7. Ari
SEVEN
ARI
“You know I’ll always have your back, baby.”
Her voice was soft, but it carried, like it had been stitched with all the things she never used to have time to say when I was younger. She folded one of my Orion Skye T-shirts, smoothing the fabric flat like she was smoothing something in herself.
I sat at the kitchen table—the same one where I used to sit cross-legged on the chair, drawing dragons in the corners of my homework while Mom stirred dinner on the stove.
The varnish had worn thin along the edges, and if you looked close enough, you could see the faint lines of old crayon—little flashes of color like the past trying to hang on.
For a long time, I thought I’d outgrow this house. This street. This whole town. College was supposed to be the start of something bigger, better. But now, back here with the same worn table under my elbows, I wasn’t so sure anymore.
Part of me still felt like that kid with crayons between his fingers—except now, I didn’t know what to draw next.
It wasn’t that I didn’t want to get out there. It was that out there felt too big, too uncertain. Like everybody else had gotten the instruction manual for life and I was still standing in the packaging, staring at loose parts.
“I know you do, Mom,” I said, voice quieter than I intended. A lie, maybe. Or a hope dressed up to look like confidence. “I just feel a little... stuck
She didn’t rush to fill the silence or brush it off.
She picked another band tee and folded it, slower now, like she was giving both of us a second to breathe.
Then she met my eyes with that look—one brow raised, lips curling softly, like I see you, even the parts you don’t want to acknowledge out loud .
“It’s okay to feel that way,” she said gently. “Sometimes we need a little more time to figure things out.”
Her words were like a reassuring hand at my back saying, I’m here for you if you need me, and even if you don’t .
“I don’t want you forgetting how much you’ve got to offer,” she said, folding another shirt with the same care.
“Someone out there’s gonna need your art.
Maybe you start with a few commissions. Talk to Mrs. Diaz at the community center—she’s always looking for help with mural projects.
Or—” her smile tugged wider, teasing, “—sell me a painting for this wall so I can finally get rid of that dusty thing from your aunt.”
A breath of a laugh worked loose from my throat before I could stop it.
“I’m serious,” Mom added, now folding a towel.
“Whatever you want to do next, we’ll figure it out.
You don’t have to have it all today. You’ve got time.
And you’ve got me.” She smiled at me. “I’m proud of you,” she said softly, as if she knew what I was thinking.
“I’ve always been proud of you. And I’m here. Now. For all of it.”
That was what did me in—not the plans, not the job talk, not the mural suggestion.
That. Her. Being here now in a way I used to wish for when I was a kid curled up on this exact chair with a bowl of cereal at nine o’clock at night, wondering why she wasn’t home yet from her second job.
I bit the inside of my cheek to keep it together.
I glanced down at my chipped nail polish, thumb picking at the edges.
“I worked hard for my degree, Mom...” Even when?—
Even when Ben, my ex, was being an asshole. Even when he tried to make me feel like trash for every little success. Even when I got that internship and he laughed, said I wasn’t good enough. I didn’t even know why I’d stayed with him so long. Maybe because part of me thought he was right.
Mom didn’t know everything about Ben. But she knew enough. Knew that college hadn’t been perfect for me, even though I’d come back with a degree.
“I know you did,” she said quietly, softer now, smoothing the same towel for the third time. “You didn’t quit, Ari. I’m proud of you for sticking with it.”
Tears pressed sharp behind my eyes, unexpected, unwanted. I blinked them down, throat tight. “You’ve given me some great ideas and I appreciate them.”
“I sense a ‘but.’”
“But I don’t know if I want to do any of them.”
“What do you want to do?”
What I wanted. God, wasn’t that the question? I wanted to make art. I wanted people to see it and feel something. I wanted to stop waking up every day with the taste of failure dry in my mouth.
But that wasn’t the only thing I wanted, was it?
What I wanted was messy. Complicated. It smelled like smoke and soap... probably tasted like danger. It had broad shoulders and steady firefighter’s hands.
It looked like Reid Morgan.
But I couldn’t tell her that.
“I don’t know,” I said instead, and hated that I wasn’t being totally honest with my mom.
“You don’t have to have all the answers,” she murmured, coming around to press a hand gently to my hair. “But you do have to start asking yourself the right questions.”
“Like what?”
“Like... what’s gonna make you feel whole.”
Whole.
Did I even know what that felt like?
I sat there while mom went back to folding the laundry.
My fingers twisted at the loose threads of my shirt sleeve, wondering when I’d stopped feeling like myself.
Maybe sometime between sophomore year and the last fight I had with Ben.
