Page 25 of My Sweetest Obsession
It’s always been about him.
I spent my time so focused on Ivy and her pain, making sure she was all right, that I was ignoring the bigger agony that drove me into that bottle and back to my dealer. I was avoiding what had been tearing me apart and going on as if I weren’t missing half of myself.
But there was only so long that could continue.
Only so long I could go on with half of my heart.
Now, I’m forcing myself to face it. To face him. To face the loss and the guilt and all the decades of life we had together.
Over and over again.
Dozens of paintings over the past several weeks, since my conversation with Roxy finally knocked loose whatever block was preventing me from fully facing the future without him.
Only, it isn’t enough.
It’s never enough.
No matter how many times I paint him, it doesn’t feel right.
Each brushstroke flows as if I’m possessed. The paint hits the canvases without me even having to think about it. So many memories of him seared into my brain, brought back to life, yet something deep in the center of my chest still stings when I look at them. Another voice in my head screams that they’re all wrong.
I stand in front of another one today, paint dripping from the bristles of my brush.
Drew stares back at me from the canvas.
But it isn’t the Drew from that night, from the last time I saw him.
So angry.
So hurt.
So broken by what I had done and was threatening to do.
It’s the one I want to remember, even though it was almost five years ago that he last looked at me this way, that he last held this unrestrained affection for me. Back when he was so excited about his future as he finished up his residency. Ready to find the woman he wanted to spend the rest of his life with and start it. Happy and hopeful about everything that was coming his way.
He grins at me from the canvas, and the words he said before this exact moment in time run through my head. “It’s time you get your shit together, too, Cam.”
If he only knew…
Of course, back then, he meant in terms of settling down with someone, because I mostly did have it together. I was focused on my art. Traveling the world and creating beautiful murals wherever I felt like putting them. Expressing all those things that had filled my head before Ivy became my obsession and a devastating addiction…
Before the man I’m looking at now paid the price.
“Fuck…”
The longer I stare at it, see the glimmer in his eye, the crooked tilt of his lips, the more the wrongness grows exponentially deep in my chest, expanding until I can’t draw in a breath or bear to look at the painting anymore.
Why the fuck doesn’t anything feel right?
I throw down the brush, grab the tray of paint, and dump it across the canvas, effectively washing away my work and that memory.
Because it isn’t right.
Nothing is.
Maybe nothing ever will be again…
I shove my hands through my hair, tugging at the long strands that have grown even more unruly in the past several weeks, but no amount of physical pain seems to alleviate the true one I’m feeling.
