Everyone leaves eventually.
All hearts break eventually.
I need to say never mind, you’re right. To slide my hands into my pocket. Change the password on my cloud.
But I don’t.
I pull my cell from my pocket. Login to my picture storage. Suck a breath through my teeth. “I’m gonna show you this. But, in exchange, I want to hear some of your supposedly shitty writing.”
“No, it’s terrible.”
“This is worse. I guarantee it.”
Her teeth sink into her lip. Her eyes turn down. She sucks in a shaky breath. Pushes out a shallow exhale. “On one condition.”
There it is. My last drawing.
A fallen angel, tugging at a locked heart, unable to take off because the weight is too much, and his wings are too worn.
It started as a riff off a client’s request. They wanted a locked heart. I wanted to make it less cliché.
Eventually, it stopped being for her.
It’s a solid drawing—a lot of emotion, clean lines—but it’s too personal.
“It has to be as bad as you say.”
“What if you have no taste and you think it’s all right?” I scroll backward in time. Past last year’s drawings. All the shit I did after Ariel told me she was a carrier for the gene that killed our mom.
All that shit about life, death, family.
Then before that.
Through years of training.
All the way back to high school.
This folder is all my drawings. But only stuff I deemed good enough to photograph. My sketchbooks are in a box in the closet.
They’re full of real shit.
This is… well, it’s not great. But it’s better than the stuff that didn’t make it.
“It has to be bad,” she says. “I have to be able to see the badness.”
“Fair.” There. That’s total crap. A self-portrait in shades of blue and black. All deep and dark, for my edgy teenage soul.
No, it was more than that. It wasn’t pretense. Well, maybe it was. But that was still there.
That sense is still there. That part of me that wants more. That wants love. That tires of parties, drinking, fucking strangers.
It wants to visit Mom’s grave, to play her music for my niece, to send sentimental cards to family members.
To show Daisy all of these pictures.
But, unlike with my dick, I’m pretty good at silencing that voice. At distracting myself enough it doesn’t nag.
“Can I?” Her fingers brush mine. “If you’re right, and it’s horrible, I’ll pick something out tonight. Read it to you tomorrow.”
I nod okay. Hand her the phone.
Her eyes go wide as she focuses on the picture.
My heart pounds. My stomach twists. My limbs get light. That same feeling I had when I was apprenticing. When I lived and died for a good work, Holden .
No one is ever proud of me. Not that I blame them. I make sure they don’t have the chance.
Probably another sign of my fucked-up head, but it’s working so far.
I’m happy. Life is good. Sure, there’s shit that goes wrong, but that’s true for everyone.
I get enough “realness” from my drawings.
This sense that I’m about to float to the ceiling—
I don’t need that.
“It’s not technically good.” Her eyes meet mine for a second, then they’re back on the screen. “But there is something about it. I can feel the mood of it. Were you really this… it’s hard to imagine you drawing this.”
“I was an edgy teenager.”
“Oh?”
I nod yeah. “Listened to a lot of songs about how much no one understood me.”
“Who didn’t?” Her fingers brush mine as she hands the cell back. “It’s not great, but—”
“Here.” I scroll through the photos. Find something that’s both shitty and empty. There. My Spider-Man phase. I drew a lot of bad fan art. “This is trash.” I turn the cell to her. “Total shit.”
She laughs. “You really thought it was great?”
“Fuck yeah, it’s Spider-Man. I thought I nailed it.”
Her laugh gets louder. “When did you realize it was crap?”
“A little after that. That’s the thing with art. Your taste matures faster than your skill. You spend a lot of time making shit.”
Her eyes fix on mine. “Oliver says the same thing.”
“Yeah?” Thank fuck for the reminder of her brother’s existence. My head is going to places it needs to avoid.
She nods yeah. “And then stuff about how I’m a perfectionist at heart. And I’ll always be critical. Especially of myself.”
“He’s right.”
“Yeah, but—” The steam of the kettle interrupts her. “I do make a mean tea latte. Chai is new, but—”
“You’re going down, kid.”
The nickname makes her smile. “No, you’re the one going down.”
I know she isn’t talking about coming on my face, but that’s exactly where my head goes.
Chapter Fifteen
Holden
Daisy is meticulous in everything she does, including fixing chai lattes. She measures exactly two teaspoons of tea. Brews it in exactly eight ounces of water. Adds it to exactly eight ounces of warmed milk.
Sweetens with exactly one teaspoon of honey.