Page 54 of Me Three
“Come on. Take it out.”
Tru hisses and their eyes narrow.
“Oh, assertive. I like it,” they say and pull away from me.
They reach for the zipper on their pants and I roll my eyes. Tru looks up at me and smirks.
“Just kidding,” they say and pick up the bag off the floor. “I just… I’ve got some serious impostor syndrome displaying this crap in a room full of wonder.”
They hold the top of the bag close to their chest and their eyes roam to all my paintings.
“No impostors here. Just two artists,” I tell them and reach for the bag, pulling at it gently until Tru gives up and opens it.
I walk over to the easel and put the half-finished painting on the floor. Tru brings the canvas over and places it on the easel and steps back so I can finally take a look at their painting.
It’s a naked, human back with two pairs of hands touching it in the middle of a black vignette.
It’s beautiful, and the detail of the fingers is phenomenal.
“Why is this supposed to be terrible?” I ask.
Tru, who’s standing next to it with a hand draped over the top, shrugs.
“I don’t know. It’s changed so much since the original idea. I don’t know anymore.”
The way they look at it as if it’s an abomination is so familiar it’s almost as if I’m looking at myself in the mirror. You know, if I was tall, lithe, andabsolutelygorgeous.
“That happens, though.”
“I just can’t stand looking at it anymore. And whenever I try to fix anything, it feels like it goes even more wrong.”
I feel the urge to hug them and reassure them that it’s what every one of us goes through, but instead, I rub my hands together and look around the room.
“No. No more fiddling with it. We’re starting from scratch.But,we’re saving this version because it’s beautiful,” I say, spotting what I was looking for.
“It’s not.”
“Trust me, little cabbage. One day you’ll be looking back at it and you’ll be loving it,” I say and pick up the blank canvas, taking it over to the easel.
Tru removes their painting and puts it on the other side of the room, propping it against the wall, and comes to stand next to me in front of the blank canvas.
“Let’s try a different approach. Get rid of the vignette. It’s only masking imperfections, and it’s not the only way to put the focus in the middle,” I say, grabbing the pencil on the ridge and drawing two vertical and two horizontal lines across the canvas, splitting it into nine rectangles. “You can try the rules of thirds instead, placing the important elements along the lines. You can even experiment and make everything outside the lines more blurry, less detailed, more fluid.”
Tru looks at the canvas, rubbing their chin for a few moments, then they snap the pencil out of my hands and start drawing on it.
I leave them to it. I know better than to interrupt someone when they’re in the zone, so I retreat to the kitchen and get two mugs. I pour coffee in each of them and pick them up to take back into the room when Carter gets home.
“Hey, handsome,” he says and hangs up his coat. Then he comes over to me and hugs me while I’m trying not to spill any coffee.
“Hey.”
“Is that for me? How did you know?” he says when he pulls away and makes to grab a cup.
“Well, no, but you can have it,” I say. “I’ll get another one for Tru.”
I go back to the kitchen, and Carter follows me.
“Tru’s here?” He looks around the room while I fill a cup.
