Chapter 8 Cam
CAM
SEVEN WEEKS LATER
As I stare at the canvas lying at my feet, Roxy’s words from weeks ago continue to ring in my ears, just as they have every time I’ve picked up a paintbrush since our talk.
“Your pieces, especially the ones you leave in the most unexpected of places, always have a message people need to see. Something poignant about life, the struggle of man, love, regret. All the things we all feel and sometimes can’t express.”
Before Drew’s death, I never had trouble expressing anything this way. Whether I was angry, frustrated, happy, confused, high, lonely, or just strung out, I’ve always been able to vent it through my art. And it’s always felt right once it’s on the canvas or wall.
But now, there are so many things I can’t express.
Either because I haven’t figured out what I’m actually feeling when my emotions are a conflicting jumble or because there isn’t any way to truly do it.
I’ve spent countless hours since the night I finally confessed everything to Ivy trying to figure out a way to tell her how sorry I am without inserting myself back into her life when I know I’m not wanted there. But there are no words that can accomplish that, if she’d even hear them.
The only thing I can do is continue sending her favorite meals to the house every day, even if it’s woefully inadequate to express everything I feel toward her and this horrible situation I’ve forced us into, and she’s likely throwing them away…
I’ll keep doing it until she tells me to stop.
Maybe some part of me is hoping she will because then she’d at least be talking to me, even if it is to scream and rant and tell me to leave her the fuck alone forever.
It would be better than the reality I’ve been living—or, more accurately, barely surviving—in since she walked out my door that night.
Because this silence is deafening.
I hadn’t realized how much I’ve come to rely on having her around and in my life, on being able to ride over to her house and let myself in when I needed to be surrounded by her and Drew, when I needed to see her, to sit and talk, or just listen.
And the longer we go without speaking, the harder it becomes to stop myself from going there, not merely to check on her and make sure she hasn’t returned to that dark place I found her in—or worse—but to throw myself at her feet and beg for the forgiveness I know she can’t and won’t give me.
How could she?
I still don’t understand how Mom sits across from me when we meet for coffee or lunch, knowing I’m the cause of all her pain.
Those eyes of hers that I know match Drew’s and mine, even if I can’t see the color anymore, somehow still hold the same affection they always have, as if everything I’ve done hasn’t changed anything for her. And none of that makes sense to me.
Maybe it’s true what people say about having children—that there’s literally nothing they can do that can change the way you love them.
But that isn’t true for Ivy.
The moment she knew the full truth, I watched her eyes shutter, and a wall built up around whatever might be left of her heart that will never fall when it comes to me.
I got everything I wanted for a fleeting moment, and even though it was tainted by what I did and lost to get there, it’s the only thing keeping me moving forward at the moment.
The only thing keeping me sane besides my meetings, my time with Mom, and the fact that at least I’m finally able to put paint on canvas again.
After weeks of nothing, at least I’m expressing something.
Only it isn’t Ivy anymore.
Every time I’ve brought out a new canvas since I met with Roxy, a different face has appeared.
One that I look at every day, yet it isn’t mine.
Finally revealing the truth to Ivy and Mom somehow turned my guilt into something physical.
I didn’t understand why I couldn’t paint anything for so long, but after sitting in front of Prometheus that day, it became clear that my subconscious had been trying to get me to put something I didn’t want to see on the canvas.
That’s why I couldn’t put paint on canvas or anywhere else. It wasn’t just not wanting to see Ivy in her anguish; it was because I didn’t want to see him.
Drew…
The literal other half of me.
The person who was always at my side and always had my back.
The only one who ever really understood me and never tried to change what I was, embracing all my quirks and darkness that clashed so much with the light and warmth that always seemed to radiate from him.
He was my rock.
And instead of telling him that, instead of celebrating his joy at finding Ivy and having her in his life, I tried to take her and destroyed them both in the process.
I will never be able to make up for what I did to Ivy. I will never be able to make things right with her. But at least she’s still here. And I will spend every minute of every day until I draw my last breath trying to find a way.
But he’s gone.
There is no apologizing to him.
There is no opportunity to supplicate myself and beg for him to allow me to take it all back like I had intended to that night after he drove away.
It’s too late, and that’s what I knew but never wanted to face fully until I sat there with Roxy and really looked at Prometheus.
It’s always been about him.
I spent my time so focused on Ivy and her pain, making sure she was all right, that I was ignoring the bigger agony that drove me into that bottle and back to my dealer. I was avoiding what had been tearing me apart and going on as if I weren’t missing half of myself.
But there was only so long that could continue.
Only so long I could go on with half of my heart.
Now, I’m forcing myself to face it. To face him. To face the loss and the guilt and all the decades of life we had together.
Over and over again.
Dozens of paintings over the past several weeks, since my conversation with Roxy finally knocked loose whatever block was preventing me from fully facing the future without him.
Only, it isn’t enough.
It’s never enough.
No matter how many times I paint him, it doesn’t feel right.
Each brushstroke flows as if I’m possessed.
The paint hits the canvases without me even having to think about it.
So many memories of him seared into my brain, brought back to life, yet something deep in the center of my chest still stings when I look at them.
Another voice in my head screams that they’re all wrong.
I stand in front of another one today, paint dripping from the bristles of my brush.
Drew stares back at me from the canvas.
But it isn’t the Drew from that night, from the last time I saw him.
So angry.
So hurt.
