Page 62

Chapter twenty-nine

Existing

P oppy sat in her studio, staring at the sink.

The faucet was dripping. Very slowly, but there was a drip.

She should get up and tighten the handle, not waste water.

It might just be a drop every few seconds, but those drops added up, becoming tablespoons and cups and gallons and she should get up, she should move, she should do something, anything.

But she just watched the steady drip-drip-drip, and existed, and tried to think.

Rai hadn’t been wrong. She’d known something was missing in the painting, even as she painted it, and instead of taking a step back and looking at it objectively, she’d just gone deeper and deeper into techniques and rules and formalities, focusing on the tiniest of details, trying to emulate her father’s precise realism.

But she wasn’t her father. She never had been, no matter how she tried, and when she was thinking straight, she knew she shouldn’t be.

That he wouldn’t have wanted her to be a copy of him, to imprison her own instincts with the chains of classicalism that he himself had found liberating.

Rai had been right. She’d gotten in her own head while painting, grounded herself despite all the flying they’d been doing, and the painting had suffered.

It was precise but sterile. Beautiful but dead.

But even so, when she’d looked at his face, his forehead wrinkled with disappointment that he could not hide, his storm-bright eyes shadowed—in that moment, all the worms she’d thought shut away in their cans for good had burst out into the open.

While Rai had been trying to explain what he meant, put his innocent, instinctive perceptions into inadequate but kindly meant words, she’d been hearing Brendan’s wormy, passive-aggressive sideways critiques under and over and around it all, like an oil slick polluting the ocean.

“It is skilfully painted,” Rai had said, and Brendan’s voice had whispered, I guess your art classes weren’t a total waste of time.

“It looks very like me,” came Rai’s voice, and It’s perfect, just like you ran a photo through a filter, Brendan hissed.

“You are not in the painting.” It’s better that you don’t have a strong style. We wouldn’t want the graphics to overshadow my words.

She’d known Rai wasn’t trying to keep her down.

With her head, she’d understood. But it had still been poisoned by the memory of Brendan condescending and negging and manipulating, bending her art to his goals, and even the recognition that what Rai wanted was exactly what Brendan had tried to suppress, tried to crush, couldn’t break her free of that nasty black coating.

And Rai had lied. He’d lied right to her face every single time she’d bubbled at him with joy at yet another sale and he’d pretended to be surprised.

He’d gone behind her back week after week, buying her art when she wasn’t looking, encouraging her to make more to sell, more for him to buy.

And he’d kept on doing it even after he’d promised not to keep secrets, after she’d told him what the sales meant.

After he should have known better. That realization had…

She wasn’t sure what it had done, except that she was numb now.

Numb and hopeless, desperately wishing she had left at least one of her carefully built barriers up to protect her soul.

She’d let them down to let Rai in. She’d made herself vulnerable, exposed herself, stupidly stupidly stupidly trusted that he would keep her safe, and now the worms were at her gates, pounding right on her bruised heart with a steady drip-drip-drip.

It was too much to take. She had to do something. Anything.

Brushes. That was a thing. She had to clean her brushes.

It wouldn’t do to leave them all full of paint, not when she couldn’t afford to buy more.

She stood and gathered the brushes she’d used, took them to the sink.

Squeezed pools of soap into her palm, scrubbed the bristles in the soap, watched the soap take on the colors of the paint, rinsed palm and brush under a stream of water, set the brush in a jar to dry, picked up the next brush. Lather, rinse, repeat, next brush.

By the time she’d finished cleaning the brushes she’d used today, turning the water off tight so the drip stopped dripping, she had calmed herself enough that she could walk to the rejected painting, cover it with its drape, not look at it.

She put her palette away, the tubes of paint, her other tools.

She should pack up the half-finished drawings on her drafting table, too, since she wasn’t likely to need them anytime soon, but the thought sent ripples into the smooth numb calm she’d been cultivating, so instead she went to the mounded cushions on the floor.

The drape she just tossed in the corner—it would need to be washed, but she wasn’t ready to face her mother, not now when she was being carefully placid, so it would have to wait for later.

