You Just Me (Just Between You and Me)

Chapter 23

Advised to take a rest, I was stuck inside Mr. Taylor's house all day, going on my third one. I didn't want to take all of Maddox's time. He needed to enjoy his time off of work too. The day of the exhibit was nearing so Mr. Taylor always arrived home late in the night. Although his Mexican caretaker checked and cooked for me from time to time, I can't have a long and decent conversation with the woman. No habla Español, was the only Spanish sentence I was confident saying. I guess I shouldn't have taken my foreign language courses, Basic Spanish, French, and Chinese-Mandarin, all for granted.

Good thing I found a guitar on a bed inside one of the rooms, must be his son's. Just like the camera, holding a guitar felt like a first in a long time. I strummed some chords I was familiar of playing. And in front of his daughter's rag dolls and stuffed animals, I was having the concert of my life. It relieved my boredom in a way. Whenever I was done with playing games on my phone, the guitar became the substitute until the night.

"You know how to play the guitar now?" Mr. Taylor caught me strumming when he arrived. I told him I took music lessons growing up so I could play a few instruments. He shrugged saying it was typical. After all, I was born a Davis. "So I guess you've done your assignment by now." He laid out a blank canvas in front me. It looked bigger than the ones usually displayed on exhibits and museums. And he wanted me to paint on it. He said he wanted it to be part of the upcoming exhibit. But I haven't even gotten my inspiration yet. The pressure got into me again.

"You see, I'm having a hard time coming up with a theme Mr. Taylor. But I promise to work on it as soon as something comes to mind." I assured him. "But I don't think I'd want to ruin your exhibit just because I can't finish on time." And by that I begged him not to include my work. He finally agreed when he called his assistant to look for a replacement.

"There's something in your mind that's been bugging you since the day you came here, isn't it?" He sat beside me. Binabasa na naman niya ang iniisip ko. "You see young one, people knew me as this boffo photographer and artist. But take all that away, I'm actually a licensed psychologist. So tell me, does it have to do with your family? Frustrations with uni? A lover of some sort? Let's talk about it." He enthusiastically said smiling. He got me bowled over that I ended up opening to him. Kung saan nagsimula hanggang sa kung ano kasalukuyang nangyayari, he was all ears. I needed no boost from alcohol just so I could share my thoughts, Mr. Taylor made sure I didn't leave a single thing unmentioned. And somewhere in my heart, a heavy weight has been lifted. Wow.

"Look, you cannot just delete a moment in your life, nor someone else's. It happened for a reason. Good or bad, humans as we are, we learn from it." Those were his words to me after everything I shared to him. "If you ever thought of wanting to turn back time, that's crap. When things don't go our way and we fail, there's always a chance to start again. It's that simple." His words hit me.

I laid on the couch with palms over my face. I was a fool for dwelling so much on the past that I was missing out what was ahead of me. All I needed was to begin anew.

"But you know what they say, you can't help who fall for. I've seen that with your uncle and Nic." I removed my hands from my face and looked at Mr. Taylor, his attention on the blank canvass he laid out on the floor. "But in your case, you knew early on in life that Met kid was the one. It wasn't like someone dictated you, you decided it all on your own. The only problem was that you forgot about it along the way." He tapped my leg and stood up, arching his back like he was done for the day.

"But is it too late to give it another shot now? You can always watch it begin again, can't you? The choice is yours, young Davis."

Despite my refusal, Mr. Taylor still insisted that I take part of the exhibit as one of his junior photographers. Assigned to take pictures of every guest that came in by the entrance, I was surprised to see my grandparents. With them were my cousins and Mr. Hall. Not knowing I was a Davis, a senior photographer who was with me mentioned that my grandfather was one of the sponsors of this event. Not long enough, Maddox and Nikki approached me and that made the photographer more surprised than I was. Too bad he felt embarrassed and never spoke any more words to me after that.