The Gay Gatsby

Chapter 22: Chance Puts the Pain in Painting

As I unwrapped the haggard scarf from my neck, I couldn't help but notice the silence that filled my house. It was Thursday, thus my dad didn't have school. But my home was barren of the usual noise that followed his presence.

I ignored my uneasiness, undoing my sopping sneakers and tugging them off my feet. I stuck my backpack in the closet before rushing to my bedroom.

The familiar environment was comforting. My bed was calling to me - urging me to just ball up and lay unconscious, in means of forgetting all my worries. And though the call of my bed was strong, the call of the blank canvas was stronger.

I didn't even spare my bed a second glance, instead ambling towards the easel set up in the corner of my bedroom. I picked haphazard paintbrushes and paints, not caring what I used. All I wanted was to do something; to find some type of distraction.

I wanted to forget.

So I drowned myself in the vibrant hues of paint.

I painted and it was chaotic. I was spewing liquid across the canvas randomly in hopes of creating as quickly as possible. But the supposedly accidental swirls looked too much like comforting green eyes. And the aimless lines bore a resemblance too close to the curve of familiar lips.

I dragged my nails across the canvas in anger, piercing the material and leaving gashes. I was ruining it. The pads of my fingers became damp with a thick layer of paint. I hardly cared as I ruined the piece I had been working on for an hour. I felt powerful as I destroyed what I had created, I felt a sense of balance. The sound of the thunderstorm palpitating outside my window only prompted me more.

I had created my paintings with ease and I had just as easily ruined them. It was painful, but no doubt, a distraction.

So I continued to paint. Brushes slapped against the pale white of canvas with violent force in an attempt to be arbitrary. Paint splattered against my clothing and against the floor, but I didn't care.

I painted; I teared. I created; I ruined. It was an endless cycle of turmoil and clamor.

I was on my fifth canvas when I perceived the feeling of dampness on my face. I dabbed a finger onto my cheeks in investigation, knowing that it was too thin to be paint. I lowered my hand and saw my fingers shine with clear liquid. I assumed sweat, but a glance in the mirror demonstrated otherwise. My eyes stared back at me with a distinct redness.

I had been crying - sobbing really. And I wasn't surprised.

My gaze slid across the ravaged canvases before me. I had tried for abstract, but I was never good at that. Ever since I was young, I drew from real life. My art focused on concrete objects; things that could be touched or seen. It focused on realities.

And it seems that my reality was Callaway.

The paintings stared back at me, all of them in a circle by my feet. They all showcased Callaway as he truly was. The first canvas featured a frown; careful and calculated, for it graced his face almost perpetually. Another canvas was of frail hands, clasped around the glass of an almost empty bottle. My gaze turned to a canvas with strokes of dark paint. Seemingly random swirls interconnected to conjure a mess of curly hair. It should've been easy to paint, just dragging the brush across in natural motions. But I put so much time into perfecting each and every strand, that it hadn't taken three times the time than it should've. That too, I had destroyed. The last painting I had ruined was of angry green eyes. They stared back at me with so much intensity that I could hardly bear to look at it, even with the rips still present across it.

And then there was the painting that I had just completed, the one that I held within my rough grasp. I hadn't yet ravaged that one. I couldn't bring myself to, for it was too painful.