Page 93 of Gravity of Love
She heard the defensiveness in her tone. She hadn’t meant to snap at her mom. It happened instinctively because her house tour had ended in the most earth-shattering kiss she’d ever experienced, and that information was top secret. Her fear was that one of her nosy theias would ask if Liam had given her a tour, and the words “tongue” or “wall” or “masterful lips” might slip out.
Her mom’s brows drew together in concern. “You okay, Mouse?”
“I asked her the same thing.” Theia Joanne raised her hand.
“I’m fine, just tired. I didn’t get much sleep last night,” she explained, holding her mom’s eye contact.
The corners of her mom’s eyes narrowed as she inclined her head slightly to the left in the maternal-lie-detector-tilt. Frankie grinned in silent reassurance, and after a few assessing seconds, her mom’s expression softened before she turned and went off in search of terry cloth, humming a little ABBA under her breath.
With a deep exhale, Frankie returned her watch out the back window, willing Liam to come home. Theia Joanne, who was of Italian heritage, argued in the background with Theia Selene, who was born in “the Old Country,” about whether Greeks or Italians made the superior wedding cookie, while Kiki kept up an endless stream of “Close your eyes, don’t move, head back” and other instructions she was sure was going in one of Theia Joanne’s ears and out the other.
Frankie lost track of time, letting the voices and the unfamiliar weight of dread settle over her. She wished she could just talk to Liam, see him, or even just have him text her back, but he’d vanished on her. Ghosted. He was deliberately not speaking to her. The man didn’t do anything unintentionally. She tried to ignore that her heart felt like it was lying on a bed of nails being driven over by a bulldozer at the thought of Liam actively not speaking to her but failed miserably.
This was a new kind of pain and a new kind of love, one that felt like a fight with gravity, which was a fight she knew she’d never win. Frankie was fighting a losing battle against the gravity of love.
From the back of the house, she heard her mom calling her name, but it wasn’t her nickname, which she used nine times out of ten. Well, technically, it was a nickname, but not Mouse. Her mom only called her Frankie if it was something serious.
“Frankie!” she shouted again.
Internal alarm bells went off as she slid off the window seat, hurried past the chattering assembly line of women, through the kitchen, and into uncharted territory. She hadn’t even realized that this part of the house existed as she walked through a door she’d thought opened to a closet but actually led to a corridor.
She felt like Indiana Jones, following the direction of her mom’s voice down a long, dark hallway. At the end of the narrow passageway, sunlight spilled through the threshold of anotherdoor that was slightly ajar in a weirdly inviting way. Part of her secretly hoped this was a Narnia situation as she pushed against the wooden surface and found herself in someplace even more magical—a glassed-in sunroom, the kind of space she’d only seen on fairytale Pinterest boards. Sealed cement floors and a single brick wall combined with two large wooden beams and a black ceiling fan that was the great room’s twin gave urban touches to the mountain aesthetic. Natural light flooded in from floor-to-ceiling windows that spanned the length of the space, offering a breathtaking view of mile-high pine trees, and a pond with a small waterfall. What was even more surprising than the room itself was its contents.
There were several easels, actual, professional wooden easels, not the cheap collapsible ones of different sizes with blank canvases on them. There were also blank canvases of all shapes and sizes leaning up against the wall. A tall shelf with a rolling library ladder was filled to the brink with art supplies. Frankie crossed to the shelves, her eyes dancing over the oil paints, brushes, rags, glass palettes, wood palettes, palette knives, mahl sticks, mineral spirits, varnish, and linseed oil.
This waseverythingshe’d dreamed about, fantasized about, and talked about wanting when she grew up. It was her ultimate dream art studio. Someone had gone into her brain and mined her head for the blueprint of this space. If she didn’t know any better, she would swear her fairy godmother had waved a magic wand, and poof, this was the result.
Which would make Liam her fairy godmother. It had to be him. This was his house. How could he have possibly remembered what she’d said all those years ago? He went to college when she was fourteen, and since he was doing the accelerated program, he was barely home.
Why would he do this for her?
Why hadn’t he told her?
When did he do this?
She lifted her hand and wiped her index finger across the wooden palette, then looked at the pad. It was dirty. There was at least an inch of dust in this room. These supplies were not newly acquired. He hadn’t procured these since she’d come back into his life.
A box in one of the cubbies caught her eye and a wave of nostalgia washed over her. It was a cigar box that Liam had kept on his desk as a teenager. She’d doodled on it one day when they were talking, not even realizing what she was doing. She thought he’d be upset, but he said he didn’t care, she could draw all over it, so she did. Her fingers reached out now and traced the peonies, the hearts, the sunflowers, the Mighty Mouse, the cat Rascal, all the tiny little drawings she’d put on it. She opened the lid and inside she found the physical copies of all the photos that had been in Liam’s phone.
Why had he kept that box?
Why had he kept those photos?
Why had he kept those photos in that box?
“Frankie.”
Her mom’s voice snapped her out of her walk-down-memory-lane investigation. She turned and found her mom staring at a wall, pale as a ghost. The angle of the open door was blocking what was on the wall. Frankie stepped around to see what had caused all the color to drain from her mom’s face. When she did, she felt her breath catch in her throat. The painting she’d done her first summer in New York, for which she was awarded the Homiens Art Prize was hanging in the center of the wall. She’d sold that to a private buyer after she graduated.
As her eyes scanned the rest of the wall, time stood still.
The wall was covered—literally covered, floor to ceiling—with her art. Not just the work she’d posted online or sold on Etsy during college. Her high school portfolio, the painting of the redbicycle she’d made in eighth grade, and the pencil sketches she’d done by flashlight in elementary school she was supposed to be asleep. There were even finger paintings she’d signed with only an FC in the corner before she’d been able to sign her full name. There was a wonky rainbow with a smiley sun at age five.
Beside the rainbow was a crumpled, coffee-stained comic strip she’d made for a San Francisco Halloween contest she lost when she was ten, a memory she’d convinced herself didn’t matter. There was another painting she distinctly remembered tossing in the trash after a particularly awful high school breakup freshman year. A charcoal self-portrait she’d given up on and crumbled up right before she’d taken her driving test. A canvas from what was referred to as her “dark period,” which she’d sworn never to show anyone, because she’d spent the entirety of junior year convinced it was “embarrassing and derivative.” Liam had all of it. Every single piece.
Frankie’s mind spun as she took in the meticulous way each piece was arranged—not just hung but curated. Grouped by mood, by era, by color palette. Someone had put serious thought into this. There were little brass tags under them, the kind you saw in museums, with titles, her name, and age: “RED Bike Costas, F., Age 13.” “Rainbow, Found in Trash, Costas F Age 5.” “Cloud of Clowns Costas, F., Age 7.” “Untitled, Found on Lawn, Costas, F., Age 5.” “Heartbreak, Found in Trash, Costas, F., Age 15.” “Charcoal Portrait, Crumbled in Couch, Costas, F., Age 16.” “Comic Strip, Found in Trash, Costas, F., Age 10.”
There were even pictures she’d taken when she dabbled in photography, birthday cards she’d made for Liam, and pressed leaves she’d painted when she was experimenting with textures and then shoved in the garbage, convinced they were failures. Some of these she thought she’d lost in the shuffle of moving to New York, changing coasts and had grieved quietly alone in theaftermath. It was a lifetime—a literal, physical timeline—of her wildest, most mortifyingly raw, and proudest work.
