Kris (12:47 a.m.):Go to sleep
Jake (12:48 a.m.):=P
Quietly, to avoid waking Rye, Jake stood, slipped his phone back into his pocket, and started cleaning up the coffee table, all the words from his sister replaying in his head.
Itturnedouttellinghis sister about his feelings had been both a blessing and a curse. He trusted her advice, and he knew she was right—that what he needed to do was just continue on the same path, be the best friend he could to Rye, give Rye time, make sure he didn’t put any pressure on Rye or ever make Rye feel uncomfortable. And just knowing that he’d been doing the right thing all this time, that took some of the weight off his chest and let him breathe a little easier.
But somehow, having admitted that he liked Rye seemed to have cracked something open inside of him. All of those feelings he’d been having, all the little hints of warmth, the swoop of his stomach, the fluttery flip-flop of his heart, all of those things seemed multiplied tenfold. It was wonderful. And it was also more intense than anything he’d felt before, and that scared him.
“New favorite? This one, huh?” Jake stepped up alongside Rye and stuffed his hands in his pockets, resisting the urge—not for the first time that day—to reach out and touch Rye’s back, to find that one spot where his hand just seemed to fit.
Rye nodded eagerly and glanced over at Jake, his blue eyes bright and warm. “The birds look... um, like they’re about to fly off the painting. And I like the style, um...”
With a nod, Jake turned back to the painting on the wall in front of them. “Wandering Warblers. Watercolor on canvas,” he read from the small plaque just to the side of the medium-sized painting. “And you’re right, I agree. It looks, hmm, I’m not sure how to say it. Maybe it looks like—”
“—like there’s movement. Like”—Rye stepped slightly closer to the painting and tilted his head ever so slightly to the right, reaching up to push a stray lock of hair behind his ear—“the painter... caught them in the middle of taking off from the tree, and...”
Rye huffed a small laugh and backed up, shaking his head.
“What?” Jake asked quietly, and his damn heart did its thing again—stuttering and racing just like it knew it wasn’t supposed to.
“Um, I... I just don’t really know what I’m talking about,” Rye said. The flicker of uncertainty in his tone had Jake shaking his head.
“That’s what art’s about, though,” Jake argued gently, and he leaned on his cane as he continued. “Okay, uh, not that I know the first thing about art—because I’ve never been an artist or even an art connoisseur, really—but I do know, or at least, Ithink, that art is about evoking emotions. That’s why different people can interpret art in very different ways. This painting—actually, all of this artist’s paintings here—seem to have that same beauty to them. Like the artist was capturing a moment of flight, of movement, of, uh, freedom.”
Rye looked up at him with an amused expression. “Isn’t that... contradictory? Capturing freedom? Freezing movement?”
Jake couldn’t stop his smile from growing much too big.
The whole day had been like this—Jake listening with amazement as Rye found more and more of his voice, exploring and questioning and asking. It almost seemed like Rye was just bursting with some need to share his thoughts. And he was positively glowing.
Or maybe that was just the way Jake’s heart had decided it wanted to interpret everything now.
Either way, this had been their whole Monday so far, starting with Rye’s eager knock on Jake’s bedroom door. He said he’d had an idea—they should go bird watching, if Jake was up for it. Early morning was the best time, and there was a place not far away—a nature preserve at Oxbow Park along the Truckee River. The walk was short and flat, Rye had explained, and there was supposed to be a huge variety of birds there, including some rare hawks and swallows that Rye seemed really keen on trying to find.
His eagerness had persisted into the early afternoon, when they’d found this small art gallery just outside of the downtown area in Reno. It was almost too perfect, really. The first exhibit, which they’d been exploring for nearly an hour already, featured stunning landscape art and paintings of birds, fish, and other local wildlife, mostly watercolor.
And, being early on a Monday afternoon, they were nearly the only ones in the gallery.
Nothing had shut down Rye’s voice all day. And that was such a wonderful thing.
Jake blinked and tore his gaze away from his friend, needing to reset a bit. “Uh, yeah, it sort of is, isn’t it?” he managed, and he cleared his throat with ashort cough. “But it still seems true, right? Like that first painting we saw, where it looked like the trees were still blowing in the wind?”
“Yeah.” Rye’s voice was softer now, and when Jake stole a glance in his direction, he could see Rye looking ahead at the painting again, his expression thoughtful. “This one’s my favorite,” Rye added. And then he turned and motioned for Jake to follow.
Together, they navigated through the rest of the first exhibit, stopping to study each of the remaining paintings. Rye couldn’t seem to get enough, eagerness and curiosity burning bright in his eyes.
Eventually, they moved onto the next exhibit, which had a much different tone—some abstract paintings with dark, sharp shapes and lines. Rye walked slowly and silently through the exhibit, but didn’t stop until the very last painting. The canvas was mostly mixed shades of dark purple, gray, and black, with cracks painted at the edges in a starkly contrasting white. At the very center, the cracks came together in a bright tumble of what Jake could only describe as shattered pieces. Like glass.
He stopped next to Rye and dropped his chin slightly to check on his friend. Rye’s hands had found his pockets, and his huge smile had tightened into something much more serious.
“This one... evokes different emotions,” Rye said simply, and his shoulders tensed slightly as he stared at the painting for another moment. Then he glanced sideways at Jake with a half-smile. “I’m okay. I know... you’re worried.”
Heat spread into Jake’s cheeks, a fast flush that he had no control over. No control whatsoever. “I’m not—”
Rye lifted his eyebrows questioningly, and Jake sighed with resignation.
“Okay, okay. I was,” he admitted. “But thank you for telling me you’re okay. There was kind of a big shift there.”
