Chapter 24 #3
He thumped his chest. “I thought we all had what we wanted. Me and Phoebe. It was like we were a secret team—in love and in work. Now it’s all gone to shit.”
“She’ll get the misunderstanding when you explain it, Sawyer,” Kyle told him. “She won’t like it maybe, but Phoebe wants the best for you. Beverly chose the best gallery. It’s not hers this time.”
“Sucks that it is her mother’s, though,” Brooke said gruffly. “I don’t imagine that will help their relationship, but that’s not your concern.”
“Of course it is!” He could hear the emotion in his voice and couldn’t seem to stop it from erupting. “I love her, and this hurt her. So badly she doesn’t want to talk to me. Maybe I can do a show at her gallery on the side.”
“No, you cannot,” Axel interrupted, crossing until he sat down beside him. “Your agent is your guide. She knows what she is doing with your career. You cannot go behind her back and have a side show. This is where Brooke is correct. It’s career suicide.”
That word had his stomach dropping to the floor.
“You might as well cancel your representation with her as well as any other reputable agent,” Axel continued in his deep voice.
“You’ll be dubbed an unprofessional, and worse, a lovesick prima donna.
How will you explain why you suddenly don’t want to do the Anderson Gallery when you'd seemed so delighted about it earlier? You’ll have to explain, and then you’ll look like you’re trying to do a favor for your girlfriend, which also makes her look bad, I might add, and that she can’t be a success on her own.
Your career will be over before it has begun, and hers will be harmed. ”
Not being able to find solutions was worse than frustrating. How could this be it? He took off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. “So these are my choices? If I help Phoebe, then I lose Beverly? But if I go along with Beverly, I lose Phoebe?”
“You’re going to clear things up with her,” Brooke told him in her no-nonsense voice.
“What if I can’t? Or what if she does understand, but she’s still hurt by all this? I’m going to feel awful. Being the cause of any hurt for Phoebe destroys me. On the inside. I won’t be able to create anything.”
Kyle stood and came over until he was standing before their group. He shoved his hands in his pants pockets. “Sawyer, I love you like a brother, but this is when you have to make the leap and paint for you. All the way. Forget everything else. Life is never going to be perfect.”
“I agree.” Axel pointed to the fireplace.
“Every true artist must fan the flames of their creative fire, whatever comes. Also, making someone your sole reason for painting is like making someone your sole reason for living. It’s an impossible loop.
Way too much pressure to put on yourself as an artist, and much too much pressure to put on another person.
Especially when you have a relationship with them. ”
He wanted to pull out his hair. All of his earlier epiphanies seemed to have burned to ash at his feet. “I know you’re right, but I can’t feel that right now.”
Brooke put a comforting hand on his arm this time and not one of those coach punches, thank God.
“You’re hurting because Phoebe thought you were capable of going behind her back and setting this up, betraying her.
You’re going to clear that up, and if she’s who we think she is, she’ll support what’s best for you career-wise.
Even if it means you don’t do her gallery right now. Who knows? Maybe in a few years.”
But that seemed like the distance between the planets right now—too far to travel in this lifetime. His hurt seemed to pulse under his skin. “I thought everything was going so good—”
“It is!” Brooke did sock him gently this time. “Don’t let this bring you back down. You’ll talk to her.”
“After she simmers down,” Kyle cautioned. “She’s a reasonable woman and a professional.”
He was going to text her with his side first, so he could make the words right. No way was he just sitting here twiddling his thumbs.
“If it makes you feel any better,” Axel broke in, “I was surprised when you mentioned Beverly wanted to go with Phoebe’s gallery.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
Axel sighed. “Because art showings are changing, and I thought perhaps she was taking a more nouveau tack with you. It seems I am right that Beverly recognizes that Phoebe’s gallery isn’t in the big leagues yet.”
“But I want to support her.” He could feel that knife in the back of his throat again. “Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do for the person you love? I mean, look at you two.”
Axel and Brooke shared a loving smile before Axel said, “Sawyer, if a client called and wanted the best interior designer in the world, I would not refer them to Brooke, simply to support her desire to be in the business. She must carve her own path. Phoebe must do the same.”
“I also don’t love Axel less because he wouldn’t give me a plumb client,” Brooke added. “I wouldn’t think Phoebe would want that either.”
“But it’s her mother’s gallery! She took it, knowing Phoebe wanted it.”
“Yeah, but that’s not your fault.” Brooke gave one of her famous dragon breaths. “What is it about bitchy mothers? Yours, mine, and Phoebe’s. They should be taken out into the forest and—”
“No need for violence, elskede.” Axel patted her hand. “Although the sentiment is understandable. Sawyer, use this for fuel. Paint from it. What it feels like to be treated like that by a woman who’s supposed to love you.”
He could already see the boy he would paint.
He was five years old, bringing home a silly craft from school.
His mother had taken it with a frown and held it out in disgust. Is this really the best you could do, Sawyer?
He’d fought tears as she’d gone to the trash compactor and thrown it inside, hitting the button to destroy it.
Something he’d loved making. Something he’d been so happy and proud to give her.
The sound had been too loud for his ears, and he’d run from the room with his hands over them. Inside his bedroom, he’d tunneled under his covers and curled up into a ball, crying. He’d fallen asleep like that. She’d never even come to get him for dinner or to give him a bath.
“I don’t think I can paint that feeling.” He pressed his hand to his solar plexus where the hurt pulsed. “No, I don’t think I want to. That’s too…hard.”
“As you say,” Axel only responded. “Yet it is the person you are who must learn how to paint for himself. I know you will figure it out. You’ve come this far.”
He had come this far.
Now he had to go even farther. He realized Nanine had been right all along when she’d shared the Mouton motto with him.
In the end, he had to be his own, Sawyer, I am, or he would be nothing.