Maybe sometime after realizing the art world wasn’t exactly holding a spot for me at the table, no matter how hard I worked. Maybe I’d never felt like myself.
“I’ll go out... clear my head a little,” I said finally, just to break the weight of my own thoughts.
Mom gave me a look that said don’t be stupid , but also you’re grown—I’m not stopping you.
I didn’t know where I was going yet, but I knew one thing: doing nothing was killing me faster than any bad decision ever could.
And hell if I wasn’t tired of drowning in my own head.
It didn’t take me long to find myself wandering to the edge of town, following roads I could’ve walked blindfolded.
The old feed mill sat empty now, the building sagging into itself like a man too tired to stand straight. Out behind it, tucked between a line of rusted-out fencing and the dry creek bed, was the wall.
Half brick, half concrete, faded paint curling at the edges like paper left out in the rain. I used to sneak out here when I was a teenager with a backpack full of cheap spray paint, hiding from the world and pretending I was some kind of rebellious prodigy.
Now, I just carried a sketchpad and a few tubes of acrylic stuffed in my bag, along with a chipped jar of water I borrowed from the kitchen.
I crouched by the base of the wall and let the sketchpad fall open on my thigh. Didn’t think, didn’t plan. Just let my hand move.
Shapes first. Angles. Shadows bleeding into curves.
It always started like this—half-formed ideas crawling out of me like they’d been waiting for their turn. Lately, everything I drew came out abstract, like my mind didn’t trust itself to make anything solid yet.
I used to love painting people. Not portraits, not the careful sit-there-and-smile kind of thing, but moments.
The curve of a neck under light, the sharp cut of a jawline caught in shadow.
Bodies, moving or still, messy and alive.
Back in school, my senior project had been a whole series of paintings capturing hands—hands working, gripping, soft, calloused, reaching.
I’d never told anyone, but a lot of them were Daddy’s hands. Memory sketches I could never quite erase, even years later.
I worked fast now, smearing color across the page, loose strokes coming together. Two shapes, side by side but not touching. One curved, reaching, pulling upward. The other tall, rigid, resisting the pull.
God, I was pathetic.
I set the brush down and pressed the heel of my hand hard to my eyes, like I could wipe the whole thing out of me if I pushed hard enough.
I didn’t come here to draw him. I came here to remember who I was before everything got complicated.
And maybe that was the problem. Maybe I didn’t know who that was anymore.
“Thought I’d find you here.”
I jolted, head snapping up so fast I nearly knocked the water jar over.
Cael stood at the edge of the fence, hands in the pockets of his hoodie like he’d been waiting a while before speaking up.
“Jesus,” I muttered. “You trying to kill me?”
“Relax.” He grinned. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I knew you’d be here when your mom said you went out for a walk. Figured you might wanna hear about what’s going on.”
I gave him a look. “If this is about who’s screwing who at McGrady’s, pass.”
“Nah.” Cael pushed off the fence and came closer, eyeing the sketchpad but not saying anything about it, like a good friend should.
“Fourth of July’s coming up, and you know the town goes all out.
Banners, storefront displays, the whole thing.
Mrs. Evans on the planning committee mentioned wanting some local art, something that’ll get people talking. ”
I stared at him. “What, like face painting?”
He snorted. “No. Big stuff. Window art, banners, maybe a mural on the side of the VFW hall—you know, the veterans’ place—if they can get it cleared.”
A mural.
I hadn’t been part of a project that big in years.
“You should do it,” Cael said, reading the hesitation on my face. “You’re not some hobbyist, Ari. You got the damn degree to prove it.”
I flicked paint off my fingers, messy little smudges across my skin. “Yeah, ’cause that’s gonna help pay the bills.”
“It doesn’t have to yet. But it’s something. And I don’t know... people need to remember you’re the kid who made the windows on Main Street look like stained glass for Christmas that one year.”
I remembered that. Remembered how good it had felt, too.
“That was a long time ago,” I muttered, looking down at the shapes on the page, those two forms straining toward each other like gravity was pulling them closer despite themselves.
"I know you didn't forget how to do it."
I swallowed, throat tight. “I’ll think about it.”
Cael bumped his shoulder against mine, easy and friendly. “Do more than think.”
We stood there for a while, no sound but the cicadas buzzing and the faint hum of cars on the highway miles off.
I didn’t want to admit how much I wanted it. Wanted to prove I could be more than the kid whose father abandoned him, more than someone’s ex. More than a story people told about the artistic kid who left town and came back with his tail between his legs.
I wanted something to be mine again.
But mostly, I wanted something that felt like starting instead of just ending .