Page 27 of Between Now and Always

I just nod. My heart breaks to hear how surprised she sounds. Loving him is an essential part of me, and I’ve kept it a secret.

“So why is he there and you’re here?” She asks, her voice full of question, but soothing at the same time, as if she knows I need the tenderness.

Telling her the truth means I can never pretend otherwise - but I need to rip the Band-Aid off so that I can start finding a way to heal and move on.

“Because after I fell in love with him…we found out we have the same father.”

A Woman’s Will

LIZ

THREE MONTHS LATER

“Hey Princess, they’re playing your song,” Joe, my downstairs neighbor calls after me when I rush past his door toward the stairs.

“Sorry, Joe, I’m late for work,” I call over my shoulder. I usually stop and talk to him on my way in. I’m covered in paint and sweaty from a day of teaching at the YMCA. I hear the slow shuffle of his slippered steps behind me and stop my climb.

It’s moments like this that make me wish for the money I forfeited when I walked away from my wedding. I hate how Joe struggles to navigate the staircase down to the ground floor of our building. The elevator is broken and our landlord hasn’t said when he’ll get it fixed. I called to see about hiring someone to look at it myself, I almost died of sticker shock.

“You’re working again? Don’t you take a night off?” he chides, a broad smile, with remarkably white, straight teeth takes the sting out of his words.

“They needed help andIneed the money,” I tell him, digging my keys out of my purse.

“You wouldn’t be if you would sell one of those paintings, or let those little crumb snatchers you spend all your free time teaching actually pay you,” he repeats his daily refrain and even though I love my students, I can’t help but snicker at his “crumb snatchers”.

“I don’t want to sell those paintings and I don’t do it for the money.” I remind him and a flutter of excitement lightens my stomach. I just mailed one of the most amazing pieces I’ve ever done, and I’m still giddy about it.

After I mailed my first set of mirrors to the women who shared their stories with me, everything changed. They started posting their pictures, tagging me in them and my following starting grow. One of my subjects was a woman whose face had been scarred by a brutal attack. The attacker was her husband. I didn’t know she was a nationally known fiction writer. When she shared her story and her “mirror” with her nearly 1 million IG followers, the requests flooded in. I’m booked solid for the next year and have a waiting list for the one after.

Sometimes, they ask me to just tell them what I would paint if I had time to.

It was like the day I decided to leave Winsome…the reward for that choice outweighed the effort it took to push past my fear. What started as a whim turned into a mission.

I have almost half a million followers and that grows every day. I’ve never shown my face or revealed my real name.

But they know what I stand for. I want to elevate the discussion of beauty beyond the fleeting and unimportant conversations focused on the way we look. I want to give people a reason to speak lovingly about themselves. And to find a way to share that however they can.

“You should, you’d rich,” he scolds me.

“Maybe one day,” I say noncommittally.

“My son might be coming to visit this weekend, I’d love to show him some of your stuff,” he says cheerfully and my heart pulls in sadness at the hope in his eyes.

“That would be amazing. But are you sure you want to spend part of your time with him looking at my little paintings?”

His dark eyes lose a bit of the sparkle, and he hums his disapproval.

“They’re not little, Beth. I wish I was famous so I could get some television cameras to come and show the world something good about humanity. You’re the best of it, my girl.”

I flush at the praise, it’s the kind he’s heaped on me since we met.

“So are you, Joe. And I can’t wait to meet your kid, I’ve got a good feeling about this trip,” I say and he smiles but it doesn’t reach his eyes.

“He’s going to love you, you’ll see.”

I wish he’d love you.I wink and say,“Well he better, since you and I are a package deal.”

“That’s right,” he grins.

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