Page 33 of Dare to Fall

“But how am I supposed to do that when I’m already three years into another degree?”

“Eva, take it from someone who knows the risks of playing it safe in life. If you decide against the one thing you’re telling me—and yourself—that lights you up more than anything else in this world, I promise you will regret it. We’re young! This is the time to change our minds. Now is the time for you to realize your major is all wrong for you. Now is the time to do what makes you happy. Not years from now when you’re up to your eyeballs in medical school debt and working in an environment that sucks the life out of you.”

I’d never seen this side of Drema before. She spoke with such conviction that it inspired me to do the same. I realized, in that moment, I’d had the friend I truly needed right in front of me this entire time.

“You really think I can do it?” I asked sheepishly.

“Eva Barnes, you can do anything you want.”

And in that moment, I truly believed her.

17

Garth

I rubbed at my eyes.The strain was setting in from staring at the computer screen for too long. My knees creaked as I stretched my legs out in front of the leather barstool. I was on what felt like my ninety-ninth read-through of an email that shouldn’t have taken this long to send.

But it did anyway.

Every field of practice had its label of prestige. For journalism, it was the Pulitzer Prize. For medicine, it was the Lasker Awards. For authors, it was the New York Times Bestseller List.

Artists didn’t typically strive to be rewarded for our work. Instead, we wanted our work to beshown. We wanted to give our work the chance for people to fall in love with it. The only way to do that on a mass scale was to have it appreciated by those who had the power to disseminate it.

Studio 628 was one of the most profound art galleries in New York City. It had withstood the test of time, standing tall in the face of recession while most others crumbled. I knew the chances of being chosen to display my art there were slim to none, but it was one of those dreams that you had to go for anyway. All the schooling and the hard work led up to this one moment.

While I was at Parsons, I would go out of my way to walk past Studio 628, as though the consistent proximity would help my future self get selected. Not a day had gone by when I didn’t think of how I would feel seeing my art displayed on the pristine white walls of that gallery. There were times when the drive to create something worthy of those walls drove me a little mad. I would be holed up in my tiny New York apartment for days on end, no contact with the outside world. When it got too bad, Lucas would have to physically drag me out for food.

He called it acreative frenzy.

Thankfully, those days of sleepless nights were behind me. Judging how my older body had reacted to just one night out, I doubted I could ever pull off the same amount of endurance thecreative frenzyrequired. Although, every time I tried to draft an email to inquire about future openings, that same desire to do nothing but create burned with conviction.

Over two years had passed since I first thought my art might be good enough to submit, but it wasn’t until recently that I finally got the balls to actually create an email draft. Weeks passed by since I had drafted the first inquiry. I should have sent it already, but after my mother’s bombardment with taking over the family business, I had to make sure the email was perfect. This would be the biggest step I ever made in my career. It would solidify everything I’d been working toward. There was also a piece of me that wanted the prestige, if only so my family would understand that what I did for a living wasreal. Having my pieces displayed at Studio 628 would open so many doors. While I loved my home state of Florida, there weren’t as many deep-pocketed art collectors as there were in New York City.

I rubbed a hand through the hairs of my coarse beard. Fuck, I needed a trim and a good deep condition. My mind whirled from the stress of it all. With the nearing exhibit at the university and my indecisiveness with this email, I was starting to lose it.

It didn’t help that my dreams were still consumed with a woman who was unobtainable. There was just something about her that made me want to get inside her head, to know what she was thinking andifshe was thinking about me. Nothing about her made sense to me, yet I was incapable of going a day without thinking about her.

I shook my head, trying to rid my mind of her. I needed to concentrate if I was ever going to send this damn email. Tapping the track pad, my laptop screen illuminated, revealing the contents of the unsent email. Reading over the draft and the attached materials one more time, I decided it was never going to be perfect. I just needed to press send and be done with it. My finger swiped across the track pad, hovering the cursor over the send button. I lifted my shaking finger, and just as I was about to click send, my phone rang.

I jumped. My nerves were fried from the tension, and when I looked to my phone to see that it was my father calling, I knew things were about to get much worse. I debated whether or not I should answer. We hadn’t spoken since last Christmas—and for good reason. George Walker was a one-track-mind kind of man, and if he didn’t get his way, it was hell for everyone. And he had made last Christmas a living hell for everyone in the family when I told him I wasn’t interested in leaving everything I worked my entire life for behind to take overhisbusiness. It turned into a screaming match. My mother cried while my brother consoled her, and I ended up walking out before we even had a chance to enjoy the pecan pie.

Something nagged at me, though, urging me to answer the phone despite the hell he’d put me and the entire family through with his incessant demands. While all my logic told me the conversation I was about to have would end up just like all the others, he was still my father. And that fact won out as I put the phone to my ear.

Before I could get a word out, he said, “Garth, we need to talk.”

“Well, hello to you too, Father.”

“Don’t get smart with me, boy.” The southern edge of his voice always came out when he was irritated. Having grown up in west Georgia, his long-time residency in sunny Florida couldn’t hide the fact that he was born in the Deep South.

“What do you want to talk about?” I asked, shutting my laptop closed with a little too much force. It was ironic that the one thing that could grant me freedom from my father wanting me to take over the company was interrupted by the only phone call I’d received from him in the past six months.

“Your mother told me she talked to you about…” His voice trailed off.

“About your health,” I said, getting straight to the point.

He cleared his throat. “Yes. Well, she mentioned to me that you are still refusing to consider my offer. I just don’t understand why you’re still messing around when you have a perfect opportunity right in front of you. It’s time to get your head out of your ass and take over the family business. It’s what you were born to do.”

Rage-fueled heat crept up my neck. The fact that he considered my established career as me ‘messing around’ pissed me the fuck off. If he actually paid attention to what I was doing, he would see that I actuallywasfollowing in his footsteps. I was just doing it in my own way. He built his real estate development company from the ground up, with no help from his parents or investors. I did the same thing with my art. From the time I left for Parsons, neither him nor my mother helped me financially. Yet, he wasn’t willing to see any of it.

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