Liam
I always thought the top would feel more dramatic. Turns out, it smells like a warm locker room and a broken heart.
Chapter 26
Sophie
I park in the same spot at the back as when I came to the community center with Liam. God—was that already two weeks ago?
He’d called a few times, but I didn’t answer. It was easier—for both of us. He needed to focus on baseball, not get sucked into my wallowing. Besides, we had agreed that whatever it was between us was just for the time Cal was away. Cal was coming home tomorrow, so the expiration date was up. No need to complicate things when he had his future to focus on.
Liam was moving on, and I was still stuck.
“Thank you for coming,” Angelica, the director of the art program, says, holding out her hand when I walk through the glass double doors. “I know you said you couldn’t commit to a teaching position here full-time, but we appreciate you filling in until we find someone. The kids will be thrilled to have a professional artist to learn from.”
“Oh, I’m hardly a…” I start, but I think about Liam. He showed up here for weeks for these kids. And he was still a baseball player—being released didn’t change that fundamental part of who he is. “Thank you for having me.”
“Kids,” Angelica says as we enter the room. Children of varying ages are seated at long tables, each with coloredpencils and pots of paint. “This is Sophia Rhodes. She’s an artist.”
For the first time in years, I don’t flinch at the title.
After discussing color and art for about ten minutes, I let the kids loose to work on their creations. I circle the room, looking at the kids’ painted flowers and hand-sketched superheroes.
I circle the tables until I come to the last table in the back corner of the room. I recognize the young girl sitting there. “Talia, right?” I say. She nods, but she looks uncomfortable. I glance at her paper. It’s blank.
I slide into the seat next to her. “Tell me about your art.”
“There isn’t any,” she says and flips her paper over.
I nod, but stay silent. Waiting.
“I want to paint a sunset.”
“Sunsets are beautiful.”
“But I want to use these colors,” she drags her hand around a cluster of paint jars in front of her. Cerulean, teals, Aegean Blue, Celadon, and a bottle of the most vibrant neon pink. “But Katelyn says these aren’t sunset colors.”
“Close your eyes, Talia,” I say. “Can you see your sunset?”
“Uh-huh,” she nods, eyes squeezed tight.
“Then those are sunset colors. No one else can tell you what art is to you.”
She opens her wide eyes and looks at me, still unsure.
“The artist makes the art. And you’re the artist, Talia. You’re not here to make the ‘right’ kind of art. You’re here to makeyourart.”
She’s tentative at first, but then she grins and reaches for the brightest green paint in her pile—the perfect green for a sunset.
I watch her paint with complete confidence, using colors that feel right to her, rather than what she’s been told they should be. And I think about my own blank canvas back at Cal’s apartment. The Senator’s commission sits there, waitingfor me to paint what she expects instead of what wants to come out of me.
The artist makes the art.
Maybe the problem isn’t that I can’t paint the commission. Maybe the problem is that I’m trying to paint someone else’s vision instead of my own.
I know what I have to do.
I have to turn down the commission.
