Chapter 6 Adrian
Adrian
The sliding door groans as I push it open with my hip, sketchpad tucked under my arm.
The air outside is warm, thick with salt, and smells faintly of sunscreen and grilled shrimp drifting up from the pool deck.
The ocean stretches wide and gold before me, waves rolling in steady pulses, the kind of rhythm you can breathe with.
The terrace hums with quiet, just the hush of the surf below and a thread of laughter drifting up from somewhere near the pool.
I sink into one of the lounge chairs, sketchpad heavy in my lap, pencils laid out beside me in a careful row, sharp and expectant like surgical tools waiting for the first incision.
Holly had been the one to push me into it, grinning as she said, “Call down, see what they’ve got.”
And it was a good thing I asked for it. Half an hour later, a polite knock announced a box being placed in my hands, containing a sketchpad, neat little rows of HBs and 2Bs, and even a couple of charcoals nestled like jewels.
A simple starter kit, the kind you’d find in an art student’s first semester, but it felt like something far rarer.
The feel of it in my lap is intoxicating.
Smooth graphite, crisp paper, the faint, almost medicinal scent of fresh pencils.
The tools are ordinary, but the way they settle into my palms isn’t.
I hadn’t realized just how badly I’d been itching for this until the moment I wrapped my fingers around the first pencil.
It isn’t indulgence; it is necessity, the kind of hunger you only notice once it’s being fed.
The paper is blindingly white when I flip it open.
I haven’t faced a blank page in years, not seriously.
Commissions, stripping, and other side hustles paid the bills, but none of it was this.
None of it was mine. This feels like stepping into a room I bricked up years ago, now forcing the air back into my lungs.
I start small, using quick gestures and fast lines to catch the pulse of the moment before it slips away.
I find myself drawing Vince, his broad shoulders, the easy curve of his neck.
I sketch him in negative space, with unfinished lines that almost touch and then veer away, as if avoiding him on the page could undo how he occupies my mind.
He sits heavy in his body, muscles built not for show but for use.
His movements are minimal and economical, yet they draw more attention than anything else.
He doesn’t need to posture; he commands without effort.
A glance, a subtle lean, the brush of his hand against the table, small things that anchor me.
I leave him half-formed on the page, a shadow I can’t stop tracing. My pencil refuses to let him vanish, even if I want it to. Vince has always been like that, an unfinished sketch in my head that never fades.
The pencil slows. My chest is tight, but not the suffocating kind. It’s the fullness of remembering.
I was seven the first time someone called me gifted.
I drew my classmates at recess, proportions a little wonky, sure, but their likenesses were unmistakable.
My teacher pinned them up like masterpieces, my parents sat me down and whispered words like “prodigy.” Suddenly, I was winning ribbons, drawing on every scrap of paper I could get from the printer.
It wasn’t about money, not then. It was about seeing something and catching it before it slipped away.
At eighteen, I met Vince. We were in high school on our last semester.
For some reason, we never really saw each other around the campus.
I never watched sports, and he’s not the type to get involved with my own kind of crowd.
I imagined him being surrounded by jocks and cheerleaders, being one of them.
One day, he’d walked into my orbit, and something inside me snapped open.
I drew him that night, hunched over my desk with a photo I’d snuck from someone’s phone.
Obsessive, relentless, line after line until the paper tore at the edges.
Vince was the first person who made me understand what it meant to have a muse.
It wasn’t just capturing a face. It was chasing the electricity beneath the skin, the spark that made someone alive.
After high school, after everything that happened, I shoved that part of me into a locked box.
Art school was supposed to be a clean slate, a huge deal, the kind of program other kids would’ve killed for.
I worked harder than I ever had, pushed through critique after critique, bled myself into every medium they shoved in front of me.
Oils, clay, digital. I excelled at all of it, like some performing seal of talent.
They called me versatile. They called me brilliant.
But I knew what was missing. The thing I’d been known for, the raw, alive portraits that stopped people in their tracks, was gone. My muse was gone.
In L.A., I tried to fake it. Commissions, posters, logos, and clean architectural sketches all paid the bills. But every time I reached for that spark, the page stayed cold. I told myself it was fine, that prodigies burn out, and the world forgets.
Except Holly never let me.
Earlier, when she first laid eyes on him, I caught the flicker in her expression, her eyes going wide, and a spark of recognition she couldn’t hide. Later, when the noise thinned and no one was listening, she slipped in close, her voice low and steady, and asked, “That’s him, isn’t it?”
I couldn’t answer; I didn’t need to. How could I deny it when she must have seen me sketch and paint the same profile over and over again the whole time since we met?
“We can go home if this is too much,” she said. “I’ll make an excuse, get us out. No one will know.”
Holly has always been sharper than I give her credit for.
She noticed how I’d sit through football games on TV without ever rooting for a team.
No jersey, no fist-pumping, just me parked there while the noise filled the apartment, the roar of the crowd swelling and breaking like surf, the clipped voices of commentators rattling off stats I didn’t care about.
Sometimes the crash of helmets made my chest ache.
One night, she asked, gentle but direct, if there was something about the sport that held me.
At first, I thought it was weird how she caught on to it.
Why would she even think of asking that particular question without any context whatsoever?
Then, I realized she must be one of those really insightful and observant ones.
I wasn’t the athlete type, never had been, and I’d never told anyone what happened in high school.
But with her, I did. She was the first to know that it wasn’t the game keeping me glued to the screen.
It was the ghost of him, lingering in every play, every cheer.
My heartbreak, replayed in endless loops of background noise.
She meant it. But she was in her element here, lit up by Trevor’s jokes, Becca’s warmth, and the easy flow of it all. I couldn’t take that from her. So I pushed it down, fixed on a grin, and told her I was fine.
Still, what are the odds, Vince being here of all places? It feels less like a coincidence and more like one of those movie cliches, the universe giving you a nudge in the ribs: Wake up. This is your moment.
I sharpen another pencil.
The graphite scratches faster now, lines darkening, crosshatching.
I stop sketching gestures and start building.
The page shifts from loose play to intent.
I drag light across Vince’s cheekbone, shadows under his eye socket, that stubborn tilt of his chin.
My hand knows the rhythm without thinking.
It’s him, exactly as he was at eighteen, and also not.
Older now, edges carved by time, steadiness in the way he carries himself.
My breath catches. For the first time since high school, I feel it. Not just drawing, but creating. The work hums under my fingers, alive in a way I thought I’d buried forever.
By the time I look up, the sky has gone from coral to indigo. The first stars prick the horizon. I close the pad gently, like sealing something fragile. My pulse is quick, skin buzzing. Inspiration, after all these years, feels reckless, like falling in love with danger.
Below, laughter rises again from the pool deck. I lean back in the chair, staring at the dark ocean, heart still racing. Tomorrow’s waiting. Vince is waiting, whether I admit it or not.
And for the first time in years, I don’t just feel alive. I feel like my own kind of artist again.