So broken by what I had done and was threatening to do.
It’s the one I want to remember, even though it was almost five years ago that he last looked at me this way, that he last held this unrestrained affection for me.
Back when he was so excited about his future as he finished up his residency.
Ready to find the woman he wanted to spend the rest of his life with and start it.
Happy and hopeful about everything that was coming his way.
He grins at me from the canvas, and the words he said before this exact moment in time run through my head. “It’s time you get your shit together, too, Cam.”
If he only knew…
Of course, back then, he meant in terms of settling down with someone, because I mostly did have it together.
I was focused on my art. Traveling the world and creating beautiful murals wherever I felt like putting them.
Expressing all those things that had filled my head before Ivy became my obsession and a devastating addiction…
Before the man I’m looking at now paid the price.
“Fuck…”
The longer I stare at it, see the glimmer in his eye, the crooked tilt of his lips, the more the wrongness grows exponentially deep in my chest, expanding until I can’t draw in a breath or bear to look at the painting anymore.
Why the fuck doesn’t anything feel right?
I throw down the brush, grab the tray of paint, and dump it across the canvas, effectively washing away my work and that memory.
Because it isn’t right.
Nothing is.
Maybe nothing ever will be again…
I shove my hands through my hair, tugging at the long strands that have grown even more unruly in the past several weeks, but no amount of physical pain seems to alleviate the true one I’m feeling.
Something else can…
My body vibrates, and that little voice keeps whispering in my ear…
I shake my head, trying to force away the divisive thoughts that will only lead me down a road I never want to go again.
But it’s been a real struggle to silence them.
Meeting after meeting. Talking with Dale. Even the time spent with Mom and some very frank conversations with her about all the things I kept hidden from her for so many years have helped keep me on the straight and narrow.
Barely.
On days like this, the pain and restlessness start to become too much even for the strongest of my resolve.
I have to get the fuck out of here…
If I don’t, my eyes will keep drifting to all the paintings along the walls. The ones I destroyed. The ones of her I can’t bring myself to. The ones of him that are all so fucking wrong.
Wrong.
Wrong.
Wrong.
FUCKING wrong.
I stalk over to the counter where my cigarettes sit and snag them.
Because what I told Ivy that night was true—I smoke so I don’t put worse things into my body.
And today, I want Drew back. I want her. And I want those worse things.
The metal squeals along the track as I tug open the loft door, the sound piercing through the storm of voices in my head—at least momentarily—and I hustle down the staircase and shove out onto the street barefoot and shirtless.
But the bite of the fall wind against my exposed skin and the cool pavement on my feet barely register.
My sole focus is getting a cigarette lit and in my mouth before I do something stupid—like pick up my phone and call my dealer again, or worse…Ivy.
I light up and start pacing the jagged, cracked sidewalk as I inhale deeply, drawing the smoke into my lungs and holding it there before I release it in one long, slow stream that quickly disappears into the crisp air.
The nicotine hitting my system doesn’t stop my body from trembling.
If anything, it only makes it worse.
“Your brother would tell you to quit.”
Ivy’s words from that day rush back to me, and I wince, looking down at the cigarette between my unsteady fingers still splattered with black and white paint that’s likely in my hair and all over me by now.
Christ, I’m a fucking mess…
This dangerous edge I’ve been walking seems to keep narrowing, and the longer I go without seeing her, without knowing how she really is beyond the placations Mom gives me, the harder it becomes to stay balanced on it.
So, I pace and smoke.
Because it’s better than the alternative, than falling.
Anything is.
And some part of me believes that it will come to me eventually—the answer.
Some way to somehow fix things that are unfixable.
It may be na?ve. It may merely be wishful thinking and hoping for something that will never happen, that can never happen, but I have to believe in something right now.
I need something I can cling to in these dangerous waters I’ve been struggling to stay afloat in, or I fear slipping under the surface.
I’ve been swimming harder since the day I came clean to Mom.
Fighting with everything I have.
But it doesn’t seem like enough on days like today.
I tip my head back and stare at the gray sky overhead, the clouds slowly passing over me, pushed by the breeze that promises winter coming far too soon.
Drawing more smoke into my lungs, I search for shapes like Drew and I used to as children, but all I see are swirling coils of varying darkness that threaten a chilly rain.
A shiver runs down my spine, and I return my gaze to the neighborhood around my building.
It hasn’t changed in the almost ten years I’ve owned the studio, but just like with Prometheus Bound, I always seem to find something new to look at out here.
Old, faded brick walls holding up buildings that have stood here for decades line the street. My fingers itch to paint one, and five years ago, I would have without a second thought.
I would throw paint on it so fast that people would go to sleep and wake to find the completed piece where there was a bare wall the night before.
But that was before.
Before I betrayed Drew.
Before everything felt so wrong.
Back when we were truly brothers, connected by so much more than shared DNA and the same face.
Memories flood my head, my eyes burning with tears that blur my vision as I take another drag from my cigarette.
The answer hits me so hard that I stagger a step.
I know what I have to do…
And I don’t know why it took me this long to figure it out.
But my plans are interrupted by my phone dinging with an incoming message in my pocket.
It’s probably just Mom or Dale checking in, but I know better than to ignore either of them, so I fish it out and scan the screen quickly.
The words take a moment to register, and when they do, my cigarette falls from my hand to the sidewalk and all the smoke rushes from my lungs…