Year Four/Week Thirty – Present
I sat beside Baxter at his studio, wiping off the nail polish he’d asked me to wear for his photoshoot.
“It looks good,” he said in passing, carrying his tripod to the center of the room. “I don’t know why you always take it off.”
“I don’t know why you insist on me putting it on,” I extended my fingers. “It always leaves a black residue.”
He laughed with his chest. “Beauty is pain.”
I grumbled something inaudible and glanced at the paperwork on the table next to me. A long list of names coated the pages, all having to do with potential buyers for Baxter’s photos.
I grabbed the notes, scanning for people I recognized. Mel had a bunch of friends in the modelling industry; sometimes she’d paint their portrait and sell it to Carson, the owner of Prix’s Art Gallery and her family friend.
The art gallery Blu and I went to.
I shook off the thought, remembering the moment like it was just yesterday.
All those months ago, when I hadn’t so much as touched her, but felt her skin so innocently with one trail of my finger.
At the time, I’d done it for a reaction. To this day, I still wonder if that was my intention. Maybe I’d always liked her, maybe I never did. Either way, I was thinking of those memories with a sad fondness in my mind.
Things changed [and escalated] after Winter’s Lodge. It’s like all the softer sentiments I had, the ones untouched by desires and lust faded into the fucking wind and I was left with this surging obsession to feel her skin, not anything beneath it.
I guess I hated myself for it, because I had no reason to go back to her. What we had… Was it really that deep? Was love too simple a word to throw around the way I did, only because I felt like she wanted to hear it? As if that one, four-letter word would magically erase all the bad parts of us?
It didn’t feel like the end, even though her last words sliced a wound so deep I’d sat on it for days. Bryce and Fawn were on the rocks, probably because Blu gave her the rundown of our situation.
I imagine the conversation went like, “How can you still be friends with him?” to Bryce defending me by saying, “They weren’t together, darling.”
He’d always steal my lines. Even if he wasn’t good at it.
But even my confidence was gone. My jokes were gone. She was gone.
Everything Blu said was correct – sad, but correct. I spoke to Scott about it, expecting him to take my side, but it was wrong of me to assume my brothers would do that.
He merely agreed. So in the end, I was the walking, living, breathing piece of shit that broke a girl who was already broken.
And I had no right to feel sorry for it.
Isn’t that fucked? Even a little bit? That I couldn’t hurt because she was hurting, because I caused her pain?
Did people forget that I was a human being with feelings, too? That I had something with this girl, something beyond a friendship?
“Get your hands off my contacts,” Baxter swatted the paper from my grip. I didn’t realize I was still holding it.
“Sorry,” I muttered. “Any luck with selling your prints?”
He ran two stressed palms down his face, messing up his bushy eyebrows. “Sadly no. I’m trying, though. Can’t give up.”
I admired his work ethic, but I knew from Mom (because Bax would never care to tell me) that he’d been in a dry spell for a few months now.
“Why don’t you try something different?”
His eyes narrowed. He hated taking suggestions, but I knew he was desperate for something.
“What do you mean?”
I cleared my throat, taking a glance at the scattered grey photos all over the walls. “Your shots are all of people sitting against plain white walls.”
“Great observation.” I could feel the disinterest slipping by the second. “What’s your point?”
“My point is they’re good, but do you not get kind of tired shooting the same shit?”
“You’re my model, Jace. You aren’t supposed to have an opinion.”
“Holy fuck,” I laughed because it was so ridiculous. I was a model, a toddler, a fucking stranger – not a brother, no, never a brother to my own flesh and blood. Everything but.
Everything fucking but.
“What?” he griped, sharp and irritated.
I had every right to be just that. Not him.
“Your photos are fucking boring, Baxter. They’re fucking boring and I’m sick and tired of you treating me like I don’t have a say in shit when all I want to do is help you.”
He stared at me with piercing blue eyes, dark like Dad’s, and dropped his tripod like it weighed bricks.
“What did you just say?”
I had enough. I finally had enough.
“You treat me like a kid,” I spat. “You treat me like a fucking kid and you don’t listen to anyone but Will because he works in finance but he got a business degree, Bax! That’s the difference between you two.
“I get you love art and making all this shit, but you don’t know anything about marketing it, or at least contacting the people who could help you, not just buy your prints.”
“Oh, and you know so much?” He let out a sarcastic laugh. It boiled my blood. “You don’t have a fucking car, you live with Mom, you’re twenty-one with no job, no girlfriend and no fucking direction!”
At this, I stood up, my anger bursting out of me like untameable embers. “Are you that proud, to not even hear me out, to listen to someone other than yourself? Do you not see that you’ve been unsuccessful doing the same damn fucking thing every single day and getting no results?”
“Unsuccessful,” he scoffed, and I knew his words were about to burn. “You couldn’t even play pro because you were whining about the loss of your ex-girlfriend, Jace.”
And I was right.
The one thing he knew would kill me, would fracture every corner of my confidence – he knew. And he used it against me.
I kicked the chair back and stepped up to his face. We were eye to eye when I said, “Fuck you,” and walked out of his studio.
The walk home was tiring even though it was five minutes away. My bones felt broken, my body was wrecked and I just wanted one second of peace. Every thought in my brain screamed, retreating back to the comfortable corners of old Jace. The Jace who got nothing – who had nothing –
Who was nothing.
Couldn’t keep a girl? Check.
Wasn’t good enough for my soccer career? What fucking career?
Wasn’t good enough –
Wasn’t good enough –
I WILL NEVER BE GOOD ENOUGH.
Mom was in the kitchen with Dad talking about their fucking relationship like they were kids in school. I couldn’t care less.
“Hi baby, how was –”
I ignored her and jogged up the stairs, slamming my door before throwing my face into a pillow. If I cried, the liquid would get soaked up by the cotton material. If I screamed, no one would hear me. No one could care.
So I yelled and I thought of everything, everyone who was better than me – everyone I disappointed – everyone who disappointed me.
I thought about Scott trying to help me, feeling like he owed me just that.
He didn’t.
I thought about Riley cheating on me, feeling as if I deserved it.
I did.
Then Blu –
Blu. Blu. Blu.
My Blu, who I hurt, who I broke and shattered and it was me – Me who deserved it. Not her. My Blu…
God, my poor fucking Blu.
After ten minutes of suffocating my screams, I flipped over and stared at my phone, unable to flip it over because if I did, Blu would be the first one I’d call.
I couldn’t do that to her.
But even still, I couldn’t stop looking at the iPhone screen, wishing I could send her a message through my mind – wishing there was no proof of my feelings, that a private bubble existed around my conversations with her – only her.
Just Blu.
Just me and Blu.
The only two that mattered.
My hue.
