My phone rings again, and I ignore it. Ugh, Billy.
I’m tired of always running. It’s beginning to occur to me that I want to settle down. Not Finn and Spencer settle down, but I think there’s a version out there I could be down with.
Loneliness creeps in and I’m tired of only having fly-by-night friends. I don’t want to surround myself with people like Billy. I wanna surround myself with people like… Olly.
Fuck, Jasper!Frustration bubbles inside. Why did you not listen? Marcus, Jacob, and even Matthew, when he was alive, warned me that someday I will come to realize I have something to live for or that I would finally find something I want to live for.
Now I’m staring down the barrel of death with no adrenaline rush attached to it, just fear. So much fear.
My arms are moving fast as my brush flies across the canvas. I don’t even know what I’m painting, I just see the splashes of dark colors. My heart is pounding. Shit, should my heart be pounding like this? Wait, did I take my blood pressure meds today?
Focus, Jasper.
I push through, knowing I can’t stop until I get these negative feelings out. My mind spirals, going into all the dark corners and pulling out every fear I have caged. I can’t handle hearing the rattle of the cages anymore.
I finally realize I’ve lived my life in constant fear. First the fear no one would want to keep me. That someone would see the stoic boy slowly cracking with every emotion he pushed down and buried.
Until they came and everything was different. I somehow knew they were a safe place to feel. But then he died, and with it came the fear that no matter what I did, I could still lose.
Fears are pulled from the depths, rooted deep with each stroke.You’re not good enough. No one will truly love you. You’re a fuckup. There’s a reason nobody wanted you. Olly deserves better.
That’s the one that takes the wind out of my sails.
My head is throbbing to the pounding beat of my heart.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
“Jasper, I know you’re in there. Let me in, baby.”
I laugh darkly. My own fears are chasing me down.I’m not even good enough for the dream beating down my door.
“Fuck! Jasper! Open the goddamn door!”
My mind slowly emerges from the fog as I notice the source of the pounding is not my beating heart. No, it’s a frantic, insistent hammering against my front door.
Bang, bang, bang. “Jasper!”
Olly?
I set my brush down and make my way to the front door, opening it.
“Jasper?” Olly gasps, his eyes going wide.
“Olly? What are you doing here?”
“Can I come in?”
I move aside, letting him enter.
“When no one heard from you all day, we got worried.”
“What do you mean, all day?” I ask, a puzzling look on my face.
“Jasper, it’s ten o’clock at night. Jaxon said he called to see how it went today, and you didn’t answer, so he called me to see if I’d heard anything. I’ve been trying to call you all night. I finally couldn’t take it anymore and needed to see if you were…” Olly sucks in a startled breath. “Jasper…” He walks closer to the canvas. “Did you paint this?”
I turn, standing next to Olly, truly seeing what I painted for the first time. The same startled breath escapes me.
“I guess I needed to work through some shit.”
