the fucker has been as restless as the rest of us lately.
"Since five," he confirms. "Even went a round in the gym already."
Damn. And we don't even have to leave for the laundromat until late this afternoon.
"If you're not careful, you're going to turn into Atticus."
"No way." He laughs. "If I were wound that fucking tight, I'd snap."
He jerks his chin to my hand. "Is it bothering you?"
I clench my teeth. "Of course it's fucking bothering me. Hurts like hell, and a muscle spasm messed up the whole thing."
"You can't fix a—"
"A blank canvas," I finish. "I know, man. I know."
I sigh.
"Is it the pinching motion that's causing the strain?"
"What?"
"Like, holding the brush," he explains, making hand gestures to illustrate. "Is the brush too narrow?"
"Uh." I think about it. "Yeah, but I need to be able to use the smaller ones for the finer details. I can't mash color onto the canvas with a fucking palette knife or a Filbert 14."
I'm not even sure those would have a wide enough handle to help with the ache from holding them.
"I have an idea."
I shake my head. "No, man. It's no use. I tried. It was stupid. I'm going to—"
"Eli," Sev says sharply. "Give me one minute. Stay there. Don't move."
It goes against every instinct, but I do. I stay for a minute, chewing my lip to shit until Sev comes back with a…blue ball.
"I miss Aurora, too, Sev, but I don't need a visual—"
"Shut up," he says, voice ringing with a playful lilt as he brings it closer.
I grab the easel and angle it more away from him, and he gives me a look.
"I wasn't trying to sneak a peek, bro," he says, hand out, fingers impatiently waving for me to hurry up. "Give me the brush you need."
I hand him the one I need, only half a size from the one I broke. It should work.
He takes it and stabs it right through the middle of the ball I now recognize as one of the stress balls from Atticus's office. He then tests it himself, holding the ball in his palm, adjusting it to show me how it should make holding the brush easier.
"I won't have as much control with that," I grouse, and he sucks his teeth.
"Try it. If it helps, we can make something that'll work better."
"But—"
"Would you just try it?"
I take the ball brush thing and try to fit it into my hand the way Sev did.
Right away, I notice how my hand doesn't contract so tightly, the ball keeping my palm more open and rounded.
I adjust a little more, and when I look up, Seven is already nodding and grinning like he's invented the fucking solution for world hunger and is therefore one of the best human beings on the planet.
He is, but I'm not going to tell him. He doesn't need to inflate his ego any more than it already is.
"Good, right?"
"With some modifications," I concede.
The ball feels good in my palm, definitely reduces the strain, but I can imagine that if it were extended to include a sort of wedge shape that I could pinch, making that pressure point less narrow, too, that would make this even better.
I wet the tip and dip it in the shade I need to fix the mistake I made when my hand spasmed. "You going to stand there and watch?"
Sev grins. "Am I allowed?"
"Absolutely not."
He laughs to himself as he shoves his hands in his pockets and turns around.
"Hey, Sev?"
"Yeah?"
"Don't tell the others, okay? Making the other painting with Aurora was different. But this is… I don't want to…"
I'm not sure what I'm trying to say, but I know I'm not ready for the pressure that comes with everyone knowing I picked up a brush again. "Could you keep it between us?"
"Yeah. Of course I can, E."
"Thanks." I lift my ball brush thing. "For this, too."
"Anytime. Theft and destruction of property are some of my favorite things to do, after all."
I grimace. "If Atty asks where his stress ball went, I'm blaming you."
"Heard and accepted. Happy painting, bro."