Chapter 42 100
ALICE
When I wake, my head pounds worse than it did when it initially cracked against the tree. I tenderly poke at my scalp, wincing when my fingers graze over a large bump.
At least it’s only a bump, and my fingers don’t come away bloody.
I rub the crust from the corner of my eyes and blink away my daze, focusing on the chest I’m curled against. A plush chest. Not hard. Soft.
Jessa.
“You’re living up to your nickname,” she teases. “Good morning, Trouble.”
“Not my fault.” I yawn, snuggling closer. She accepts me, tucking my head tighter to her chest. “Ori’s fault. He made me upset. He also saved me.”
He always saves me.
“Yeah, I heard.”
“Where’s Harley?” I ask.
“Work.”
“And Ori?”
“Sleeping. In the other room. I finally forced him out because the only thing worse than regular grouchy Ori is sleep-deprived grouchy Ori.”
I pull back, staring into Jessa’s concerned expression. She seems tired—her hair is piled into a bun on the top of her head, her bangs are messy, and she’s missing her fierce makeup.
My lips part to ask a question. Then close. Then open again. Then close and twist. I don’t think they actually want to ask the question, and I don’t think I actually want the answer.
“You’ve been asleep for thirty-six hours,” Jessa says. “Ori stayed with you for the first thirty-two.”
I nod, knowing that already. I remember his overwhelming heat and scent. It’s more of the why that’s bothering me.
“Want to tell me what happened?” Jessa asks softly. Her hand brushes against my cheek, and I lean into the touch.
I hum, thinking. “It’s complicated.”
“I’m smart.”
“It’s messy.”
“I’ve got a bin of Clorox wipes under the sink.”
I laugh, then wince as the pounding in my head increases. “I don’t know where to start.”
“Pick a place and go from there,” she eases.
Jessa traces over my freckles as if they’re a connect-the-dots coloring page. My cheek feels taught where her finger brushes, puckered from the scabbed over cut.
My tongue runs over my teeth, they’re fuzzy and taste like two-day-old mouth. I’m sure my breath stinks, but Jessa doesn’t seem perturbed.
“I’ll figure out the rest with context clues,” she adds.
I glance away, torn apart by the sharp emotions that strike me something fierce.
“I’m terrified of not being able to love again,” I whisper my confession, the heart of the argument Ori and I got into in Arcadia. “And I’m terrified of losing someone I love again.”
Jessa hums. “You know the great thing about loving more than one person is that if one of us is gone, there’s someone else there to comfort you.”
“But what if I’m still the last one?”
“That’s the risk we take.” Jessa sighs, hand sliding down my neck to cradle my nape. “You’re the only one who can decide if it’s worth it.”
I remember too much. Of them. Of him. The memories are razor blades hidden in candy that I swallow down. There’s one in particular I’m choking on, and I need to gather the courage to pull it out or force it down.
“Can you take me to my studio?” I rasp. “I have one last painting to finish for the gallery.”
The canvas is heavy as I pull it from its drawer.
Heavy physically. Heavy emotionally.
I heave it onto my easel and stare at the half-finished painting. I had started on Ryan first, so he’s mostly done. Meanwhile, I’m a specter of paint taking up half the canvas.
“Is that your hubby?” Jessa asks, arms wrapping around my waist. Her chin finds my shoulder. “He’s cute.”
One corner of my mouth lifts. “He was.”
“Is this one old?” Jessa asks.
I hum. “From… before.”
“Ah.”
“I was going to do a whole series of us as a gift for when he got home,” I say, digging my phone out of my pocket to find the picture of us that I once referenced. I hold it up for Jessa. “It’s from when we got engaged.”
“You look happy.”
“We were.”
I place my phone on the stand next to my easel. My gaze flits between the picture and the canvas, already calculating the changes I’m going to make to the painted version of us.
Poetic it will be, that’s for certain. Ryan will remain the same. I’ll change.
“Sometimes I question the exact shade of his eyes.” My fingertips graze the canvas. “What people don’t realize is that when you’re apart for someone for months at a time, you go through a kind of grieving.”
Jessa’s hands spread across my belly in quiet encouragement, and I anchor my hands on her forearms, leaning into her strength.
“You mourn the life before the separation. The exact way you slept next to each other. The jokes you’d toss back and forth.
The small habits you’d formed are broken in the effort to survive the interim.
Then, they come back different. Everyone says it, warns you about it.
But you change too—they don’t warn you about that, though. ”
My face scrunches, and I shake my head.
“That sounds ominous,” I say. “It’s not a bad thing. Not necessarily. Only a truth. If he had come back I’m sure he’d be different, and I’d be different, and we’d be different.”
But not this different, my mind whispers.
“I’m sad I didn’t get to meet that version of him,” I finish, breaking Jessa’s hold. “You can pull the beanbag over if you want to watch from this side. I need to get started if I want to get this done tonight.”
Jessa watches as I paint. I speak to her with my brush strokes, bristles narrating my story; she hears every pass over the canvas and hums her understanding.
It’s an intimate thing, to share your act of creation with someone.
Harley joins a bit later, when the sun dips low enough to shine golden beams between the slats of my blinds. No one talks, and yet everything is said between our contented sighs.
The painting takes shape. Ryan stares at me, love in his eyes. I stare at the viewer, tears in mine. One rolls down my cheek. Our rings dangle down my chest, set on their chain, just as they do now, cold against my skin.
He is the past, and I am the future.
Ryan and I lay in a meadow of flowers—funny how similar the location of our engagement shoot was to the Meadow in Arcadia. Now that I remember, I understand why I keep going back to it.
I saw him there.
How, I don’t know. But I know it was him.
Maybe Arcadia knew I needed him.
Or maybe I’m crazy, drawing meaning from magic I can’t explain.
I set my brush down. Either way, it’s done. My vulnerability laid bare for everyone. The final painting in the series. The last canvas for the gallery.
The boy in the painting is closure—or, at least, the start of it.