Page 74 of Neat
But that wasn’t the world I lived in.
My phone buzzed on the coffee table again, but this time I didn’t even move to check the screen. I knew it wasn’t Logan, and I knew that whoever itwas, I didn’t want to talk to. I didn’t want to talk toanyone.It didn’t matter that it was Christmas Day — I was perfectly content being miserable.
And alone.
It was what I deserved to be.
I hadn’t eaten since the night before, the thought of food so revolting I couldn’t stomach so much as a piece of toast, so my legs were a little wobbly as I wrapped my thick robe around me and padded downstairs to the shop. Snow had covered the town last night, leaving us with a beautiful white Christmas that every little kid and mother, alike, had prayed for. Under different circumstances, I might have run out to play in it. I might have been having a snowball fight with Logan, or laughing as I got soaked making snow angels.
As it was, Main Street was empty, everyone home with their families celebrating the birth of Christ, and I found the vacancy comforting. It left me alone with my thoughts, alone with my misery, alone with my broken heart — and my ability to use it to create something.
It was the only thing I wanted to do, other than sit around and feel sorry for myself. I wanted to bring something to life — and before I could make a choice of how, my body made it for me. My feet carried me numbly over to one of the stools in front of a blank sketch pad, and I sat with my back to the store windows, letting the late afternoon light cast its light over the cream paper.
It was cold in the studio, but I didn’t turn the heat on. If anything, I wanted to feel that cold down to my bones. I sat there, shivering, pulling the sketch pad into my lap and propping my feet on the footrest of the stool. For a while, I just stared at that blank sheet, vision blurring, heart slowing to an almost nonexistent beat within my chest.
Then, I drew.
Time slipped away easily, just like it always did when I lost myself in art. The afternoon light turned to evening light, a bright glow from the setting sun reflecting off the snow and casting the studio in a halo so beautiful it might as well have been sent from the heavens. I found comfort in the familiar scratching sounds of the pencil against the paper, in the way nothing slowly turned to something. Gray dust covered my hand, and my back and shoulders ached from poor posture, but still, I drew.
And blended.
And created contrast and depth and everything that was so challenging with sketching — that challenge usually the medicine that healed all my ailments.
But when the pencil fell limp in my fingers and I stared down at the face that stared back at me — the one that had haunted my dreams all night, too — I didn’t feel any relief.
I only felt the deep, all-encompassing, impossible-to-ignore urge to make everything wrong right again.
I’d brought Logan to life on that paper — the crinkle of his eyes when he smiled, that dimple on his cheeks, one hand seeming to hold the face of the person looking at the drawing while the other rested under the pillow he laid his head on. My sheets pooled around his waist, allowing me to bring the lean lines of his toned stomach to life. His hair was a mess, just the way I liked it, and he was looking at me like I was the only thing that mattered in this entire world.
Like the way I looked at him.
I sighed, dropping the pencil to the pad and scrubbing my hands over my face. I didn’t even care that I was surely marking my face with pencil dust. I wanted to rub away the exhaustion, the headache, the stress.
When I lowered my hands again, I found myself staring at the photograph of him eating pizza and taking notes that first day we’d worked on the shop. My heart crawled into my throat, and I tried and failed to swallow past it as I looked at him.
I could only remember one life-altering moment in my life.
That night my father chose his reputation over me, the night he made it clear that my safety and wellness came second to the connections he needed to run business — I made a choice. I chose to never lean on my family again, to never abide by the rules they set for me, to forge my own path and forsake what anyone in this town ever had to say about it. I chose what was right over what was wrong, what was hard over what was easy, and what was just over what wasunjust.
Now, I found myself sitting in that same, hollow, yet somehow exciting kind of moment.
I was on the precipice of making a decision that would alter everything. I would no longer be able to wake up in the life I’d known, in the comfort I’d made a home in, in the certainty I’d found peace in. Because once I made the choice that I was teetering on making, everything would change, and though it was the harder path to walk — it was the right one.
I stood, setting my sketch to the side and walking over to stand in front of the photo of Logan. My heart clambered in my chest, and I placed a hand over the spot where it ached, soothing it as best I could.
He was worth it.
He was worth everything.
And no matter what it cost me, Iwoulddo right by him.
That was a promise.
Logan
I told you so.
It was the unspoken theme of that Christmas Day.
