Forbidden ~ after unlocked

Chapter 8 - Keefe

The Manhattan skyline looked different at night, Keefe thought.

He trailed his eyes along the horizon, aimlessly kicking his heels against the side of the apartment building he sat on the roof of.

The cityscape was a constellation of lights, dancing and twinkling in the night. Lights from office buildings and street lamps were so bright not a single star was visible. In the daytime, everything blended in with the blinding sun. But at night, the buildings provided their own artificial sunlight. Towers jutted up into the sky like uneven blades of grass, though it seemed strange to Keefe to compare something so manmade to something so natural.

Below him, Times Square was busy with people even at this late hour. The flashing signs and advertisements were relentless, and cars swerved around like ants rushing back to their queen. All the people crowding the sidewalks had their hoods up, due to the light rain drizzling over the city. Everything looked like a big mob of black and grey, with the odd pink or yellow umbrella standing out in the darkness here or there. The blinding lights were dulled by the rain, making everything hazy. 

Keefe threw his head back and opened his mouth to the rain. A few drops landed on his tongue, and he swallowed them gratefully. Food was hard to come by since he didn't exactly have any money. Water was even harder. There had been way too many close calls with the police.

One thing that he managed to steal was a sketchbook. Keefe took it out now, hiding the pages under his coat to not soak them. He flipped through his few drawings and smiled. The sketches were an escape from the harsh reality he had forced himself into. He would draw moments he caught in the ever-changing city: a child licking an ice cream cone, a mother cradling her baby in her arms, a happy couple walking through the park, and so on. Anything to take his mind off her.

Keefe carefully took out a pencil and flipped to a blank page. He glanced around the roof he was sitting on. It was empty, save for a rat or a few dead pigeons. Nothing to draw there. Instead he shifted his focus on the skyline. The massive concrete giants towering into the sky were overwhelming, yet conforming at the same time. No one would find him here in this maze.

He began to lightly move his pencil back and forth across the page, forming different shapes as he went. He started with the lights on the buildings; little gilded flecks illuminating the darkness then continued to form the shapes around them. His fingers moved without him even having to think. He created ovals surrounding the golden sparks of light, long golden strands trailing down the paper, a nose, ears, shoulders, smiling lips... as he finished Keefe held the drawing out in front of him.

He gasped. He'd drawn her.

Keefe shook his head hard, squeezing his eyes shut. It'd happened again. He would start to draw a scene, but somehow, every time, it'd morphe into her. How he imagined her face when she read his letter, her face lighting up when she talked to Keefe about him. The look of hurt crossing her features when he'd run away the first time, her in a winnowing gala gown, her smiling when he'd given her the paintings he made. Her face was everywhere. In his dreams, on his drawings, on ads, on people he didn't know.

It was a beautiful yet terrifying plague coursing through him with no cure.

Keefe started shaking as he flipped through the pages of his sketchbook. His trembling fingers trailed over her features; Her smile, her caramel eyes, her honey-coloured hair, details all the way down to her gloves or the multiple necklaces hanging around her neck. Tears welled up in the corners of his eyes. Keefe blinked to try to shoo them away, but they spilled over and landed on the paper.

Without thinking, he threw the sketchbook over the side of the roof.

It sailed down into the center of the bustling crowd of New York, landing in a puddle. He got one last glance at his drawings of her before footprints marked the pages and it was lost to the mob.