No Such Thing

Part 2 | Chapter 1

Playlist:
Breathe - Lee Hi
Hourglass - Catfish and the Bottlemen
NYLA - Blackbear
Out of the Woods - Ryan Adams

The average person will look at a painting, dead center, five to ten feet away. You can get a two-dimensional view of the picture as a whole, and probably Instagram it for all your friends to see how cultured you want them to think you are. But, take it from me, it's the side view of a painting that's the most interesting. From directly next to the piece, you can see every crack, ripple, bump and impression left by the brushstrokes of the artist. This is when you find yourself asking the real questions. Left-handed? Aggressive? Drunk? Scorned lover? The actual image becomes dull when you delve into the questions of what was happening in the very seconds that it was being crafted. The big picture becomes the minuet details. Painting becomes a captured series of emotions that have only been scratched at the surface. Just like me.

"What terrible crime has this canvas committed to be treated with such colère?" I return to Earth in that instant and zone in on the mess of blood red paint in front of me. My eyes trail along the smears staining my arms, clothes, and likely my face along with almost everything surrounding me. A jagged breath escapes me and I squeeze my eyes shut for a moment before turning to Penelope, arms crossed, coolly resting against the doorframe. Her lopsided grin could never fully conceal the worry brimming in her eyes. She was so careful when she spoke with me, dancing around the questions I knew were burning in the back of her throat, like one wrong word would send me on a tailspin. Despite the bright spring sun pouring in through the vast, white studio space, I never failed to feel so small and so cold. The ever-present goosebumps on my arms making my skin look practically reptilian. Penelope caught sight of me shivering and draped her poncho over my shoulders. It felt warm and smelled of cinnamon, a perfect representation of her. Eyes like swirling drops of honey, freckles that made constellations around milk chocolate skin, tight golden curls that bounced and shone in the sunlight. "You're the only one in all of France who could still be chilly on a day like this. Your heart keeps you so cold. Come now. Let's get out of here." She pulls me away from the stool I glue myself to for hours in the day, but before I'm dragged out the door, a pair of familiar eyes appears in the sea of red across the room. And then he's gone.

*Jace's POV*
The terrorizing sound of a jackhammer beating into nearby concrete jolts me from my deep slumber and the vision of her stormy blue eyes vanishes. I turn to the digital clock atop the dresser beside me to see that it's already half past noon, and I've got studio time scheduled across town in thirty minutes.

Pulling on a pair of rag & bone jeans, I stumble through the havoc caused by whatever company was over last night. A quick smile and nod at Pauline, our maid, and I'm entering the lair of the boy gone mad. Sprawled across his new indigo silk sheets is Ryder, accompanied by two unidentifiable women on each side of him. All of them nude. All of them reeking of vodka and sex. Bollocks, this has gotten old. "Ladies, phones." The brunettes exchange pouts of disappointment before handing them over. I delete every compromising photo they managed to snap of Ryder considering his reputation doesn't need to get any shittier. "Alright, out you go now. Shoo, shoo." I don't pay mind to their offended scoffs as they scurry out of the room with their heels and dignities dangling from their fingertips as I look down at the bare-assed brown mop of a sad man-child next to me. "It's two years today. You know that?" He mumbles into his pillow but I know perfectly well what he's on about. He lazily flips onto his back and stares blankly at the ceiling.

I miss her too. Not the way he does, but that doesn't make it any less or any more. That's the funny thing about missing someone, no one ever misses someone the same as someone else. Every night, he finds himself at the end of a bottle hoping he'll find her there, smashes it when he realizes she doesn't want to be found, then fucks any girl willing until he's too worn out and intoxicated to remember her.

He cried once since we moved in together. It was a year ago today. The anniversary of the first time they kissed. He played that bloody Ed Sheeran track all night and day. I couldn't wait for it to stop... until it did. He hadn't budged from his room at all but I heard him. The blood-curdling screams, the punching of walls, the shattering glass, and those haunting sobs. I posted up by his door on high alert in case he tried to off himself, I was shaking with the fear of it. But he came out the next morning, said just once what it was all about, and went right back to normal.

It didn't make me feel bad that I wasn't in even remotely as deep a hole as him about it. I went through it all with her. If anything I pitied him knowing he wouldn't have lived a day after she left if he would've been in my shoes. My coping methods now were simpler and a thousand times less damaging. Working on music and writing not only for my band but other artists has been blissfully therapeutic, especially knowing how proud she would be of me.

"You play that fucking song even once, even so much as the first note... I swear, Wells, I will tuck you up like a kipper." He gives me a shallow laugh. "She would hate me right now. She would absolutely hate my guts." "Been there, done that, mate. Oh, how the mighty have fallen. You really ought to get your shit together, Wells. For her." "Maybe tomorrow. I've got a sick migraine." He buries himself back into his pillow and I take that as my cue to leave. Babysitting a broken twenty-four year-old billionaire is exhausting.

Making a mad dash toward the subway station, I feel her necklace drumming against my chest, reminiscent of the way her heartbeat used to lie so close to mine. Sliding into an empty seat on the train, I slip the tattered leather journal out from my back pocket and take pen to paper. Your necklace hanging from my neck / The night we couldn't quite forget / When we decided / To move the furniture so we could dance / Baby like we stood a chance