January—Cannes
Maeva leans so close to her canvas that the sharp paint smell turns in her stomach. So close she can feel the air stir as she blends highlights into Alex's curls. The rest of the canvas is covered, hiding the other four men. She has been shifting it bit by bit over the past weeks—a little left for Cameron, a little more for Quentin, right for Alex and Nathaniel. Corin's face stays covered in the middle. She tells Saria it keeps her focused on one person's features at a time, and Saria takes it in with huge, gullible eyes. Maeva knows she keeps the heavy curtain in place because she remembers his face every time she looks at the flawless rendition of it. Not the narrow, intense face that he had posed with. No, she sees his features pulled up into that grin, light and careless as summer bubbles. His poison blues glittering with humor, simmering with desire. The thick churn of pain in his eyes the day he had walked away from her, how they have become a little more toxic each time she has seen him since.
Maeva takes another dip into a sand colored mixture and adds highlights to Alex's crown. His soft cedar-bark curls are just starting to look like hair. She sets her brush down for a smaller one, and starts blocking out his lashes in a darker brown than his hair. His mouth comes next, in a soft pink, and she starts his tattoo in green.
Her headphones have sat untouched on the sofa for weeks now, so she hears the doorbell to the gallery ring, and is prepared for the hammer of Saria's boots on the hollow steps. Maeva still cringes and pulls her brush far away from the canvas.
"Miss Leroux, one of them," Saria makes a waving motion to the canvas, "is here to see you."
Maeva grips her brush a little tighter and flinches. But it is a half-moment reaction. Corin is 'Mister Olivier' on a good day and 'the singer with the blue eyes' on a scattered day. The person at the door is not him.
"Thank you, Saria," she puts her brush in water, pulls the cover back over the canvas, and follows back down the steps to the door.
The face she had just been painting stares back at her, but here with a proper range of color value and aviator sunglasses. Alex smiles as he sees her, but only a little, nothing of his usual cat's grin. Maeva schools her features to an even more advanced neutrality. It doesn't matter that it isn't Corin, that pitying smile tells her he is still here.
"What do you want, Alex?"
"I thought we should go to dinner. Talk, catch up, you know," he says.
"I'm a bit busy right now."
"I think you can make time for this. It's important to me."
His brows rise over his sunglasses, and she can see him blinking behind them. After a short consideration of his stance—straight, unmoving—and his jaw—closed, serious, she sighs.
"Fine. I'll be back, Saria."
Her assistant fusses back.
Alex's combat boots thump beside Maeva's clacking ankle booties as they walk. He asks her how she is, she says she is fine. When she asks how he is, he says he is good, happy to be home, happy to be working on another album. His chatter takes them all the way to a tiny restaurant a few streets over, but there is something off about it, like biding time, like preheating an oven. She watches him get charm all over their bubbly waitress, stalling a little bit more, and then he talks fondly over the menu and the music. Maeva orders a glass of wine, feeling herded as he pushes his sunglasses into his hair and chats to her about local fish.
He waits until she is fully cornered by a plate of mussels before he looks at her with the same seriousness he had at her gallery door.
"So, have you been seeing anyone lately?"
He pulls his fish apart with the tip of his fork. Maeva twists her lips over her wineglass,
"Just say whatever it is you want to say, Alex."
"So you've gotten the idea," he chews and considers. His eyes are dead even on hers, "listen, I don't know exactly what happened between you and Corin, but you need to do something about it, Maeva."
She sets her fork down a little bit too hard.
"This isn't my problem anymore, Alex. He wants things that I won't give, and he knows that. If he isn't dealing with it well, that's on him."
"Oh, he's dealing with it," Alex gives a sharp, bitter laugh.
It reminds her too much of the laugh Corin had left her with two weeks ago, when she'd asked if he was going to stay with her.
"What do you mean?" The question comes before she can pretend it doesn't exist.
"Look, you didn't know Corin in the really bad months," Alex drags his hands through his hair, "but I did, and the last two weeks have been like a replay of my worst nightmare. He's completely manic, and nothing is slowing him down."
"What do you want me to do about it, Alex? I can't just change the way I feel to make him happy."
"I'm not asking you to propose to him. But there needs to be some closure. If you're ending this, have that conversation, and cut it off for good."
"I can't do that."
"Why not? I thought you cared at least that much about him."
She rips a series of muscles from their shells, mangling them in the process.
"I do care about him, which is exactly why I can't talk to him. I'll stop the sex, alright? But I can't listen to him beg me or explain myself another time. He'll just find some way to convince me otherwise."
"Convince you..." he raises a brow, "so why can't you give him what he wants? He doesn't seem to want all that much."
Maeva stops chewing, a swirl of regret rising at the memory of her last words. She eases her mussel down her throat, stalls with a tug from her wineglass.
