Sanity // s.m. [IN EDITING]

[25]

I am so mean I keep dragging this out I'm sorry omg

Elliot

***

"See?" I fling another handful of bright pink paint across the room, which lands on the wall with a loud splat. "Easy."

"I thought you would be quite scary when you're angry," Carter says as he dips his palms one at a time into a bucket of cobalt blue paint, unaware that he had multiple drops on the bridge of his nose and cheeks. "But you're actually kind of fun."

"I told you," I shrug, adding even more spatters of pink to the mix on the wall. "And you thought you had to have artistic ability. Please. All you need is emotion."

"Are you ever gonna tell me why we're doing this, though?" he asks. "Not like I'm complaining."

We had been throwing paint at the wall of anger for since this afternoon, Carter for curiosity and mostly force, me for infuriation and jealousy.

I guess it was official-- we were friends. No one else had taken part in the paint throwing, let alone seen it with their own eyes. But then again, I don't have many people up in my apartment anyway.

"Later," I decide, wiping my hands off on my apron, which hardly even had a clean spot to dirty up.

"Elle," he groans, "it is later. Later should be now, or later becomes never."

He says the word "later" hilariously, with a thick accent. "Lay-er", he pronounced it. I suppress a giggle without meaning to, watching him roll his eyes.

"Hey," I pipe up. "You called me Elle. What a champ."

I take my thick, bushy paintbrush, dipped in a bright blue, and wipe it across his check gently.

He shuts his eyes, resisting the urge, as I could tell, to lash out. He just exhales through his nose softly, a grin spreading across his cheeks.

"You shouldn't have done that," he warns.

I laugh again. "What are you going to do to defend yourself?"

To my revelation, all of a sudden, he jerks forward. Slamming my wrist to the floor, his vibrant colored body stressing all at once against mine as he pins me down to the plastic-covered carpet, with a strong, balanced force.

"Christ," I bite back a smile, my round eyes widening. "You're strong."

"Tell me," he orders. "Tell me why your day was awful. Tell me what you're freaking out about."

I knew I had no choice. He deserved to know. I had dragged him here, after all. He probably would much rather be home, doing something actually worth his time.

"Okay," I breathe. "Just get off me and I'll tell you."

I couldn't take him seriously with the blue stripe across his face.

He scrambles to his side of the room and pulls me forward with his hand, gaze locked on mine, apprehensively waiting.

"So, um, I'm not exactly a writer for Manhattan Literary," I say quietly, biting my lip and averting my gaze to the ground, at the drops of paint on my overall jeans-- used specifically for painting.