Page 69 of Possess Me! (I Want You To)

What did you paint before the art block? I couldn’t believe how interested I actually was in his answer. When I’d been alive, there had only been three things that I genuinely cared about. Art. My motorcycle. And food.

“All sorts of stuff,” Luca shrugged. “My favorite thing though was…” He fidgeted. “Ugh. You’ll probably think it’s cheesy.”

I won’t.

Weirdly enough, I wasn’t lying.

I was, for the first time, truly invested.

“I paint emotions?” Luca cringed at himself. “I know, I know. That’s like—cliche—and very Pinterest of me but…still. They always just…hit me—you know? The feeling of them. The colors—the vibrancy—the way they can pause time or speed it up, depending on how you’re feeling. The way people experience them so differently. They’re never the same. It’s all so…”

Fascinating, I finished for him.

“Yes! I always thought so.”

Do you paint your own emotions or other people’s?

“Both? Either? I like experiencing things through every perspective.” The more he talked the more animated Luca became, and I was enraptured as he took one hand off the wheel and began unconsciously tracing shapes against the top of his thigh like he was painting from memory. “The first piece I made that really felt real to me I painted for my mom’s wedding when I was seventeen.”

I wanted him to continue.

What did you paint?

“It was a wedding present for her and Paul—that’s her new husband, he’s actually super cool. Anyway, it was like…this abstract splash of color. Pinks—yellows—champagne! Twisting, writhing, tangling together. A combination of all of us. Paul, Mom, me, Betty, Adam! Our colors blending like we were about to. Inside every paint stroke I hid my hope for our future, Betty’s distrust, Adam’s eagerness. All you had to do was look at it, and you’d feel it all. But above that—above the layers and layers of conflicting emotion, there was just…love. The love I saw between them, as cheesy as that sounds. It was bubbly, and bright. Young, in a way I never got to see my mom be before.” He took a breath, flashing me a shaky, nervous smile. “Sorry, I’m talking too much, aren’t I?”

No.

I couldn’t remember ever being this fascinated by someone before.

I don’t understand.

“What do you mean?” Luca paused, clearly flummoxed.

How could you recognize love enough to paint it? I clarified. It seemed a ridiculous notion, that he could see love. That he could replicate it.

“Oh.” Luca blinked. “I don’t know how to explain that. I just… Sometimes when I look at someone I can—see it? What they’re feeling. Why they’re feeling that way. What color it is—what shape—I don’t know if it’s normal to be like this or maybe I’m just delusional but…putting form to feelings has always come second nature to me.” He blinked again. “It’s the strong emotions that really get me going, you know?”

You’ve been sad. Haven’t you wanted to paint that emotion?

I wanted to see what his sadness looked like to him.

“Um, yeah.” Luca laughed and the noise was sharp and brittle. “I don’t know if ‘sad’ is the word I’d use.”

You’ve been crying.

I wasn’t stupid.

Tears equal sad..

“Yeah, but like…” He shook his head, a nervous quirk he did often. It was almost like he thought his brain was an Etch-A-Sketch and shaking himself enough would erase his thoughts. “I haven’t been sad. I’ve been…” he trailed off.

What?

“Desolate maybe? Desperate? Despairing. Lost. Confused. Angry. And worst of all…numb. Lately, I’ve been feeling like I’m worse than nothing. Like if I hadn’t come along, then maybe the people I love wouldn’t be hurting.”

Worse than nothing? What was that supposed to mean? How could one person feel so many emotions at once?

“Sadness is the addition of melancholy, you know? Blue. Silver. Gray. Heavy as syrup. Gentle as the evening tide. Sadness fades. It has a beginning, and an end. Sometimes it loops, but there’s always causation. Not to be confused with depression, because that’s a whole different demon.”

---