"He wants commitment and emotions, none of which I have to give."
"I'm inclined to think otherwise."
"Of course you are, you want your best friend to be happy."
"And you make him unbelievably so. I thought he made you happy too," Alex shrugs.
"That isn't the point. I can't—" she smacks her glass down, "you know what? It isn't any of your business. I will help Corin by staying the hell away, but that's all I can do."
Maeva picks at her last mussel while Alex rearranges the potatoes on his plate. When the waitress finally wanders back over, they split the bill and leave with much less chatter than there had been. The walk back is quiet until Alex yanks her toward a café, insisting he requires a latte. Maeva waits while he orders and stares like a begging dog at the espresso machine.
"This is the thing I miss the most on tour," Alex murmurs, inhaling the steam that drifts off his cup.
Maeva raises her brow at the twenty ounces of ivory-brown foam he cradles to his chest.
"I'm fairly certain you can find a latte just about anywhere now."
"But it isn't the same," he sighs.
Maeva tilts her head and thinks that this might be funny to paint. Rock star with a latte, a la child with a chocolate bar. She'd make the strokes invisible, too soft for words, and the colors a shade or two lighter than they actually are.
"You only think that because you're an emotional raindrop."
Alex sips it, sighs, and starts walking again. He smells it and drinks it a few more times.
"I wish you'd at least tell me what happened, so I can help him."
"You know what happened," Maeva flicks a low look to him.
"I don't mean the gross parts," Alex shakes his head.
"What other parts are there?"
"Mhm...let's start with why you agreed to do vocals for a song that was blatantly about you and gross things."
"It's a good song."
She studies the architecture of the buildings as she walks by, the lines and curves and color variations in the stones. That way he won't see her face.
"And the night you spirited our vocalist off to god knows where and nearly fried his voice the night before a massive show?"
"Your vocalist was in the fetal position backstage contemplating suicide," Maeva glares at him, "I'd say helping him get out was the right move."
Alex stops moving. She stops too, catches the tap and ripple of hurt in his gray eyes.
"I...didn't know. He almost always says something, and if not, you can tell. We would've cancelled."
"Corin would never let on if he thought you'd cancel a show," she walks on, "he called me, and I'm shocked he listened."
"Somehow I think he'd listen to a lot for you," Alex takes a long sip of his coffee, "why'd you write your name on him?"
"I was drunk, it was dark, there were feelings flying around," Maeva grumbles, because she had been well sober by then, and there had been plenty of light to draw by.
"I didn't think you had feelings."
"Just because I won't make use of my feelings doesn't mean I don't possess them."
Alex laughs into his latte, "she who contradicts herself is at conflict."
Maeva cuts a glare his way, "yes, I have zero understanding of how my feelings work. Am I at conflict with my position on Corin and I? No. Stop pushing it, Alex. We're done."
"Two more questions," Alex licks the foam from his lip, "small questions, inconsequential questions."
Her heels click the cobblestones harder, but she lets out a deep sigh.
"Fine, if it shuts you up."
"Why did you care?" Alex turns down an alley shortcut, "the night in L.A., why not just talk to him over the phone, or telling us, instead of coming all the way to see him?"
"So stupid questions," Maeva rolls her eyes, "I needed to be sure he wouldn't hurt himself. If I weren't physically there, there would have been no way of knowing, until I saw the headlines."
"Surely you've done your part for him, Maeva. We're his best friends. You're the acquaintance he obsessed over, you have substantially less obligation there," Alex says, "and forgive me for saying, but you hardly seem like the person to send your heart out to every mangled soul on Earth."
"I consider that a compliment. But you know the acquaintance slash obsession is a very oversimplified version of what I am to Corin," she takes a long pause before she finally says, "that goes both ways, I'm invested in him."
He frowns and sips his latte, tracking down the next alleyway.
"I suppose that's true. I'll take that answer."
"Next question then."
"You know Corin skipped a shower that weekend?"
Maeva pauses in her steps, turning high eyebrows on his smirk, "excuse me?"
"Corin didn't shower the day between our L.A. and Seattle shows," Alex repeats, "he was afraid your name would rub off."
"Of course he was," she mumbles, shaking her head. "And why did you feel the need to tell me this?"
He shrugs, "I just wanted to demonstrate how utterly whipped and devoted Corr is to making this work with you. Have it bounce around in that defense wall of yours."
"It has nothing to do with his devotion, Alex," Maeva snaps, walking ahead of him, down the next alley, "you're not going to get any further than he did with sweetness, so quit—"
She stops as the beat of her shoes on the stones becomes starkly familiar. A pattern she will never forget.
"What is it?" Alex comes to a halt beside her.
Maeva's voice is low, "I didn't realize where we were..."
