Bryan

Halloween was just a couple days away, and I could feel the excitement lingering in the air. Children were chattering about costumes, and parents were hauling bags of candy to their cars. All the while, I was standing outside Hailey’s art studio door. It was opening and closing frantically with happy customers lugging their artwork and pre-carved pumpkins home. I couldn’t help feeling a small flicker of pride well up in my chest for her success. There was a part of me that ached that I hadn’t been here for the grand opening to usher in this new part of her life that seemed to be doing so well.

I scooted over toward the window and saw her chatting with a customer. People were pointing out paintings on the walls, asking about prices and fondling the tags hanging from them. Some people were asking her about the easel up front, and I had to duck down when she looked over, so she wouldn’t spot me. I wasn’t ready to have this conversation with her, especially in front of customers. I wasn’t ready to hash this out and attempt to stuff my feelings down, so I could listen to her ramble on about someone she never really knew, someone she felt she knew because he painted some pictures before he shot himself up in an alleyway or some shit.

I took a deep breath and listened as her door kept opening and closing. I took a deep breath and stood up, no longer seeing her through the window. I turned my head toward the diner and started over that way, feeling my stomach rumbling with hunger. It’d been weeks since Drew and I had been over there. I’d been avoiding it because of the proximity to Hailey’s gallery, but I knew Drew was avoiding it because I was.

I walked into the diner and sat down, taking in all the Halloween decorations that had been put up. Many of the waitresses perked up when I came in, waving to me with wide smiles on their faces. I’d forgotten how much this place warmed my soul, and I felt the joy I garnered from this place spreading through my limbs. I sat down, and our regular waitress came over, a double chocolate milkshake already in her hand as she set it in front of me. No whipped cream but cherries on both the bottom and covering the top.

Just how I enjoyed it the first time I’d shared a milkshake with Hailey.

“Been a while since I’ve seen your pretty face in here,” she said, smiling. “You feelin’ all right?”

I looked back across the road out through the window and saw Hailey helping a customer stuff painting after painting in the back of his car. Holy shit, she was doing wonderfully. Had it been this busy since she opened?

“Oh, yeah. I’m doing fine. Just really busy with work. Opening new job sites and such.”

“Where’s your fun little friend?” she asked.

“Drew? He’s ...”

How could I tell her he was pricing out stuff to open his own tattoo shop? How could I tell her I was here trying to speak with my ex about what happened between her and my dead brother? How could I tell her my life was secretly going to shit, and I was slowly turning into the shadow of what my parents used to be?

“He’s actually not feeling too well, working too much and not resting enough to recuperate. I’m about to chain him to his bed,” I said, grinning.

“Well, you tell that man to get better. If he needs a milkshake or a warm pick-me-up, it’s on the house when he comes back in here.”

“I’ll be sure to let him know, thank you.”

I started mindlessly spooning the milkshake into my mouth as the waitress took off. I noticed she didn’t take my order even though she started calling out food for my table, and that’s when I realized I had been here way too much. This was Drew’s and my spot for sure, but it was slightly tainted with Hailey. We’d come over here and had milkshakes one time, and she loved them so much, she had gotten another one to go. The look on her face while she was sucking down that milkshake through that straw had squirmed me in my seat. This was right before the second time we’d slept with one another, and I felt every single hair on my body stand on end.

I was thrown back to that night about a week ago. When she showed up on my porch while I was drunk. I thought it was a hate fuck, something to get her out of my system. I knew if I had a really good orgasm without tending to her needs at all, I could flush her completely from my system and be done with her. That’s how it was supposed to work. That’s what Drew told me was supposed to happen.

But all it did was cover my home in her scent. All it did was force me to replace that damn couch. All it did was make me scrub harder in the shower because now her perfume was once again underneath my nose. My heart now fluttered with the thought of her again, and my dreams were permeated with her writhing underneath me. The encounter we’d had only served to reopen my heart to a woman who’d tossed it onto the ground and stomped it into oblivion, and I hated myself for it.

I hated that I still loved Hailey, no matter what she had done to me.

It was annoying. As the waitress sat my order down in front of me, all I could think about was this impending conversation. I started to dip my fries in my chocolate milkshake while I continued to stare across the street. The customers were slowly dying down, and most of them were coming over here for lunch. I started wondering if that happened every day. If every lunch shift, customers would flood her shop before flooding this diner. If that was the case, she was doing exactly what she’d wanted to do.

She was reviving a dead area of town with nothing but the beauty of her artwork.

