● Liminal Space ●

Liminal Space cont.

We walked in silence around the room, him surveying a painting before I'd come and replace him, trying to look on with a new set of eyes. But it wasn't long before I was turning up beside him and sighing without really realising it. From then on, he would give me a small snippet of the story in his head before he moved on. He would say things like "The feeling after eating a huge chocolate cake to yourself" or "Dragons" so seriously and then just walk away. The painting somehow always reciprocated his thoughts, and it was so effortlessly hilarious to me. He had the dry kind of humour, the type where he didn't even react to his own joke, and often I couldn't even focus on the painting because I was concentrating too much on not laughing out loud. He only broke once, when we stood in front of a brown painting with white long lines scattered vertically, he lost his serious demeanour and said, "Literally the only thing I can think of is my dad's moustache." I lost it with him, and after a minute he looked down at his watch. "Are you hungry?"

"After that? Of course."

He grinned down at me and my sarcasm, then we weaved our way back through the sculptures and into a room we hadn't been before. It was completely empty apart from the silent artworks, and I felt an unusual feeling creep over me. I stopped, and when I shushed him and he stopped walking, there was literally no noise around us.

"How weird does this feel?" I heard the echo of my voice bounce off the white walls in the big room.

I watched him as he got that philosophical look about him again, crossing his arms across his chest and looking into the distance. "There was actually a study about that...why it feels so weird."

"Oh there is, is there?" I teased, feeling more comfortable in his presence. I tucked my hair back behind my ear that fell out when I cocked my head at him.

He ignored me, "I remember when I was flying back from America and I had a stopover at night. So, at like, three in the morning, my friends and I walked through this dead quiet, almost deserted airport and it almost felt like we were walking in an alternate universe or something. The feeling was just... I don't know... it didn't seem real to me. So I looked up on it, and apparently, places like that airport have strange vibes because our brains need to have context. As humans, we need to assign frameworks to places, or it feels like it shouldn't exist. This is just your brain freaking out because your mind tells you there should be people making noise, or music, or something for atmosphere. And when there's not, you can't figure out what to think." Then he looked back at me and my quizzical expression and added emphatically, "I'm serious. It's called liminal space, look it up."

I couldn't do much but stand there and look at him. This guy seemed to be everything I wanted to be. Smart, sophisticated, and with a whole lot more experience of the world than me. He had travelled, studied things around him and been hungry to better himself. My own thoughts reminded me of the food he was supposedly taking me to, "So... lunch?"

I realised when he shook himself out of his daze that he'd been staring back at me the whole time I was lost in my thoughts, "Ah, yes, follow me."

I traced his steps back through the gallery to the small café at the front. He ordered a cappuccino, and a focaccia and I let him pay for my sandwich and iced chocolate. It wasn't until we were sitting together at a table that he asked a question through a bite of his focaccia, "So what's your deal? It doesn't seem like you come here a lot."

"Oh really, why would you think that?" It was getting easier to be sarcastic with him. He didn't answer, just took a bite and waited. So I tried to explain myself, "I guess I wanted to have this big long list of things I've done and experienced. But I don't really know if it was for my benefit, or just so I could seem well-rounded when others asked about me. I wanted to be the girl that came to art galleries for fun, and got tattoos and was so self-expressive that I impressed people. I just never did it in my teenage years, so I wanted to do it now. Appearances are everything, you know."

"Makes sense. Well, if you want to do more stuff, I can always show you cool places to go around the city."

"Dude, I don't even know your name." I smirked as I took a sip of my iced chocolate.

"It's Wyatt."

"And you're American."

"Well, yeah, I grew up there. I moved here four years ago after college to travel. Then I just stayed on to do another course. The art culture here is amazing; I couldn't pass up the opportunity."

"That's awesome." I said, smiling and sipping my iced-chocolate that made me feel so young and immature next to him. When I finished high school, I decided I didn't want to study again. I went to a couple of tours of art schools, but I never thought I could fit in there, so I never tried since. I always admired those who went to college though, those who knew what they wanted in life and worked hard for it. I'd like to think that I did that too, but in a different way. But still, I envied him and his courage, "So you just left?"

He nodded, "I just left. When you want something, you just got to go do it."

"You're crazy."

"You could say that, but it's called following your dreams, Daisy. I think you're crazier if you don't do it." He looked at me over his coffee mug, his eyes glowing with challenge. I knew he said it just for my benefit, and so I bore into him with my own eyes, noticing the deep blue colour behind his reflective glasses. I wasn't sure if he was noticing the same in mine.

He broke the contact, placing his cappuccino back on the table softly, "So, what are you, twenty-three?"

I raised my eyebrows at him, "Twenty-two."

"Then you've got plenty of time. Your twenties are for exploring everything; yourself, the world. It's a time where you figure out why you're here. You can't just be a square peg forever without knowing where you fit."

"I feel like it'd be easy for you, though. You're confident, attractive, smart. You already know where you fit." I tried not to sound too pathetic, but I wasn't sure it was working.

"I'm far from fitting in, believe me. And by the way, who said you're any different? Listen, life is what you make it. Sometimes it's like today. Sometimes you'll push yourself into strange environments and make it work, but sometimes you just gotta do you. You don't have to be anything. Trust me, my parents wanted me to be a lawyer, and here I am on the opposite side of the world, taking pictures and making coffees for a living. There's literally no rule book."

"Is that what your tattoo means?" I pointed to his wrist, where I could now see the black lines, marked on his skin like he was a prisoner marking off the days until his release.

"Kind of, I'm keeping track of the dreams I'm fulfilling." He rotated his arm on the table, showing the marks and mirroring my smile. "Do you have one?"

"What, a tattoo?"

"Yeah."

"No. Always wanted one, never had the guts though."

Wyatt put down his focaccia half and picked up his phone, putting it down a second later. "Are you okay if we go? I have something I want to show you."

The excitement in his eyes was enough to get me to nod. It felt so cliché in my head when I thought it, but I realised this guy was making me feel alive. Maybe my life was in the 'liminal space' stage, where I couldn't figure out what was going on around me anymore, and my brain couldn't see where I fit into everything. Perhaps this guy was the context I needed to get grounded again.

I barely hesitated to follow when he stood and grabbed his denim jacket from the back of his seat and said: "Let's go."