Pastel Colored Sadness

CHAPTER 1 Love and Death

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Chapter 1

Love and Death

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Sometimes, when the one you love smiles at you, it's not because they're happy, or because they like what you're doing with them right now.

I only wish I'd learned that sooner.

My boyfriend and I sat together on the concrete at the skatepark. He laid his head on his knees, looking at me with his eyes mostly closed. His sweet smile took my breath away in the warm, spring sunlight of the morning. I could have changed everything at that moment, but I didn't know what would happen before it was too late.

That's why when an officer came to our studio late one afternoon, I wished to go back to when everything was still okay.

"Taylor, Taylor Clemmings?" The officer shuffled his foot in the doorway. "I'm sorry to say this, but your boyfriend Tomas Skygrove was found dead in your apartment."

I had missed my chance. I'd lost him forever. Nothing can ever be salvaged, not when the sheet around his neck had taken his life. There wasn't a note. He left too many notes. It was in his art, his photos--the signs were everywhere and I never noticed. I can still remember the smell of paint, the black color staining Tom's fingertips, the pain glistening on the canvas where he painted his first black and white painting since high school.

How could I have missed it? How could I have never seen how sad he was, how he became more fragile as time went on? How could I, as his lover, not notice his illness?

I always knew he was quiet. Delicate. He was an artist who loved the color pink in its most pastel form. He never wanted to be anywhere but in his art studio or outside to stare at the blue sky. He always wore white collared shirts with jeans and changed his piercings for the occasion instead of changing his everyday wear. He was funny and kind. He was like sunshine, and he was the one who filled the hole inside my chest when nothing else could.

I wished I had seen how his sunshine became clouded, how his kindness became painful, how his laughter became softer. I could have done something--anything! He was beside me every day, we spent so much time together, so how could he have killed himself?

His twin: Justice; was taking his ashes to their parents in Idaho where they'll do another ceremony to send him off into the afterlife. I got a tiny necklace filled with his ashes and little charms, like his birthstone for March, a paintbrush, and a pink flower. I don't wear it though, because I could never force Tom to stay with me if I was the reason he died.

Of course, everyone has to hear about his death and call for a reunion. We gathered at the usual place, the one that only the jocks like because it has a bunch of football on loop on their large screen TV.

Tom had always liked pranking people with Justice while Sam and I sat in our usual spot outside in the back alley. The door here was broken, so people could go in and out freely, but the door was heavy enough that the noise from inside was dampened.

"What are you going to do now? Follow him?" Sam asked, scratching his reddish-brown whiskered chin. There were circles around his eyes that were almost like bruises. He's spent so much time on the piano this past week, and now he was taking care of me instead of getting rest. I knew that if I tried to get him to go to bed, he'd only get mad and scold me again.

"If he wanted me to follow him, he wouldn't have left me," I take a drag on my cig, hardly a draw left before the nub. It always went by so fast nowadays.

"So you won't be throwing yourself into the sea," Sam said with relief. I hadn't even realized that Sam was worried about that. If I died, he'd never enter the sea to gain his true form and have a family with a Kelpie his age. "What about your music? The band? Are you going to quit or are you going to leave them hanging and wait for them to replace you?" Sam continued, taking a drink of his soda. Since he was a Kelpie, he couldn't take in anything that would darken his body, like a cig. Otherwise, he'll lose the ability to protect me with his illusions.

I scratched my ear, finding the earrings Tom gave me for my birthday last month. I didn't take them out after he put them in for me. I told him he'd have to take them out if he didn't want me to wear them. Now he'll never take them out.

The tears sting my eyes as I stomped out my cig and started another one. Only smoking because I didn't want to get up. To continue with my broken life. It helped to keep from crying. I hated crying, because I only shed tears of blood now, ever since that fateful day I was cursed to the land forever.

"I don't know what I want, Sam. Besides Tom, nothing's of worth in this world. I want to run away... but I can't leave Tom," I lay back on the cold concrete of the back alley. Everyone was toasting and drinking for Tom, but it was really just a reason to get drunk. They never cared for Tom. They don't care for Sam and I either.

Back then, it had only been the four of us: Tom, Sam, Justice, and me in our little group. We were the artists of class C. Stuck in our own little world, we were outcasts among those who wanted to become lawyers, politicians, presidents, CEOs, and a lot of other fancy people.

Justice loved pottery and sculpting, always sitting at the potter's wheel or painting a sculpture of fairies or landscapes. Justice was also the only one that could fly to another group when one got boring, never sitting in one group longer than ours. Unlike Tom, who loved painting and drawing. Thomas could sit in the art room all day back then, all alone. Just painting whatever came to his mind. That's why I fell in love with him. Because he was such a gentle person, something I needed in my life, I soon found out.

Sam loved piano, he could play in contests all around the globe but he goes where I go, always protecting me. Sometimes when he plays, I can hear a story that he's telling me, like it was something only I could hear, since I loved music too. I love singing and my mother's guitar. She'd been teaching guitar since I could remember. It's only natural that I'd play too.

Tom was the one that made me feel like I could make stories with my music, but not without a few words. I've written love songs with the band that Justice formed for me, even though they had always been a strictly 'rage band' before I joined with Sam.

In High School, Justice found three seniors in college who were wanting a lead singer and a pianist, so Sam and I joined them, ending up the leaders of the band instead. We had Tom be our artist, painting amazing covers for our music and fliers for our performances. Justice got into it too, making bobbleheads for us in a fancy-dancy 3-D printer. Everyone in our small city loved the band, and I always loved how it made Tom smile.

Now when I go back, I'll see the covers and notice all the little details that Tom left behind, signs that he was depressed. That he was in pain. Signs that he needed me to figure out the most of all people in his life. That's why I haven't been back since his death when I packed everything I needed and ran to Sam's couch, where I'd go whenever Tom needed to be alone. Which for some reason had been fewer times as we went on with our lives. He hadn't wanted me to leave him home alone when he had a client around during this time. That's what I can't understand about Tom. Why did that change, but in the opposite direction?

Sam let me wallow in my misery for a week before he stalked up to my couch domain with a stuffed lamb with ram horns stained in spaghetti sauce in his waving hand. "It's already been a week, Taylor. Look, I know this place that you can go to. It'll be relaxing, and you can come back prepared to face everything. I'll get things here ready for you to come back. Now go enjoy the beach house," Sam finally kicked me off of his couch.

Great, I thought from the floor beside the couch, what was Sam cooking?