Worth Living For

Chapter 16

~Frank’s P.O.V.~

As I walked into the door of my apartment, the first thing I saw were my art supplies. I dropped my suitcase on the floor, the door clicking shut behind me.

I hadn’t done any art in days. I hadn’t even thought about art since I had been in California. That was new for me. Too new, too different.

I hurried straight to the living room, to my art supplies. They were scattered and unorganized, just like I had left them. I picked up a paintbrush and just painted.

~

I stood back, admiring the painting I had just finished. A smile spread across my face, and I knew that the painting was exactly how I had seen it. The painting was exactly how I saw everything now. The painting was a picture of what was now my whole life.

I studied the painting for a while, and it felt like I was actually staring into Gerard’s eyes, though it was only through a painting.

These eyes were the eyes that had made me catch my breath when he pulled his sunglasses from his face, the first time I ever met him. These eyes were the ones that I could never seem to look away from. These were the eyes of an artist. And it seemed that the closer I got, the deeper they became. They were never-ending, his eyes. And the thing with never-ending is that you can never see what is hidden inside.

It’s always been said that you could sometimes tell a person’s life story by looking into their eyes. You could tell what they were truly feeling. But when I looked into Gerard’s eyes, I couldn’t see it. I couldn’t see what he was feeling, couldn’t see his life story. All I saw in his eyes was a never-ending soul of an artist. And it gave me hope.

His eyes had always been beautiful to me, since that first day we met. But in that moment, the moment that was so special to me that I had to put it onto a canvas, his eyes were unbelievable. Instead of seeing what he felt, I saw myself. I saw him too, with me. I saw my passion, I saw what I had been waiting to discover since I was thirteen. I had been waiting for my passion, what I was supposed to do for the rest of my life. I thought it would be a form of art, like painting or photography, but it wasn’t. It was art, though. Just being in Gerard’s presence felt like art. I realized, in that moment, that my passion, the thing that was meant to be my whole world, was now right in front of me.

I left the painting on the easel and headed to my bedroom to unpack, pressing ‘start’ on the coffee maker on the way there.

~

A few days had passed since I had gotten home from California. I had stayed in the house the whole time, not even leaving when I craved the coffee from my favorite cafe or when I ran out of food to eat. I was too busy making art.

I was in the middle of another painting when the phone rang. I pulled my arm back, about the throw the brush that I held at the wall, but stopped myself, clenching my fist and lowering my arm. I groaned loudly instead, and made my way to where the phone sat on the table by the door.

“Hello?” I said into the phone, shifting my weight in annoyance.

“Oh thank God, Frank. Finally!” a female voice said from the other end. At first I didn’t know who it was, but it didn’t take me too long to recognize her voice.

“What are you talking about?”

“Where the hell have you been?! It’s been almost two weeks since I’ve seen you. And you refuse to answer your phone. Fuck Frank, you scared the shit out of me! No one’s known where you’ve been!”

“Calm down, Ava!” I huffed. “I took off work, boss told me to take as much time as I needed. I went to California for a few days to visit my dad, and I just got home a few days ago.”