Chapter 5 - Cam
CAM
Even the thumping bass that vibrates the old floorboards beneath my bare feet can’t ground me tonight the way it usually does. The rhythmic beat typically helps me focus. It gets my head into that zone where all the visions I see inside it can flow out and onto the canvas without any real thought.
Not tonight.
Not when everything is chaos.
My mind. My body. My soul.
The meeting and then a very long talk with Dale did little to dispel any of this misery that threatens to consume me, nor the anger at myself for setting all this in motion.
It lives in each breath I take, as does Ivy’s scent that somehow still lingers in this space.
Restless energy crackles over my skin.
I pace the studio around a massive blank canvas laid out on the tarps on the floor, just waiting for me to do something—where it has remained for hours now while I haven’t been able to put anything on it.
My fingers twitch, agitated to pick up the brush and get all this emotion out.
It’s always been my only outlet.
Even as a child with a crayon in my hand, I would draw the world as I saw it and what I was feeling—first in color, then in black, white, and gray after the accident.
It was how I dealt with Dad’s death, with Mom’s illness, with feeling like I wasn’t fitting into my own skin the older I got.
It has always been my source of freedom.
Yet, I can’t do it tonight.
Each time I get close to snagging a brush from beside the waiting palette, I retreat to my pacing, because I can’t see what it’s supposed to be the way I should, the way I always could before.
Because it’s been her for so long that I can’t paint anything else.
But I can’t paint Ivy now.
Not anymore.
It’s always been so easy because I’ve memorized every second I’ve spent with her, locked away each minute detail about her hair, her eyes, her lips, her skin, her smile, the way she seems to radiate a pure light and obliterates the darkness always creeping in on me so I can perfectly capture it.
But all that is gone.
All I see now is the devastation on her face as she kneeled in front of me on this floor and absorbed the horrific truth…
All I see is pity and hatred in the eyes that looked at me with so much warmth only a few days ago…
All I see is her agony instead of her life and beauty.
I don’t want to paint her like that.
I don’t want to memorialize her pain.
I want to remember her like that…
My gaze drifts to the painting I did of her on the bed.
Hooded eyes filled with contentment and a lingering haze of lust gaze back at me with so much affection.
Full breasts and dusky pebbled nipples as my gaze devoured her.
One long leg propped up, exposing her glistening cunt still filled with the evidence of how I took her right in that spot.
“Fuck…”
My scream of frustration echoes around the studio and off the brick and steel the same way her cries did that night and the next morning, but it was so quickly replaced by her sobs of despair in this same space that it’s tainted now.
No amount of trying to shake away those visuals or sounds from my head has worked. Ivy’s pain is so deeply embedded in my soul that it’s become a part of me I can feel with every agonizing breath I take.
That same demon that threatened to control me last night crawls across my back, settling on my shoulders with its agonizing weight. Whispering in my ear that it will help end the suffering and silence the voices in my head. Promising it can ease torture and wipe away the memories…
Only, I know it’s a lie.
One I allowed myself to believe for a long time.
One that almost convinced me last night.
One that is so damn tempting when I’m here with darkness and regret as my companions, when nothing seems right and I know that it never will be again.
Too much has happened.
Too many mistakes.
Too many lies.
Too many deeds that can’t be undone.
My eyes land on the huge canvas where I made love to Ivy for the first time. Every drop of paint screams in my head. Every splatter makes my chest tighten. Each smear spread across the surface drives a knife straight into my heart.
It represents everything I ever wanted but never deserved. The culmination of me finally succeeding in taking what I always wanted, what I craved more than life itself.
And she was everything I thought she would be and more.
I start trembling as tears pool in my eyes.
Because it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever created, and I’ll never be able to look at it again without knowing what it cost me.
It will always be a reminder of all the horrific things I did to get us to that point.
I betrayed Drew. Lied to her. Stalked and watched while I lived in a dark hole of selfishness.
Threatened and said horrible things I didn’t really mean.
Then, when I should have left, when I should have let her grieve Drew’s loss and found somewhere I could have let myself crumble on my own, I was too selfish not to walk away.
I let her need me. I let her kiss me. I let myself give in to all those cravings.
And I’ll never have her again.
I’ll never touch her, kiss her, hold her, or feel her come apart in my arms.
I’ll never get to tell her how sorry I am for everything I’ve put her through because she will never want to hear it.
Just like I don’t want to listen to the sinister voices in my head right now.
I try to shake them clear, squeezing my eyes closed and fisting my hands in my hair hard enough that my knuckles ache and my scalp stings. The pain there doesn’t do anything to alleviate that in my chest.