She blinks at the alley in front of her—narrow mouth, lumpy stones requiring careful steps, a gutter dripping water into the crevices at the side. A shortcut she knows well, the fastest one through these streets. She rarely takes it anymore, because this is what happens every time. Stopping, her brain turning the drip of the gutter into the sound and smell of rain. Watching the water run and puddle beside a row of trash cans that never move. She steps forward, as she does every time, and inspects the stones, looking to see if the blood had stained them. It hadn't, but she checks every time anyway, for the faintest memory of the pool of red that had been there.
Alex steps up behind her. He is the quietest she has ever heard him.
"This is where it was, wasn't it? Where you found him?"
"Yes," there is no way she could have ever lied.
The alley doesn't remember, but she does. Oh, she does.
She remembers the red all over, the tangy smell of it, the rain turning it pinkish. She remembers the brown, the ashy shade of his skin. Remembers the lack of black on his wrists, he had no tattoos then, just gaping red slices. But, more than anything, she remembers the blue—Corin's eyes—toxic, glowing, a window into chaos.
There is no lying about this. The emergency room afterward, easily. Alex, Quentin, Nathaniel, and Cameron talking to her incessantly in the weeks Corin was hospitalized, absolutely. Corin's budding obsession when he had come back to school—long-sleeved shirts, thick bandages—definitely. This moment, these colors, that destroyed shell of a boy, never.
"I've never seen it," Alex looks around the alley, "I don't know if I can even picture...it feels bigger here, doesn't it?"
He looks at her now, his voice sticking in his mouth, "like it happened yesterday. Like it could happen again tomorrow."
Maeva moves away from the spot he had been, closer to the mouth of the alley, where she can breathe the different air.
"That's why I need to be there, Alex. You all may be his best friends, but none of you saw his eyes, or heard his voice, when he'd finally decided to end it. You don't know how close he actually gets, all the time. Every time. It could happen tomorrow. We just don't know," she whispers, fighting to keep her voice even.
Her throat is wooden, unable to swallow.
Alex takes a deep breath, lets it out slowly, slowly, through his nose. He finishes his latte. And then he pulls out a cigarette and lights it. Maeva listens to him drag off of it, takes a deep sniff of the smoke.
"That's it, isn't it?" Dirty gray smoke comes off his words—it matches his emotional stare, "that's why you won't let him in."
"Yes."
He gives her a cigarette.
They take drags instead of talking as they walk back toward her gallery, and lean on the creamy stone to finish the pack of cigarettes. She has not smoked in a long time, but she has never been sensitive to it. The smell and the feel of the smoke clean out all the complicated things the alley had shoved inside her. It is so much easier out here, away from the memories, and the predictions of the future.
Alex stamps out his third cigarette before he talks again, "you know he's a lot better now than he was, Maeva. He's learned how to work through it, even when he does get really close."
"It doesn't matter," she takes another mouthful of smoke, "all it takes is one day that's a little bit too bad, or a little glitch in medication, or a conveniently placed kitchen knife, and he's gone. I already get scared enough, I can't...I just can't."
She shakes her head and takes another hurried drag.
The memories and feelings are brewing again—not just the ones from the alley. Corin's arms around her, his soft mouth, and warm body. His voice saying sweet things, fingers dancing along her skin, that strange, lovely feeling in her chest. Her voice saying sweet things back. It is not a memory anymore, so much as a dream immune to the cigarettes. She takes another quick drag, trying to chase the dream away before it becomes a nightmare.
"But you do have feelings for him?"
"Yes. I want to give into him, Alex. I want to know what all of this is, what it means," her fingers brush her collarbone, where her emotions press "but I won't live scared, and I won't let him hurt me when it happens."
Corin is gone from the memory dream now, and it is a cold, lonely thing. It becomes just like the faces of the people she had seen hurt before—shattered, empty.
"You don't think you'd be hurt now?" He folds his arms instead of lighting a new cigarette.
"Not nearly as much. If the feelings get deeper, they'll only cut deeper if they get ripped out, right?" She looks at him.
"In theory. But answer this for me, Maeva," he unfolds his arms, and looks at the cloudy, salty sky above them, "if Corin were to kill himself tomorrow, would you regret not loving him while he was alive?"
Her eyes widen as his words strike her emotion jar. Longing is what leaks out, for Corin, for her emotions, for all the time she has wasted so far. The smiles and kisses and nice colors she has missed out on. The pain it had caused Alex to say that shimmers in his irises, and it is as if what he said has already occurred. Maeva cannot swallow again. Her muscles are weak, the emotion jar feels empty, and she misses the fullness, misses Corin's presence there. A tremble starts in her jaw.
Alex takes her cigarette away and holds her while she cries.
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A/N: Thanks for reading! I'd love to hear your thoughts--please comment!
Song Credits: None