If Quinn was annoyed I couldn’t sleep over very often the week following our return to Gray Springs, he didn’t show it. If anything, he was trying to be as supportive as possible while I spent my nights eating ice cream straight from the tub with Pippa and drawing her funny pictures.
But with finals approaching, Pippa grew determined and at least got out of bed long enough to shower and attend class. Tim had given her all the time she needed off from the parlor, and I picked up one of her shifts for her until she returned.
As Christmas break neared, she perked up enough to allow Quinn to take us out for dinner and even came over to the townhouse once or twice to watch movies with us.
Quinn hadn’t said a lot about Toby’s sudden disappearing act, just that he’d heard he’d been kicked off the team and nobody had seen or heard from him since he left.
I could tell it bothered and worried him, though, and did my best to remain positive. I knew, though, or rather, had heard enough from Pippa. Football was everything to Toby. Getting kicked off the team and losing his scholarship would’ve crushed him.
It was just too bad he had to crush someone else in the midst of his despair.
Pippa had excuses some days. “He doesn’t think the same way we do. He’s unable to see outside himself when it gets that bad.”
Other days, she was just plain angry. And rightfully so.
I didn’t know much about mental health disorders, but I still didn’t think it was right that it’d been almost a month since he left, and he hadn’t even bothered to return calls or contact anyone.
But I’d learned a lot in my time at Gray Springs. Funnily enough, not all of it had anything to do with academia. The biggest thing being, you couldn’t control everything. Least of all how others were going to act or feel.
I did something horrible. But I wouldn’t let the guilt drown me, and I wouldn’t let it define who I was or who I was becoming.
Friday afternoon, the week before Christmas break, I was leaving the visual arts building, stopping to button my coat with my portfolio wedged between my legs when the professor called me back. I walked into the room with my heart pounding, wondering if maybe my final project wasn’t good enough. Or if I’d flunked my final exam.
“Have a seat,” Professor Sanders said, digging around for something in her desk drawer.
I did, sliding my portfolio onto the paint flecked counter in front of me and sitting on a stool.
“Now,” she said, closing the drawer and smiling. “I was supposed to catch you before you left, but you were in a hurry.”
Her smile made me feel a little more at ease. A little. “Sorry.”
She waved a hand. “Don’t be. Congratulations.” Pressing a sheet of paper down in front of me, she tapped it with a long, silver nail. ‘You’ve been nominated for the Claire Davies award.”
“What?” I wheezed out.
I’d heard about the award, how it could open many doors with studios, art museums, and other job opportunities. Three students were nominated each year.
Claire Davies was a student who had attended Gray Springs in the early nineties. A very talented woman whose work still hung throughout the walls of the art building and auditorium on campus. She suffered a long battle with depression and bulimia, and no one was ever certain of how she died. But the rumors all circled around suicide.
“Your piece. The Heart Left Behind?”
I nodded, knowing exactly which one she meant. It was of two hearts, holding hands and walking away, bright red and pink in color. The third was a deep burgundy heart left at the bottom of the page, bleeding and reaching after them, lying squashed on the floor crumbling beneath it.
Tears blurred my vision. The feelings I’d felt while painting it briefly resurfacing.
I didn’t give much thought to it after completing it. Just left it hanging in the drying room. Nothing I’d made during that time felt worthy. In fact, that painting felt childlike. Half assed. As though I’d created it without wearing my glasses. I’d done it in class, during the first few weeks of having my heart broken after finding out Quinn had moved on.
Except he hadn’t. Not really.
I frowned, glancing from the paper to the professor. “But I didn’t submit it.”
Her red lipped smile was a bit crooked. “Let’s just say you did.” She winked, walking back to her desk, and leaving me dumbfounded.
“It’s not … it’s not even that good. I was in a bad place and not myself when I painted it.”
I had half a mind to beg her to let me submit something else in its place.
“Ah,” she tsked. “That’s where you’re wrong. We don’t always need to be tortured to create. But I won’t lie; heartbreak, recklessness, and heavy emotion have sprung some of the best works of art I’ve come across.”
At my gaping expression, a little laugh tinkled out of her. “Its brutality and honesty leap from the paper.” Her hands spread out in front of her. “You can’t look at that painting without feeling it. The pain, the sorrow, and the fear. It’s all there. And the rough, raw, unpolished quality to it only makes the emotion speak louder, telling a story that’s hard to read but important and real nonetheless.”
After she’d excused me, my feet carried me out of the room as though I were made of air, and I’d disappear or splinter apart at any moment.
I stopped in the hall on the way out, my eyes roaming over the artwork on the walls until they landed on the largest piece made by Claire Davies.
Reaching up, I brushed my fingers over the golden frame, my excitement dimming as I surveyed the harsh strokes and red lines running violently over the old piece of art paper. A stenciled face stared back at me from beneath the chaos. A beautiful, expressionless face. It was a mess. An incredible, soul wrenching mess of despair, created with slashes of paint that told so much yet so little at the same time.
Happy endings didn’t always arrive for a lot of people.
I stepped back, letting the sorrow of that particular truth wash over me. But instead of feeling miserable, I sucked in a deep breath and set it free with a wobbly smile.
I could acknowledge how fortunate I was and had no intentions of taking it for granted. Especially after I thought he might be lost to me forever.
Running outside to the steps, I saw Quinn standing at the bottom, waiting with a hand over his eyes to shield them from the winter sun as he watched me.
I leaped down them, almost stumbling in my haste to get to him.
He jumped forward, collecting me before the pavement did, and swinging me around. “You’re still a bit of a clutz.”
“And you’re still capable of making me trip and fall whenever I see you.”
His loud laughter was absorbed by my mouth, seeping into my heart and soul as I clutched his head and devoured his lips with mine. My legs wrapped around him, and my portfolio fell to the ground. But I didn’t care.
It was true. Not everyone would get a happy ending.
But I’d gotten mine.
And I wouldn’t apologize for it anymore.