Last night answered that. The silence pressed down as soon as the sun set. I stretched out on the thin rug I’d hauled over from my apartment, but the floorboards stayed unforgivingbeneath me. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Ash’s face, heard his laugh, and felt the ghost weight of his arm across my chest.
By morning, the need to get out is so strong I throw the window open and gasp at the air like I’ve been underwater. I need out, and a new skyline lets me pretend I’ve got a new life waiting under it. The studio that used to nurture my dreams feels more like a tomb for them now.
Jamal knocks on the open door. “You want help with these?”
I stand too fast. “Yeah. Uh, that’d be great.”
“I know I gave you a hard time about this …” He looks past me at the boxes. “But I wanted to say … I’m proud of you. I know that’s weird, but I think?—”
I cut him off with a hug. “I’m going to miss you.”
“You know I’m coming to Kansas once you’re settled.”
“I know.” I try on a smile. “I’ll show you what I’m sure is an amazing art scene I’ll have cracked by then. And obviously I’m coming back to visit.”
“You got this,” Jamal says quickly, before it can get too earnest. “And… we got you this.”
His paint-stained hands hold out a package wrapped in the same brown kraft paper we use for finished canvases.
“You didn’t have to,” I say, running my thumb over the smooth leather cover of the sketchbook inside, “KW” embossed in gold. “This is incredible.”
“Wait until you open it,” he says. “Everybody chipped in.”
Inside, every page has another pasted over it: the studio in twenty-seven pages. Goodbyes painted in watercolor, inked in black and white, and scrawled in calligraphy. One page has big block letters that spell LOVE AND ART, with each letter filled by tiny drawings of Beanie Babies, Rocky, Gram’s mug… A sketchbook turned love letter.
My vision blurs, tears gathering but refusing to fall.
Jamal’s the only one who saw all of it. Leaving him behind hurts in a way I haven’t let myself look at. I pull him into another hug, and even though I know he hates it, this time he hugs me back.
Not posting the recording. Ash rejecting me. Packing up my life. This stupidly beautiful sketchbook. It all crashes together.
“Am I making a mistake?” I ask, my throat as tight as my grip on him.
“You don’t have to go,” Jamal says, rubbing my back. “But isn’t this the way to do it? When it’s because you want to, not because you’ve got no choice?”
I nod, and the weight shifts enough to let him go.
He grabs a box. “Your car downstairs?”
“Thank you,” I say. “Seriously. For this. For everything.”
“Dude, nobody’s dying.”
Packing the studio turns out to be exactly as easy as he promised.
I run my fingers over the worn handles of my brushes, bristles stiff with dried paint, and set them back in their tin cans, then into a box. My inspiration board’s chaotic collage of photos, clippings, and dried flowers all comes down in a few limp sheets. I wrap and stack finished canvases. Once the easel’s folded, I’ve uprooted the last piece of my life here.
Hauling boxes downstairs makes me almost grateful I don’t own much. It takes eight to fill the seats and a ninth shoved into the trunk, leaving just enough room for the canvases.
Jamal helps with the awkward stack of finished work, and we ease it snugly into the remaining trunk space.
My whole life is inside Gram’s wood-paneled Buick Century, and I can’t help but think she’s whisking me away from yet another disaster. I rest my hands on the open lift gate, stare down into the packed space, and think of her. She’d tell me it’s okay to go, to try, and to see what’s next.
No struggle, no strength.
I slam the trunk closed, and my next breath catches.
Across the hood, Ash is standing there with wind-tousled hair and red-rimmed eyes. My knees go loose.