My phone dinging with an incoming message finally forces me to release my death-grip and make way over to the counter where I left it.
Hope blooms for a brief moment that it might be Ivy.
That she is reaching out to me, that last night wasn’t the end…
but I know it’s likely Mom. And if I don’t respond to her, I know she will show up here worried, when that’s the last thing I want to cause her ever again.
Mom
Are you okay? I can be there in twenty minutes.
Despite how distressed I am tonight, her offer tugs the corners of my lips up.
Because even though she has countless reasons to want nothing to do with me, to hate me, and want to stay far away, she still loves me.
Somehow, she has the ability to separate what I’ve done from that commitment to me and her belief in who I am at my core—a good person.
That little boy she raised to always do the right thing and to care about other people more than he did himself.
Even if she’s wrong.
At my core, I’m the person who chose himself over and over again. Who did wrong in more ways than anyone can count. I’m the one who should be gone from this world, not Drew.
It should have been me.
That truth has haunted me endlessly the past few months.
There were so many times I cheated death, when I came close to the final sleep because of too much booze or mixing volatile concoctions that should have taken me from this world.
Yet he was taken. The person who literally saved lives for a living, who took care of everyone else, even to his own detriment.
How is any of that fair?
My thumbs hover over the keyboard.
I’m definitely not okay.
I’m self-aware enough to know that.
But having her here wouldn’t change anything.
Drew will still be gone…
Ivy will still be lost to me…
I’ll still know it was all my fault…
Releasing a ragged breath, I fire off my reply.
I’m fine. Have you spoken to her?
I don’t need to tell Mom who “her” is.
As despondent as I have felt since I opened that box, Ivy has it a thousand times worse.
She opened that door for me.
She gave me the key.
She invited me into her home and into her life.
She welcomed me into her heart when I had no business being there.
And I crushed what hope she had left.
I can’t even imagine what she must be feeling right now, how bad it has gotten for her…
Bile climbs my throat just thinking about what she’s suffering, and I swallow it down, clenching my phone tightly as I wait to hear even a single word about how she’s doing.
It took all my willpower and strength not to go over there today to check on her, to ensure she’s all right, even though I know she never will be again.
The only thing that held me back was Mom’s assurance that she was going to do it and reminder that Ivy would make it very clear if and when she was ready to see me.
Which certainly isn’t now.
The little bubbles tell me Mom is typing a reply, but they go on for so long it’s clear she is choosing her words carefully. When the message finally pops up on the screen, my hand tightens on my phone.
I went over there earlier. She’s understandably upset. Marlo is with her. I’ll keep checking on her.
And you.
She didn’t have to say the words for me to understand the meaning: Ivy is in as bad a shape as I imagined.
And that demon whispers again…
I block it out, setting my phone back on the counter and turning to face the blank canvas again.
The music continues to play, helping drown out those voices I’m trying so hard to silence tonight, but it won’t be enough. So much tension has built through my body that every muscle aches and trembles, and knowing Ivy is suffering only makes it worse.
Instead of grabbing the paintbrush, I snag the box cutter from the counter—the very one I used to open the package from Drew.
I tighten my hand around it, my gaze traveling over the hundreds of paintings in the studio. Piles and piles of them lean against the walls. Almost all of them of Ivy.
But I can’t touch them with this blade.
I can’t destroy what I have left of Ivy, even if I have destroyed her.
My hand flexes around it, though, urged to shred something, to make anything look how I feel on the inside—flayed alive.
The stereo moves to the next song, and the change in beat propels me forward, those familiar vibrations through the floor comforting as I approach my target.
It’s the painting that made me a household name—the one everyone recognizes.
They may not know my street art, those murals painted on the sides of buildings in unsuspecting neighborhoods. But they know this.
The little girl smiles back at me, holding her balloon so tightly, the simple joy of receiving it enough to brighten her face and the world around her.
I don’t know why this image came to me that day.
I don’t understand how it was so crystal clear.
But I had to paint it, give it to the world, make a statement about those joys in life we take for granted as we grow up and allow outside forces to crush us.
Now, she seems to mock me.
Because there is no joy left in my life.
I bring the box cutter blade to the canvas and slash it across, ripping through the image and tearing myself open in the process.
Tears stream down my face, but I keep cutting, obliterating it until nothing remains but pieces dangling from the wood and scattered across the floor.
My chest heaves with a sob, and I turn away from it, my vision immediately zeroing in on the blank canvas that has haunted me all night.
I turn the blade on it next.
Slicing.
Stripping the canvas away until nothing remains.
There was nothing there anyway.
There might not ever be again.
My muse is gone, along with any hope of ever finding her.