Who Names The Colors

The Storm on the Sea of Galilee

The sound of her shuffling feet while she paced a trench into her living room was the only one Jo had heard for an hour. She had called Audrey to babysit because she was not sure how this was going to go.

If, while she was breaking up with Harry, he got emotional, there may be yelling. She didn't want Zoe near that at all. Jo expected that would be the end of it. A little voice in the back of her head said you never knew though.

Ethan's dad had hit her, once, the day she ended things for good. It was a good smack. It had shocked her and in some ways put such a bookend on the relationship she sometimes felt like it hurt less than Colin's indifference.

Harry, well, she wasn't sure about him. He was the tenderest of the lovers she had had. She could admit that that's what this was. To herself at least. To tell him that she had come to this place, that they were a whole lot more than she expected, maybe love, seemed like an unkindness now. Now that it was over. Had to be over, right?

But you never knew, rejected men were tricky. and this was the most passionate affair she'd ever had. The way they were pulled to each other. The way he knew her and tried to know her better and felt her made her think that it could be explosive. She was hoping they only had that energy on canvas, and the mattress. That the TNT they brought out in each other was limited to those spaces and that she had no reason to fear him. That he respected her enough to follow her wishes. No, wish was the wrong word. She did not want this, to do this. If the weekend and the way she missed him, an ache even in the arches of her feet, had taught her anything, it was that she wanted him.

Jo wanted him more than anything in her life already.

But she did not love him more than anything else. And those first in her heart were in the blast zone right now. Their inability to keep away from each other could not steal the food from her children's mouths.

They had to be over.

She would ask him to transfer out of her class. Jo would have to. She could not see his face everyday, not if she couldn't touch it.  He still had a few weeks to work it out and his adviser ship.

God, she didn't know.

She felt greedy of his progress. Jo did not want to share him or his work, the beauty and growth, with anybody else. Not so intimately, where he would feverishly text her pictures late at night. She had got one just a bit ago, she expected why he was not with her already, it was of her, well Bathsheba, with her face. It wasn't so obvious his advanced technique teacher would notice. But she could see her the upturn of her nose and the apple of her cheek. It was excellent, not as good as the pieces he had total dominion over, but still good.

It made her cry, because it was shocking, and it stung like that time that she has stepped on an urchin in the sea. The pain was long lingering and persistent. It ached after too, like this did. What a pity she had just recognized the depth of her feelings only to know she had to sacrifice them. Sacrifice them, her version of first fruits, to her own creations.

She did not want to.

God, he made her so selfish. Jo didn't deserve to watch him grow anyway. She'd crossed so many lines. It would be best for both of them if she released him. His art was worth more than her covetness and her job was worth her self control.

Her son was worth even more. And truth will out. Ethan would know if they continued. She could see that now, or was in fear of it.

Harry might make her feel like she was made of solid gold, but if she lost her job she might have to sell herself to feed her kids and that was unacceptable. The carpet under her feet was not getting worn, but she imagined it could be. What was she doing? They hadn't made a commitment, not explicitly. Jo could just ghost him.