Of course, she would be successful. Of course, that would mean she would stick around. Of course, there was a part of me that was happy for her. Proud of her. Rooting her on even though she fed me deceit while we were together. I ate my food faster, trying to stuff all the memories down with the food settling into my stomach. One by one, the customers left her shop and came over here, filling up the diner I’d come to know so intimately with faces that seemed to foreign.

Except none of the waitresses seemed to be addressing anyone in a foreign manner.

That meant these people were regulars, which meant Hailey’s art gallery was always this busy with regulars who were coming to see her artwork.

I finished my milkshake and left my plate of half-eaten food on the table. One by one, the cars trickled from the parking lot until there was no one left but her across the street. I threw some bills onto the table and started for the door, suddenly feeling full of the energy I needed to have this conversation. I strode across the road, feeling my shoulders roll back in confidence as the energy from my lunch coursed through my system, but there was still an inkling of doubt in the back of my mind.

I knew this conversation was important, but I still wasn’t sure if I was ready to have it.

I almost ducked out and went to my car. I almost turned my body and ran back across the street. I almost caved into the familiar feeling of fear as I approached the front door of Hailey’s gallery, but before I could turn my back, my hand was on the doorknob and the door was rushing open.

My eyes lifted to take in Hailey, standing in the middle of the room with paintings surrounding her. Her walls were almost completely bare, and I could tell she was trying to figure out where to put the paintings at her feet. I noticed some still had a creepy Halloween feel to them, but I also noticed there were a few pieces of artwork hanging on the walls that weren’t done by her. I’d been around her painting long enough to get a feel for her style, and the brushstrokes were all different. A couple of the paintings were too bright for her tastes, but one of the paintings was dark, way too dark, even for her.

I studied the darkened painting and wondered where it had come from. It was a picture of a man in the woods, his figure cloaked in darkness. The forest was black with only a little bit of sunlight streaming through the trees, but it was enough for the audience to realize that the trees weren’t green. They were crimson red. Like blood.

I walked slowly toward the painting and allowed my fingertips to reach out to it. No, this wasn’t something Hailey could do. Her soul was too attuned to the natures and the emotions of others around her to be this dark. She experienced too much joy in her life to paint something this morbid. I looked closer and saw the figure in the woods hunched over like maybe he was in pain or screaming out for help. I had no idea whether it was a man or a woman, but there was something deep inside of me that called to the dark man alone in the woods while he was surrounded by blood-dripping trees.

My eyes finally peeled from the painting and scanned the bare walls, my soul silently congratulating her on her success. Bare walls meant people were purchasing her artwork, which meant she was becoming profitable. It meant she was pulling people into this side of town and exposing a beauty to this rundown part of San Diego that hadn’t been touched in years. I wanted to ask her if she was doing her classes and if she was holding her art therapy sessions yet. I wanted to ask her if she’d had any formal galleries with cocktails and finger foods and shit like that.

I wanted to ask her if she was still thinking about showcasing John’s paintings like I knew she’d mentioned during that initial conversation that ended it all.

But before I could turn around and get my bearings, I felt his heavy weight descend around my neck. I felt this warmth encompass my body while my eyes tried to adjust. There was something pressed into the crook of my neck while my arms stayed rigid at my sides, and my instinct was to push the object away, to get out from whatever grip someone had me in.

However, when I came to, Hailey’s arms were around me while her beautiful, warm, luscious body pressed firmly against mine.

I was startled by her outpouring of affection, especially given how our last meeting went. I fought the urge to wrap my arms around her and pull her close. I fought the urge to beg for her forgiveness. I fought the urge to pick her up and take her body as my own again right here on the onyx flooring of her gallery.

I fought the urge to do anything except stand there rigid and wait.

“I’m probably not going to believe anything you have to say, but your sister had a point, so I’m here,” I said.

She sighed and pulled back, looking into my eyes for the first time since that night. I could see the hurt behind her eyes, and I was angry at her. She had no reason to feel hurt by this situation. None of this was about her.

Until I remembered that I threw her out into the night without her pants even buttoned around her hips.

Okay, maybe she had a bit of a reason to be hurt.

“I’ll give you a chance,” I said. “So, say what you have to say.”

I waited for her to get snotty with me. I waited for her anger to bubble up to the surface. I waited for her hand to crack against my cheek or her voice to start yelling, anything to alert me to the fact that I’d finally crossed a line. I was trying to find her line with me. I was trying to figure out what I could do or say that would finally make her step back and fucking move on already.

But instead, she simply threw her arms around me again and hugged me closer than she had just a few moments ago, and I couldn’t help but thread my arms around her back.

“Thank you for coming by,” she said into my ear. “Let me go get us some chairs.”