Page 143 of Painting Celia

The dampening comforter held her tight as she trembled, her gasps echoing off the soaring ceilings, filling the whole space. She let the storm come. She wracked with each cleansing wave, feeling and feeling and feeling.

She cried out loud. She was getting better.

•••

“Dude,” Kelsey said, fingering her sticky notes. “Her mom sucks. You know about what she did?”

“I know.” León waved an offering hand at the empty office chair, and Kelsey sat, eyebrows raised and face speculative.

León looked at the high beamed ceiling as though he could look through to Celia’s floor. “She’ll be okay up there, right?”

Slim hand resting on her burgeoning belly, Kelsey nodded, lips pursed. “She’s changed, don’t you think?”

“Yeah. I do.”

She gave him an appraising once-over. “You’ve changed too. You’re way nicer to her.”

Kelsey and her bluntness! León set his jaw, a slow wary fire starting in his stomach. “I was an idiot.”

“I don’t get why you quit painting.”

He looked over to the luminous blue painting, still hanging on the far wall, his fingers twitching as though he could feel a brush. Weak sunbeams breaking through the clouds reflected off the polished floor, casting the painting in a soft glow. He hadn’t had anyone to tell this to; Andrew had been off with Trevor for weeks. The blue days, the black nights of missing Celia, lying awake thinking up ways to earn a few extra minutes near her….León was near his breaking point.

“I’m an ass when I paint,” he admitted. It was tough to say, but… “I want her more than I want art.”

“You’re here to get her back, aren’t you.” It wasn’t a question, and he didn’t feel the need to answer it.

Kelsey’s voice behind him softened. “You’re going about it all wrong, you know.”

León spun on her. If she expected him to take this with good humor…he was sailing too near desperation. “Help me, then! I’m making this up as I go, and Celia’s not telling me if I’m getting through.”

“Oh, she’s telling you,” Kelsey replied.

León stared.

“Look, you’re an expressive guy. Celia responded to that, it gave her permission to be expressive too. Now you’re buttoned up, all casual. It comes off as fake, by the way. But she’s retreating to that, copying you. You’re cooling things off.”

His mouth opened, then closed. “God dammit. How do you see things like that, Kelsey?”

“I just watch,” she sighed, slumping back into the chair. “I can’t believe you guys need this spelled out! Fine, I’ll help. Go be yourself, idiot.”

“I am, though. The new me.”

“No, stop being casual and boring.” Her voice sharpened, and she fixed him with a pointed look. “The guy she fell for is all emotion and drama.”

León felt something melt in him. A warmth spread through his chest, the icy shell of his fears beginning to crack. “You think she’d take me back?”

Kelsey chuckled. “I’m not touching that one. Ask her.”

Twenty Nine

Thunder grumbled through the night sky, and up in her quiet loft, Celia smiled.

Golden lamplight pooled against red brick, little amber halos warming places that mattered. The watery blue silk comforter on her bed, way off in the corner, shimmered under a single pendant’s warm sunset hues. In the room’s center, yellow couches faced off across a low glass table set with glowing punched-tin lanterns. Her artichoke-green dining chairs basked in rows under the modern copper chandelier.

It didn’t all match, but she had picked furniture that spoke to her. This was her place.

When she’d needed healing yesterday, a safe place on her first day of official estrangement, she’d had her loft. Her Incubadora. Her new life.

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