Saturday, 9:05 PM:
Hey Char! You doing things that bring you joy? <3
Yup!
Just remember, boys are bad except for dad!
…
I mean, not your dad specifically. My b. It’s just a stupid rhyme!
Ok!
Not everyone will abandon you!
It’s ok
Ahhh! Sorry I’ve had a few cocktails with my parents. I’ll be home Monday morning!
Yay!
My weekend, on the other hand, had been one long hyperfixation on the new sketches that I might want to transfer to canvas. Without Mariah here to advocate for my mental health and forcing me to “spark joy,” I’d barely left the apartment.
She’s been back for all of two minutes and is already diving into things I’ve been avoiding for days. Mariah is currently kneeling on the ground beside the flattened canvas. I watch as she leans in towards different areas of the painting, taking in the detail—the splatters and whirls of blue, black, green and gray.
My heart squeezes at the memories of how I felt leading up to the creation of that painting. Lustful, nervous, safe, blissful... I’d mostly cycled through those, I think. It’d been a much more fun cycle than the last week or two—angry, numb, sad… determined.
At least this cycle had given me a kind of fuel. Before, I hadn't known how to get what I wanted, and I was afraid oflosing something before I even had it. That fear had come to fruition. Now, I’ve fully let go.
“And you two no longer speak?” Mariah is tracing the implied tendrils of my hair with her fingertip. You’d think someone might be embarrassed seeing a depiction of their friend in the throes of sexual bliss. But that’s not how Mariah works.
“Well, his assistant John did include this letter as well.” I toss the sealed white envelope down from the counter and it lands beside her. I’d neither touched the rolled-up canvas nor his letter since I placed them inside our apartment on Friday. I’d been channeling my emotions into a new conceptual collection. Which is what I’d been working on in my sketchbook when Mariah had arrived.
I hear a gasp as I pick my way back over to my desk against the window in our common space. “You haven’t opened it?!”
I shrug again, not really sure how to explain it. I think... I’m afraid of what it might say. Its existence makes my teeth grind and my heart palpitate. I don’t want to deal with it.
“Well…” Mariah hesitates. “May I open it for you?”
“Sure,” I release on an exhale. There’s the sound of ripping paper and then, silence.
“What does it say?” I roll my eyes, already feeling myself rejecting the message.
“It says—” Mariah trails off for a moment. “It says, ‘I’ll come back one day. Hope you’re well. XO, D’.”
It takes a moment for the words to settle in my psyche. And then the teeth grinding intensifies.
Mariah flips over the paper and then looks once again inside the envelope. “Huh,” she says, “that’s it.”
“Yeah,” I deadpan, “that’s it.” I look at the painting,that’s it and that’s all it ever was.
Mariah takes in my closed-off expression. “It says he’ll come back,” she ventures. “That... is good! Right?”
“I don’t care,” I say. “I’m not falling for his mysterious vigilante persona anymore.”
“Vigilante?” Mariah mutters.
“Whatever.” I flick my hands in the air. “His whole charade! I’m out.”
