Her Eyes

Twenty

She was lost.

Esmae wandered the long, endless halls of the art gallery, passing by intricate paintings she would have gawked at if she wasn't running around, trying to find Nikolaos.

The two previously stayed by his artwork as he told her about his creative thinking process before Nikolaos was spoken to by a few businessmen. She excused herself then, telling the man she would wait for him by the entrance.

The only issue was, Esmae forgot where the entrance was and took far too many twists and turns in the assumed linear building. She still passed by groups of guests, though they were small and sparse, making her worried. She knew the more people there were, the closer she was to Nikolaos, but as she wandered further down the halls of paintings and pictures, she realized that she had absolutely no idea where she was going.

Oh no.

A small voice inside her panicked, making her brain work twice as hard to remember where she came from. She tried going back the way she came, retracing her steps, but with anxiety and panic growing within her at a faster rate each second, she couldn't think clearly and second-guessed her decisions.

She stopped by a painting of The Scream by Edvard Munch and bit her nail as she took deep breaths. "Calm down, Esmae," she whispered to herself. When the dryad felt her heart calming again, she focused on her surroundings and turned around, walking back to the area she had come from before.

"Thomas, Caravaggio, Titian," she breathed under her breath, noting the long dead painters and their paintings as she passed by them. The further she walked, the lonelier she felt and soon, she was alone, not another human in sight.

She passed by another painting, this one more recent compared to the others from before, and stopped to stare at the woman depicted in the creation. She was sitting alone at a table in the corner of a room with a bottle of alcohol to accompany her. Her arms wrapped around her body unnaturally, and she grimaced as she stared at the bottle.

As Esmae looked at the details, feeling her arms shiver when she stared at the woman's long ones, her purse vibrated, distracting her. She fiddled with the small clasp on her purse and pulled out her phone, a smile entering the scene when she saw Nikolaos' name along with a picture.

"Hello? Niko?" She heard heavy breathing on the other end, and waited for a response, shifting on her heels. "Esmae where are you?" he rushed out, sounding extremely worried and panicked.

She bit her lip to prevent her from apologizing and glanced at the lonely woman again before returning to her phone call. "I-I got lost when I was walking around, b-but there's a painting called... Absi...nthe Drinker by Pablo Picasso," she worded carefully, hearing Nikolaos' heavy and quick footsteps through the phone.

"Stay right there," he ordered, his voice hard. "Don't move." Esmae's heart picked up and she worried that he was upset at her. Of course he is Esmae, you're disrupting him.

Esmae always worried that she was annoying Nikolaos with her constant questions and continuous physical affection. Even when he reciprocated her feelings twice as strongly, she couldn't help but feel that her presence threw his life off balance and became a nuisance; a liability.

Her feet wobbled and her mind conjured negative emotions about herself. "O-Okay – I won't move. I'll stay put...promise." She whispered the last part, meaning it for herself more than for anyone else.

She heard Nikolaos breathe out relieved. "I'll be there soon; be good for me." There it was. The same two words that always made Esmae's heart erupt with a plethora of emotions and her body heat up like the sun on a summer's day. For him. She could do anything for him, but she reminded herself that she mattered too.