Page 69 of Give My Everything
“Yeah,” she says, the word coming out in the scratchy voice of someone who hasn’t spoken in a while.
She clears her throat.
“Yeah, I just…wanted to extend the olive branch after my…after Sunday,” she says, her words choppy and uncertain.
This is the Remmy I’m still trying to figure out—this kind of shy, very awkward, unsure woman who tries to fade into the background.
The other version of her? The balls-to-the-wall, fun, over-the-top Remmy? I get her. I know that form of her is her fun side wrapped in protective armor.
We all have shields, ways to deflect.
And Remmy seems like she’s strong one moment, ready to take on anything you can throw her way…and then the next, she wilts like she’s been sprayed with poison.
I’ve never thought about it this way, but maybe that’s protection, too? Maybe she pulls back when she’s too tired, retreats when she needs some time to lick her wounds.
I don’t want her to have to do that around me.
“I didn’t know you paint,” I say, pushing off the doorway and wandering into the room, closer to her and the easel. “Have you been doing it long?”
My eyes focus on the canvas, but I can see her in my peripheral vision as she turns to take a look at what she’s been working on.
It’s an open doorway with light shining through, the rays from the hall outside cascading into a blank space on the canvas that hasn’t been painted yet.
“I started painting in high school,” she says. “But I didn’t realize I was any good until I went to college.”
I nod.
“I don’t know anything about art,” I say, my voice heavy, “but it feels…dark.” Then I point to the empty space. “What’s gonna go there?”
There’s a long silence from Remmy. So long I turn away from the art and look at her.
And I’m startled at the look in her eyes. Vacant. Empty.
“Nothing,” she answers, her voice still a wobbly whisper. “Nothing goes there.”
Something sits uncomfortably in my stomach as she gets up out of her seat and begins to collect her supplies, but I don’t know how to vocalize how I feel, or whether I should.
Maybe I’m reading into it.
Maybe I’m seeing things or totally misunderstanding.
All I know for sure is that I’ve never seen a look like that on Remmy’s face before. Even on Sunday.
And I never want to see it again.
CHAPTER12
REMMY
Nothing.
That’s what he called me.
I knew what I was painting when I started. I know because I’ve tried to paint it what feels like a million times.
I can never paint the blank space, though.
Instead, I normally just sit there and stare at it, lost in thought. The blue doorway that haunts my nightmares.
