Page 37 of Forever Never
Remi bit her lip to hide her smile. Brick Callan had that kind of effect on women of all ages.
He grunted in response and, with a pointed look at them, turned to head back toward the street.
“Nawesome?” Remi teased.
“Shut up. He looked directly at me. What was I supposed to do? Form actual speech? Not everyone’s as brave as you are, you know,” Audrey muttered.
“Come on. Let’s go buy the big guy an ice cream cone,” Remi said, slinging an arm around her friend’s waist. “You can help me plan outfits around these shorts.”
Audrey looked down at Remi’s legs. “Why?”
“No reason. I just feel like wearing them for the rest of the summer.”
12
Remi watched transfixed as the thick, red liquid dripped onto the plastic on the floor, splattering in a macabre pattern over her bare foot.
Radiohead’s “No Surprises” blared from a wireless speaker on the table. Pulsing waves of oranges, blues, and rich purples shifted around the interior of the cottage. But instead of feeling comforted as she usually did, she was sick, almost dizzy as the red rolled like blood over her skin. The canvas in front of her taunted with its blinding white perfection.
Red. White. Blood. Snow. The shimmer of broken glass glimmering in headlights. Dark. Dark. Dark.
Despite the sunshine reflecting off the endless surface of the lake beyond the windows, she felt like she was back in the suffocating midnight black of that cold, horrible night.
The brush—a tool once so familiar—felt foreign and wrong in her left hand.
She shook herself forcefully.
“Don’t be a fucking baby,” she insisted, raising the brush like a wand. A spell to vanquish the darkness. To bleed color onto the canvas and, in the process, exorcise the terror, the helplessness.
Sweat dotted her brow and the back of her neck where her hair hung in a limp curtain. Her breath was weak within the confines of her lungs. A warning that she needed to pause, to breathe.
The bristles inched closer to the surface. One sweep, and the white wouldn’t be perfect in its emptiness anymore. She’d learned the lesson early. Void wasn’t perfection. Putting her colorful, lawless mark on an otherwise blank canvas was what she did best. At least, it had been.
“This is stupid,” she hissed through her teeth as the song started over again for the ninth time. “Just put the damn brush on the damn canvas.”
It had been nearly two weeks since the last time her brush had swept through richly colored oils and created worlds where before there’d been nothing. It felt like a lifetime.
But the nothingness, the void, was safe. Pristine.
The tightness in her chest started to burn, and the brush rolled from her stiff fingers.
“For fuck’s sake,” she muttered, sucking in a breath.
She sank to the ancient, dusty drop cloth she’d reclaimed from her parents’ basement and used a corner of it to swipe the paint from her foot.
This whole “breakdown” thing was really starting to piss her off.
Her breath sounded thin and wispy.
“How are you going to live a full life if you can’t take a full breath?”
An old question posed by a new friend. And for once, Remi had paid attention.
“I’m not a yoga type person,” she’d insisted, eyeing the colorful parade of tights and tank tops and mats as students of all shapes, sizes, and colors marched into the studio.“I’m more of a ‘boot camp that makes you barf at the end’ person.”
“Mmm. And how is that working for you?” her friend had asked serenely.
“Fine, but next week you come to a boxing class if I hate this.”
