Across the city, Andre was standing in the middle of his studio, staring at a canvas.
The room was freezing. He hadn’t turned on the heating. He was wearing a thick wool sweater and a scarf, his hands covered in paint, his fingers stiff with cold.
The canvas in front of him was a chaotic, violent explosion of color. Deep, bruised purples, angry slashes of crimson, heavy, oppressive blacks. It was the darkest thing he had ever painted, a raw, unfiltered expression of the agony that was tearing him apart from the inside.
He had been painting for fourteen hours straight.
His phone buzzed on the small wooden table by the door.
Andre ignored it. He dipped his brush into a pool of black paint and dragged it across the canvas, a harsh, jagged line that felt like a physical wound.
The phone buzzed again. And again.
Finally, Andre dropped the brush, wiping his hands on a rag, and walked over to the table.
It was his mother.
Claire (14:10): Andre, please call me. There are reporters outside the bakery. They are asking terrible questions about you and Blake. Where are you?
Andre stared at the message, the words blurring together.
He felt shame flooding through him. He had brought this to their door. He had taken the quiet, peaceful life his parents had built and dragged it into the mud.
He unlocked his phone and dialed her number. She answered on the first ring.
“Andre,” Claire said, her voice tight with anxiety. “Where are you? Are you safe?”
“I am at the studio, Maman,” Andre said, his voice hoarse from disuse. “I am safe.”
“What is happening? The papers are saying Blake has moved out. They are saying you have separated. Tell me it is a lie.”
Andre closed his eyes, leaning his forehead against the cold brick wall of the studio. “It is not a lie.”
Claire gasped softly. “Oh,mon cher. What happened? Did you fight? You must talk to him. You must fix this.”
“I cannot fix it, Maman,” Andre whispered, the tears finally spilling over, hot and fast “Il est parti,” Andre said, his voice cracking. “Il est parti et c’est de ma faute.” He is gone. And it is my fault. “I broke it. I broke it completely.”
“What did you do?”
Andre couldn’t say it. He couldn’t speak the words aloud to his mother. The shame was too vast, too final.
“I made a mistake,” Andre sobbed, sliding down the wall until he was sitting on the floor, his knees pulled to his chest. “A terrible, terrible mistake. And he is gone. He is gone, Maman.”
Claire didn’t ask any more questions. She didn’t demand explanations. She just listened to her son cry, her own voice soft and soothing through the phone, murmuring words of comfort in French, a steady, unconditional anchor in the wreckage of his life.
When he finally hung up, the studio was dark, the only light coming from the streetlamps outside the high windows.
Andre sat on the floor for a long time, staring at the shadows. He thought about the life he had built with Blake. He thought about the quietmornings in the flat, the loud, chaotic dinners with Liam and Talia, the terrifying, exhilarating moment they had kissed at the US Open. He had risked everything for that kiss. He had risked his career, his privacy, his relationship with his parents. And he had done it because Blake was worth it. Blake was worth everything.
And then he had thrown it all away.
He pushed himself off the floor, his muscles stiff and aching from the cold. He walked over to the small wooden table, turned on the desk lamp, and pulled a piece of heavy cardstock from a drawer. He found a pen, his hand shaking slightly as he uncapped it.
He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know how to bridge the chasm he had created.
But he had to try. He had to do something, anything, to reach across the silence.
He sat down and began to write.
