Her mind was blank. There was no thinking, “This is Zack’s work. I’d know it anywhere.” Not when the only thing she saw was…
Her own face.
It stared back at her from behind a veneer of carefully treated marble. Wisps of hair, made of stone but still looking like fine threads, fell against the statue’s cheeks. Rachel shook her head in absolute awe.
Behind that statue was another one of Rachel looking over her shoulder, the plaid of her flannel shirts matching the one she wore now. Paintings of her referencing other artists’ iconic styles hung on the walls. Pedestals held little clay figurines of miniature Rachel’s doing different activities. It was whole museum of Rachels.
But the gasp-worthy piece was the one at the back of the gallery where most of the attendees congregated, taking pictures and writing down their thoughts on cards. The same kind of card in Rachel’s back pocket.
“Please.”
On the wall hung an imposing replica of the sketch Zack did of Rachel that fateful day they first saw each other. But instead of simple pencil strokes, the artist had added ink and a little bit of watercoloring to highlight the brown of Rachel’s hair and the red in her shirt. She worked diligently on her translating, although the spine of her dictionary actually said Book of Happy Memories in Japanese.
Another picture hung next to it, a veritable before and after of her relationship with Zack.
It must have been the night of the wedding. It had to be, because that was the only time Rachel was naked like that in her boyfriend’s bed. While Zack took care to keep her assets covered, the silk sheet in the painting left her back exposed and a hint of her behind hanging out. It was intimate. It was translucent.
It was titled Just Friends.
“What do you think?”
That voice was what sent shivers down Rachel’s spine, not the artwork. “I think,” she began, “that whoever this woman is, she’s more than a friend to the artist.”
Zack stood beside her, emanating such warmth that Rachel almost missed the scent of his cologne. “I’m glad that’s what you immediately picked up. I can tell you with little hesitation that an artist always appreciates it when his intent is understood.”
They stood in silence while Rachel processed what had happened that evening. Here Zack was, standing beside her, giving her the space she had craved while still broadcasting how much he had thought about her over the past two months – and how much he still wanted her. Rachel didn’t need to see it in his art or hear it from his mouth. She felt the intensity radiating from his body, only a few respectful feet away. The man held himself back from grabbing her, kissing her, pinning her next to the portrait of her face and making love to her.
“I’m sorry,” she said, compelled by the energy surrounding them.
“For what?”
“For what I did.” People continued to approach the artistic display, most of them politely looking in their direction before pretending to only be enthralled with the pictures on the wall. “It was awful. I was prepared for you to move on and find someone else.”
“Everyone told me you might say something like that.”
Rachel turned toward him, flabbergasted. “Who?”
“Everyone. Seriously. Everyone I talked to because I was a miserable wreck for a whole week before deciding what to do. Then I was a productive miserable wreck.”
“You did all of this in two months?”
“Once my agent told me my latest patron was a Japanese businessman, I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I ran it by Mr. Suzuki, who has turned out to be the most terrible romantic you could meet in Japan.”
“Not hard to accomplish.”
“I figured. Anyway, he doesn’t live near here, but I convinced him to display my collection here so you could see it opening night. Think it might be a hit.”
“An obsessive look at one man’s love for one woman? I’m shocked.” Rachel said it with a smile.
Zack shrugged. “Don’t know if I would say obsessive…”
When Rachel spun away from the wall, she encountered another image of herself. There, on a tiny pedestal in the middle of the floor, was a carefully carved marble figurine of Rachel sleeping, like in the “After” photo of her relationship with Zack. She pulled out her reading glasses from her bag to get a closer look at the intricate details.
“Jesus. How do you do something like this?” Every wrinkle in the blanket, every wisp of hair was there, and in such miniature form. Marble was hard, right? How did men like Zack and Michelangelo make it look so easy to create something soft from something so hard? If Rachel tried it, she’d break it in half – in frustration!
“Great patience and an eye for detail.” Zack kept his hands clasped firmly behind his back. “You’re not mad that I did this?”
“Why would I be mad?”
“Because like you said. Bit obsessive.”
Rachel kept her eyes focused on the little details presented in a tiny marble representation of her asleep in Zack’s bed. “Maybe there’s such a thing as a good kind of obsessive.”
“Well… nobody counted on you saying something like that.”
“Who are these people saying these things?”
“I believe my father explicitly said, ‘Unlike in those romance novels, son, if you actually use your money and connections to track down a woman because you insist on possessing her, she’ll call the cops on you, not marry you.’”
“Goes to show your dad really doesn’t know me that well.”
“He could, you know.”
Rachel should have expected he would say something like that. The only reason she didn’t excuse herself from his presence was because his voice was… how could she put it? Decode it? Decipher the bundle of emotions creeping on a tethered line between him and her? The Japanese had a concept called The Red String of Fate that permeated media and old wives’ tales. Everyone is born with a red string tied around their finger. Their soul mate is on the other end.
That was the invisible string hanging between them. Just because they couldn’t see it didn’t mean it was any less red than the flannel on Rachel’s back.
“I honestly didn’t think you would do something like this. You didn’t even try to contact me here. No letters, no texts…”
“You said you needed space. So, I let you have your space, even though I wish you hadn’t done it like that.” Zack sighed. “Look, Rachel, I love you. I wasn’t lying when I said that. But I guess I can see how, from your point of view, it was too much to handle at once. Like I told you all those weeks ago, I guess I can get insecure too.”
A man who did all of this – while also respecting her temporary boundaries – surely must have loved her. Rachel wiped something away from the corner of her eye. How was this even possible? How could she find a man like this?
How could I have left him like that?
“Two days after we slept together,” she confessed, “I saw what that blog had been saying about your dating life for so long. Then I saw you in that bar talking to that woman. I know I was wrong, but my brain was filled with these terrible thoughts that you were either still sleeping with other women or were going to soon.”
Zack didn’t respond for a few seconds. Then, “They’re always saying things about me. They’re going to keep saying things about me. You have to trust me, Rachel. Trust me when I say that since the moment I met you, I never once touched or thought about another woman. I didn’t understand it at the time, but the moment I saw you through that window, I knew it was meant to be.”
“I don’t believe in fate.”
“Neither do I. That’s what makes it more miraculous.”
Rachel took his hand, coiling their red string of fate within their palms. “This is pretty miraculous.”
“So you’re not mad at me?”
“How could I be mad at a guy who clearly loves me so much and respects my boundaries? As long as that man also understands that I may not be wholly open to changing my life quite yet…”
“The night is young, hon. We can bounce on my own gallery opening and go, I dunno, grab some food and swing by my hotel room?”
“It’s been ten minutes. It’s taken you that long to suggest sex.”
“I didn’t say anything about sex.”
Rachel entered his embrace. His arms wrapped tightly around her as she tipped her head back and grinned into the underside of his fuzzy chin. “You heavily implied it. Like you’ve been implying it since the day we met.”
“I know what I want.”
“What do you want right now?”
He gently swayed them back and forth while a million cell phone flashes went off around them. If people hadn’t recognized Rachel yet, they certainly did now. Her face surrounded them. She was on every wall, on every shelf, and on every single pedestal adorning the gallery.
“I want you, Rachel Taylor. We can figure things out from there. At your own pace, even. Promise to keep me in the loop in the future. No more running off under the cover of darkness. I can find you, anyway.”
They kissed on that promise. The applause erupting around them sounded a million miles away.
All Rachel could really hear was the thundering of her own happy heart.