✧･Chapter 40 Youve Always Had Me. #3
The painting is darker than the others, almost entirely washed in deep shadows and muted gold. There's a hallway, the soft glow of old lights reflecting against polished floors, and two figures standing close enough that there isn't any space left between them.
Me. Mae.
I swallow. She didn't paint what happened afterward, she painted the kiss.
The first one.
My chest tightens as I move closer, studying the way Mae remembered it. My hand is against the wall before I realize I've reached for something to steady myself.
I remember that night.
God, I remember it.
The alcohol. The laughter. The way everything felt too loud and too warm. The way Mae looked at me when we were finally alone, like she'd been trying not to look at me that way all night and had finally run out of reasons to stop herself.
Then the kiss. I remember being terrified of how much I wanted it.
The painting somehow makes it feel more real than the memory does. Mae hasn't painted us as two drunk people making a mistake. There is no shame in the way she's captured us. No hesitation or regret.
Just two people who, for one brief moment, stopped fighting something neither of us knew how to name yet.
I stare at it until my eyes start burning. I drag a hand over my face and take another slow breath.
Then I look at the next painting and this one hurts differently.
It's a road.
A long stretch of highway disappearing toward the horizon beneath a wide, empty sky. A car is driving away in the distance, small enough that it almost disappears into the landscape. On one side of the canvas, barely visible, is the outline of a woman standing alone.
I remember that road. I remember leaving. I remember telling myself I was doing it for Helena. For work. For the opportunity. For something bigger than the life I'd built here.
But I knew the truth, I was running from Mae.
I was running from loving someone I couldn't have.
My throat closes as I stare at the painting.
Six years.
Six years of convincing myself I'd made the right choice.
Six years of waking up somewhere else and wondering what she was doing.
Six years of pretending I didn't still think about her every time I heard a song she'd liked, every time I passed a coffee shop that smelled like the one where we'd spent so many afternoons, every time I saw a painting that reminded me of the way she saw the world.
And then I came home.
The next painting is waiting for me. This one isn't a memory I want to revisit, but it is one I could never forget.
The first thing I notice is the tattoo, Mae's tattoo. The one that finally told me she had been lying all those years.
The painting doesn't show the argument itself. It doesn't need to. Mae has captured the moment after, when everything between us had already cracked open and neither of us could put it back together again.
We're standing across from each other, angry and terrified and completely exposed.
But we're reaching for each other, even then.
Even after everything.
I stare at it until my vision blurs.
That's when I understand what Mae has done, because she's not painting our happiest memories.
She's painting the moments that changed us.
The first time we met. The first time we chose friendship. The years when that friendship became something neither of us had the courage to name. The night we crossed a line we couldn't uncross. The years we spent apart. The moment we finally found our way back to each other.
I slowly turn toward the final canvas.
And freeze.
This one is different, because there's no memory waiting for me. No familiar place, no moment I can reach back into and remember. Because I've never seen this before.
I take a step closer, then another.
The painting is a porch, our porch. I know it immediately, even though the house looks older. The trees around it have grown taller. The flowerbeds are fuller. There are little signs of a life that has been lived there for a very long time.
And sitting together on the porch are two women that are older.
Much older.
Their hair is streaked with gray, their faces softened by years and laughter. One of them is leaning back in her chair with a book resting in her lap, while the other has turned slightly toward her. Their hands are resting between them on the armrest, fingers intertwined.
I move closer, barely breathing.
It's us.
Our hands are the giveaway with simple rings resting on both of our fingers. I stare at them, completely frozen.
Mae has painted us decades from now. Not as some grand romantic fantasy. Not dressed up, not posed, not young and beautiful and untouched by time.
Just us, old, happy, and still together. Still reaching for each other without even thinking about it.
A laugh catches somewhere in my throat, but it doesn't come out. My eyes burn as I take in every little detail - the worn porch steps, the plants Mae somehow knows I'll still be keeping alive badly, the two coffee mugs sitting beside us, the blanket folded over the back of my chair.
A life. Our life. A future I never knew I was allowed to imagine until Mae put it in front of me. I lift my hand to my mouth, staring at the painting through the tears gathering in my eyes.
I don't know how to breathe.
The room feels too quiet around me, too still, like everything outside these four walls has stopped existing.
All I can see is that painting. Those two women sitting on that porch with their hands intertwined, the rings on their fingers, the quiet familiarity between them.
Mae has imagined us growing old together.
Not just loving each other now, not just wanting me now.
She has imagined herself loving me when our hair is gray and our faces are lined with years.
When our bodies have changed and our lives have slowed down.
When all the exciting parts of life are behind us and all that's left are ordinary mornings, familiar rooms, shared coffee, and the person sitting beside you.
My eyes squeeze shut, but the tears escape anyway. I swipe at my face quickly, almost embarrassed even though there's no one here to see me. A shaky laugh slips out of me, and I shake my head because I don't know what else to do with the sheer weight of it.
Then I hear her.