But Poppy could and did stack the sunflower cushions that belonged to her mother’s couch by the door, stuffed the ones that belonged to her own couch into place.

She changed the sheets on her bed, made it up neatly.

Cleared the counters in the kitchenette. Dusted her knickknacks.

It was working. She could feel her mind settling, and even better, each thing she organized, each wrinkle she smoothed, each tiny blow against entropy made her feel like she was building up her barriers again, bit by bit, brick by brick.

And if she could get just a little bit of a shield, then maybe she could face Rai and talk to him like a grownup.

They could work through this. It was fixable.

She just needed that degree of separation, some safety glass, so they could successfully navigate the next two weeks of their affair and say goodbye as planned, with gratitude and hugs and smiles on their faces.

What else could she do?

Recyclables. Trash. Mail. She could do all of that in one circuit.

It was hot outside—she repressed a twinge of concern for Rai—but she wasn’t afraid of the sun, even if that thought brought up the image of Rai, standing atop a desert hill.

I would not put my hand in a bonfire, but I gladly raise my face to the sunlight.

Laying her down in a bed of clouds. The water obeys me.

It will not let me fall. And I have told it that I will not have you fall, and so it obeys.

Catching sun-sparkling raindrops in his hand. Are we planning a murder?

She smiled against her will. It was going to be all right. She’d calm down, and she’d call him back, and they’d have a good, mature talk, and it would be all right .

She emptied her crate of recyclables into the blue bin, stuffed the full plastic trash bag in the green bin, dragged both bins to the curb, and grabbed the mail out of the mailbox on her way back to the guest house, sorting through it as she went.

Election mail, AARP, more election mail, big flyer bundle, more election mail…

Social Security Administration.

It was a small envelope this time. Not big, like the rejection earlier had been.

Hope rose in her throat, and she ran the last few steps to the guest house and closed the door behind her.

She still had the recycling bin she’d emptied, and she dropped it beside the door, flung the junk mail into it, and tore into the not-bad-news-sized Social Security envelope.

“Be good news,” she chanted as she scanned the pages, looking for the words that mattered. “Please be good news. Please please please be good news.”

Name, date. Legal mumbo-jumbo. We have reached a decision. Words words words…

…has been denied.

Her legs folded under her. She managed to catch the back of the couch, lean against it, ease around to sit on the freshly replaced cushions as she kept reading.

While there is evidence that your condition causes some limitations, it does not prevent you from working and…

“Oh, bullshit. Bull shit .” She kept on reading, kept on reading, until the words were fuzzy and she realized she was crying, she was crying and she couldn’t stop, and god , it hadn’t hurt this much last time.

She hadn’t cried this much last time. Last time she’d just needed a moment and then she’d pulled herself together, and then Rai—

Rai.

That was the difference. Because then, Rai had been there, sure, but she’d still been whole.

She’d still had her shields up, still had her Rai-life and her real-life separated in her head.

He’d still just been a cute temporary lover, an ordinary toilet paper salesman, and she’d had the built-up scar tissue to keep anything from hurting like this.

And then she’d found out the truth, and her world had opened wide. She’d let her shields fall, one by one. She’d flown, she’d loved… She’d hoped.

That was it. That was the problem. She’d been living in a dream. She had let herself believe that she’d found the cloud’s silver lining, the rainbow, the goddamn pot of gold. She’d let Rai sweep her away, let herself hope.

But Rai was going to leave. And when he was gone, she was going to have to start all over again.

No more flying, no more imagining she was anything other than a cog in the machine, transcribing political commentary for pennies while her art supplies gathered dust in her studio and her drawings gathered dust on the walls of Café Legend.

Assuming Heather even wanted her to keep exhibiting there when she didn’t have her fae boyfriend throwing money.

She had to get used to the idea, get her head out of the clouds and get back down to earth, where she belonged.

And the longer she put it off, the harder it was going to be.

She breathed. In for four, hold for seven, out for eight. And then she sent Rai a text.

Come over as soon as you can.

She opened her laptop and waited.