Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Ricky added a final brushstroke to the painting. Another melancholy landscape that Miss Jenn would probably reject. But, it felt fitting for the situation.
What better way to capture the moment he realized that love was dead?
Ricky had kept himself busy for months after he moved to New York. It was a new city, he was young, and he left all his friends behind in Utah when he decided to go to art college. He wanted his first project to capture the magic of entering a new city with a fresh start.
He met Gina at Dolly's, back when Ricky only worked there three days a week, and one of them was a Wednesday—one of the only two days in the week Gina gave herself a rest from rehearsal. She even walked in with her pink gym bag, a high bun, and her leotard she wore as a shirt under a leather jacket.
They hit it off after he gave her a BLT on the house for her number. Ricky vaguely remembers himself saying several cheesy pick-up lines, but he remembered a smile appearing on the grumpy ballerina's face every time she entered the diner.
So, Wednesday became Gina-and-Ricky days. They would talk about anything and everything, including how Gina felt insecure around the snobs on campus, so she'd chosen to live off it, and how Ricky hated every day of art school, even though it was the whole reason he moved to New York.
Gina was his first friend. Big Red, her roommate, was his second. Then, they introduced them to Carlos—a fellow ballerina and future choreographer.
Soon, Ricky had made a whole new family in New York. Weekend baseball games to see Jack and Jet, late-night picnics in Central Park with Red, and surprise visits to the Upper East Side to see Kourtney.
And, even when Ricky had given up on college after only three months, and decided to work on his own art full-time, Big Red and Gina let him move into their apartment. They had supported his art career, even though he offered dog scraps for the rent, and Carlos had invited him to take pictures of their ballet class.
When he finally took Carlos up on his offer to see their class, he saw Lily. She was pirouetting and plié-ing in rosy tulle like a fairy from The Nutcracker when he finally took her up on the offer. She was new. She was magical.
Lily was a weird addition to the group. She got on everyone's nerves. She was snippy, erratic, and a little bossy. But, she was pretty and had big blue eyes and Ricky had a hard time stopping himself from defending her to the group.
When they decided to date, it made things in their group a little weird. They fought a lot, they didn't act like they liked each other, let alone loved each other.
"They weren't right for each other," Big Red had said nicely—Gina had told him to his face, less nicely, Carlos too. They did, and it didn't make things better.
It was just awkward. Everyone knew what Lily did, but they still kept her around. And now Mack was hanging around, he knew it would be even more awkward. He'd missed Jet's baseball game for the first time in months.
