8. Anika
— ? —
Anika
I was covered in paint when the phone rang.
Cerulean blue on my hands. Cadmium yellow streaked across my forearm. A smear of alizarin crimson on my cheek that I wouldn’t notice until I looked in a mirror three hours later. I looked like a Jackson Pollock painting had attacked me.
Which was fitting, because that’s basically what had happened.
Anwesha’s spare studio was small. Half the size of the one at the triplex, with water-stained ceilings. The light was terrible. The ventilation was worse but I loved it.
I’d painted more in the last two weeks than I had in the last two years.
Twenty-six canvases surrounded me. I’d been working on them for months. The fresher ones were turned to the wall because I couldn’t look at them yet. They were too raw. Too honest. Like I’d cracked my chest open and smeared the contents across stretched cotton.
The phone rang again. I ignored it.
“You know he’s not going to stop,” Anwesha said from the doorway. She was holding two cups of coffee, her silver hair piled on top of her head in a messy bun, her reading glasses pushed up on her forehead. “That’s the fourth time today.”
“I’m aware.”
“You could answer it.”
“I could also set myself on fire. Similar energy.”
She laughed and handed me a cup. I took it with paint-stained fingers, leaving blue smudges on the ceramic.
“The show,” she said, settling into the ancient armchair she’d dragged in here specifically so she could supervise my mental breakdown in comfort. “We need to talk about it.”
“What about it?”
“I moved the date once. When you asked. Because I love you and because I believed you when you said you needed more time.”
“So do it again, please.”
“There’s no second time, Anika. The gallery is booked. The invitations are printed. The press releases are written.” She fixed me with a look that had launched a thousand artistic careers. “October fifteenth. That’s the only date.”
“I know.”
“Do you have thirty paintings?”
I looked around the studio. At the canvases turned to the wall. At the ones still wet, still waiting, still demanding more from me. Twenty-six finished. Four more needed.
“Almost.”
“Almost isn’t good enough.”
“I’ll have them.”
She studied me for a long moment. Anwesha had known me since I was nineteen and terrified, a scholarship kid from the suburbs who didn’t know anyone and couldn’t afford the materials for her first assignment.
She’d hired me to work in her gallery, paid me in cash and leftover paint, and taught me everything I knew about turning pain into pigment.
She was also the first person to know about Neil, and she supported our relationship.
A fact she reminded me of approximately once per conversation.
“He called me this morning,” she said. “Twice. Wanted to know if you were eating. If you were sleeping. If you’d said anything about him.”
“What did you tell him?”
“That you were working and that if he called again, I’d block his number.” She sipped her coffee. “He called again. I didn’t block him.”
“Why not?”
“Because watching Neil Franco grovel is the most entertainment I’ve had in years.”
The phone rang again. We both looked at it.
“Answer it,” Anwesha said.
“I promised myself I wouldn’t.”
“You’ve been staring at his name every time it pops up for two weeks. You’re not fooling anyone.” She stood and gathered her coffee cup. “Answer it. Yell at him. Get it out of your system. Then get back to work.”
She left. The phone kept ringing.
I picked it up.
“You can come home.” His voice was rough and wrecked. Like he’d been gargling gravel and regret. “I’m not signing the papers.”
“That’s not how divorce works, Neil.”
“I don’t care how it works. I’m not signing. I’m going to win you back.”
I laughed because I couldn’t help it. It came out sharp and bitter and completely devoid of humor.
“Win me back. Like I’m a contract negotiation.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“What did you mean, then?”
A pause. I could hear him breathing on the other end. Could picture him pacing his office, running his hand through his hair, trying to figure out how to close this deal.
“I meant that I’m not giving up,” he said finally. “I know I messed up. I know I hurt you. But I’m not going to just sign a piece of paper and let you walk away.”
“I already walked away. Two weeks ago. You missed it.”
“Anika…”
“You were at a press conference, I think. Closing your big deal. Making history.” The words came out sharper than I’d intended. “How did that feel, by the way? Winning and losing at the same time?”
Silence.
“It felt like nothing,” he said quietly. “It felt like absolutely nothing.”
I closed my eyes. I didn’t want to feel sympathy for him. Didn’t want to picture him alone in that triplex, surrounded by all his expensive things, realizing none of them mattered. I wanted to stay angry. Anger was easier than grief.
“And if you can’t?” I asked. “Win me back, I mean. What happens then?”
“Then I’ll spend the rest of my life trying.”
“That’s a hostage situation, Neil. That’s not romance. That’s just… stubbornness with better PR.”
“Give me two weeks.”
“What?”
“Two weeks. Just two weeks to prove I can be the man you married.”
I opened my mouth to say no. That was the smart thing. The thing that every self-help book and every well-meaning friend would tell me to do.
But the word wouldn’t come out.
Because part of me, the part I hated, the part that still remembered the boy who’d given me his jacket in the rain, wanted to believe him. Wanted to believe that somewhere underneath all the deals and the phone calls and the beautiful secretaries, the man I’d fallen in love with still existed.
“Two weeks,” I said. “But I set the rules.”
“Anything.”
“No Giovani. No black card. No buying your way through this. You show up yourself or you don’t show up at all.”
“Done.”
I looked at the canvas in front of me. Half-finished and raw. A woman standing at a crossroads, the paths ahead of her disappearing into fog.
“Two weeks. Come tomorrow and we’ll see if I’ll grant you that two weeks.”
I hung up before he could respond.
Anwesha appeared in the doorway like she’d been listening the whole time. Which she definitely had.
“Well?”
“He wants two weeks to prove himself.”
She raised an eyebrow. “And the conditions?”
“No money. No assistant. No shortcuts. Just him.”
A slow smile spread across her face. “Neil Franco without his safety nets. That should be entertaining.”
“It’s going to be a disaster.”
“Probably. But at least you’ll know for sure.” She nodded at the canvas. “Are you going to be able to work through this?”
I looked at the paint on my hands. At the canvases surrounding me. At the fog in the painting that suddenly felt less like uncertainty and more like possibility.
“Anwesha. I’m going to need more paint.”