Chapter Fourteen #2
It’s him, again. Damp, white blond hair sticking out from beneath a dark green beanie, a bar through his right brow.
Hidden beneath his hair, the hint of earbuds are pressed into his ears, a satchel slung over the shoulder of a black college sweater.
My eyes travel south to the jeans that are more rips than denim and sneakers which are paint-stained.
When I glance back up into the face of my asshole neighbor, his gray eyes are fixed on me with a fleeting look of disbelief.
Then, it’s gone, and I’m effectively dismissed.
He takes an easel two rows ahead of me and drops onto the stool like he’s done this a hundred times before, his shoulders loose and posture relaxed.
Someone leans in to murmur something to him and he responds without looking around, rolling his sleeves up to his elbows and exposing forearms littered with illustrative tattoos.
I wouldn’t care, I don’t care, except I can smell him from here.
The scent of rosewater bodywash filters towards me and my teeth grind. My bodywash. The bastard.
He doesn’t spare me another glance, not even out of curiosity, and the irrational part of me bristles at being so thoroughly ignored.
Ignored by the man whose door I was slamming my fist on last night, yelling for him to shut the damn music off.
The more I think about it, the more my eye twitches.
He denied me sleep, used my bodywash and now, he’s ignoring me?
I tell myself to let it go, that I wanted to disappear and be unremarkable, yet my eyes keep drifting back to him anyway.
It seems my attention has a traitorous mind of its own.
Before I can spiral too deeply, Liz stands at the front of the room and claps her hands once for everyone’s attention. “Shall we begin?” she asks rhetorically. “As we discussed yesterday, this semester is centered entirely around self-expression.”
My gut sinks, a groan becoming locked in my throat.
Liz carries on explaining that this isn’t a technical course.
Perfection and realism are beside the point.
What matters is translating something internal into something visible.
Our emotion, identity, conflicts, obsessions, silence, all of it is to be laid bare through whatever medium speaks the loudest.
Oblivious to my inner turmoil, she paces between the easels, her linen jacket already dusted with pigment, whilst I resist the urge to slam my head against the desk.
“I hope you’ve all prepared a few concepts as I requested yesterday.
” Following this comment, a tornado of papers are pulled out of books and bags.
Liz comes to stop in front of me, glancing across my empty desk and she smiles pitifully.
“Maybe you should use this time for some reflection.” I mimic her smile, although when she turns away, I no longer hear her.
I grip the edge of my stool and breathe through the rising panic, painfully aware that I’ve stepped into a world where everyone else seems to know how to swim.
Meanwhile, I’m floundering in open water, staring at a blank canvas and wondering how I’m supposed to express myself when I’ve just spent the last several months suppressing everything I don’t want to feel.
Survival has been the only language I’ve known for so long.
Around me, students flip open sketchbooks filled with notes and thumbnails.
I just sit there, acutely aware that I have none of that.
I don’t know my medium of choice, or my style, or my influences.
The white space in front of me feels less like a possibility and more like an impending punishment.
Students begin to work, confident hands moving with purpose. And then there’s him.
He’s already started sketching, lines flowing without hesitation, completely absorbed in his process.
I scowl at the back of his beanie-wearing head, not wanting to notice the way his arm shifts across his page, tattoos and veins catching the light.
Forcing my gaze down, I open my sketchpad, trying to pretend the room isn’t starting to tilt.
Self-expression. Who even am I, aside from a bitter woman who can’t step away from a challenge?
There’s nothing interesting about that. There’s simply…
nothing about me that I can replicate without the use of a can of gasoline and a box of matches.
Yet I try. I soul search, floating through the recesses of my mind that have remained untouched for a long while.
The noise around me dulls, Liz’s voice dissolving as my pulse climbs into my throat and takes up residence there.
The page stretches wider and whiter, until it feels less like a void waiting for me to fall into.
My vision blurs at the edges, a familiar warning sign that I’m losing the thread.
I focus on counting my breaths, in and out, but the numbers slip away from me just like everything else.
All that’s left is the phantom pain, the scent of blood in my own nose, the burn at my scalp, the memory of a face glaring down at me.
A jolt comes out of nowhere. My table rattles violently, pencils skittering off the surface and clattering to the floor as I’m yanked back into my body.
My head snaps up, my heart slamming against my ribs, and I nearly recoil at how close someone is standing.
It takes a second to reorient, to register the room thinning out around me, stools pushed in, tables cleared. Class has already ended.
My neighbor steps back and leans against the opposite worktable, arms crossed as he watches me without shame.
His white hair is free of its beanie, mussed like he’s dragged his hands through it one too many times.
There’s a faint blue light flashing in his ear, his headphone still firmly in place.
Dark smudges stain his fingers, bleeding into his sweater and tattoos until it’s hard to tell where the mess ends and he begins.
His steel-gray eyes are blank, fixed on me as if he’s looking straight through my skin.
“Productivity doesn’t seem to be a strong suit,” he murmurs, tipping his chin toward my untouched sketchpad.
I blink, still foggy, then snap the pad shut and shove it into my backpack with more force than necessary. “Maybe if someone didn’t blare their music all night, I’d be able to get enough sleep to focus.”
His mouth twitches, not quite a smile, but there’s clear satisfaction there.
It vanishes just as quickly, the weight of his presence sharpening instead.
I don’t know why my neck prickles, but like a moth to a flame, I shoulder my bag and circle the table toward him.
He straightens at the same time, looming as his gaze drags over my face, searching, assessing, like he’s hunting for damage.
I force the tremor down and paste on a mask of indifference.
“Maybe you should knock next time,” he says calmly. My jaw drops at the audacity. As if I hadn’t been pounding on his damn door half the night. Before I can snap back, he leans in just enough for the scent of rosewater body wash to wash over me. “Or invest in earplugs.”
Something brittle inside me finally fractures, and heat rushes in to take its place. I surge forward, gripping his sweater and yanking him into my space, fueled entirely by the fury curling in my core and not the reality of how close we are.
“Or you could learn to use these more often,” I shoot back, ripping the headphone from his ear and slamming it into his chest. He catches it before it can fall, and for the first time, something flickers across his face, not anger or amusement, but interest. I shove myself away, forcing my breathing steady while my fists remain clenched, nails biting hard into my palms.
For a heartbeat, neither of us moves, the air between us vibrating with everything left unsaid. Then he steps aside, turning to leave.
“I want a name,” I state before he can reach the door. He pauses, glancing back with a pierced brow arched. “I can’t keep calling you the asshole next door.”
That same flicker passes through his eyes, like he’s internally laughing at me. To my surprise, he turns back, cracking his knuckles.
“Someone wasn’t paying attention at the clinic,” he says. In that one sentence, I find myself at a disadvantage. He’s right, I didn’t give a shit about anyone at the rehab facility, but he clearly made a point to learn about me.
“Reid Wilder. Although the asshole next door has a nice ring to it.” His tone is lighter now, a thin crack of humor breaking through.
I nod, satisfied that at least something came out of this class. Remaining in the doorway for a stilted moment, his gaze slides over me once more, and his tongue briefly flicks out to wet his lips. Then, he grins, a wide motion that reveals a pair of dimples I wasn’t prepared for.
“Good luck with expressing your emotions, Meg O’Connor. Looks like you’ve got plenty bottled up.”