Renascence Ch. 05

With weakened knees and a weaker heart, I drew my arms away from him and tucked them back against my sides. Gabe sensed it too, the emptiness we had filled with each other, and there was something terrifying about it; what was going to take the loneliness away when we didn't have one another to hold? He let go of me too, but he didn't move away. He stayed rooted there in front of me, looking down at me as I looked up at him.

"You're always so sad," Gabe said, his voice low. It's funny, as the words came out of his mouth, he was the one who looked sad. It was a profound sadness, one that was spoken from the depths of his amber eyes.

"It's a very sad thing," I said.

"What is?"

"To be alive."

Gabe winced, but I didn't take it back. With my mouth or my eyes, I spoke nothing but the truth. Emma and Kev were bones beneath the ground, and Gabe and I stood here in a cold classroom in the middle of nowhere, together in our aloneness, yet infinitely incomplete.

"You're right, Grace. It is a sad thing."

—

The art teacher, Mr. Young, taught me about form, perspective, composition, value and lighting. A crash course on the fundamentals, blowing through the basics one after the other just to make sure that I would know enough that I could look at a canvas and follow a guideline in my brain of how to approach it. I wasn't really open to the idea at first, but the more he talked the more I felt like he'd unlocked a door that I hadn't even known was there. I thought about shapes and movement, about how light fell on objects, about how something could completely change if you just took one step in another direction. The world looked different than before.

"I'll give you a list to pick up your own over the weekend, but you can use mine for now," Mr. Young said, patting a box of professional art supplies. It was crazy to me that he'd trust me to even touch it, much less dig through it and use it.

"I had the canvas primed with gesso for you already so you're good to go," he said, pointing to an easel in the corner of the room. "Palette, acrylics and paintbrushes are in the case. Cups are over by the sink. Paper towels right next to them."

"Hold on, Mr. Young. I don't know what I'm doing."

"Painting," he said, leading me to the canvas with his art box in hand.

"Okay, but how?"

"You tell me."

I tried not to make a face that gave away how fucking weird I thought he was.

"I don't understand."

"Use a paintbrush or your hands. Paint. It's very simple."

"What am I supposed to paint?"

"You tell me."

God, this man was frustrating. It shouldn't have surprised me. Most artists are.

"So that's it? Just paint?"

"Just paint," he reaffirmed, walking away to help everyone else with their color wheels. The rest of them got to do normal things, and I was here being subjected to this bullshit. I was certain that Ms. Hanley had told him some sad little story about my life, and now I was being given this special treatment to uplift me or whatever. I fucking hated it.

I spent a long time staring at the canvas before I realized that this was exactly what a lot of artists did. I was daring the canvas to give me an idea, but it was pretty quiet, sharing nothing, giving me no clues, just as fucking useless as Mr. Young and his instructions. Just paint. What the hell did that even mean?

I found a pencil in the art kit. Probably a special kind of art pencil to do special kinds of art things that I didn't know shit about, but it didn't matter. A pencil was a pencil to me. I turned the easel away from the class, planted my feet in front of it and then I began to draw.

Mr. Young had said how important form was. I needed to learn to think in 3D and imagine all sides of an object and keep that in mind while drawing in 2D. It hadn't really made sense when he'd said it, but it was starting to make sense now. I sketched out the skeletons of what I wanted to paint. Lines and curves, ending, connecting, spiraling in all directions. I drew with the pencil until my hand began to cramp, but I didn't let it stop me. I just kept going, transferring all the noise out of my head because right now this canvas was my purple notebook. The emotions that I didn't have the words for were being given form.

Mr. Young dropped by to check on me. He didn't ask my permission to see my work, but I didn't care if he saw it so I didn't say anything.

"You're speaking," he said, looking at the canvas. "Keep talking, Grace."

And then he walked away again. At the beginning of class I might not have understood what he had meant, but all the weird things he said were starting to make sense. Painting was a language that you could speak any way you wanted to. By outlining what I wanted to paint, I was already saying a lot about myself.

I wasn't shy anymore. I went through his art kit like it was my own. I understood now why he hadn't bothered to hold my hand through this process. It really was simple.

I filled a cup with water and grabbed a roll of paper towels. I didn't bother with the palette. I dipped right into cups of paint, all colors that spoke to me, colors that were dark, deep, like a cut, like all the silvery and gray and shadows and highlights that told my story. It wasn't a scream—it was a whisper. And for now, that was enough.

Five minutes before the bell rang Mr. Young came by and showed me how to clean the brushes and set them to dry. He told me to be confident in my paintbrush strokes and not worry about making mistakes.

"Life is full of mistakes. Making them is as natural as breathing," he said.

I understood that. It made sense.

Mr. Young's method of teaching was strange. He showed me all the ropes, but he let me tie them myself. There was a struggle that came with learning from him, but he was doing it on purpose. Figuring it out for myself was part of the journey. He didn't box me in with instructions that could have influenced how I would approach telling my story. He just let me tell it.

—

There was paint underneath my fingernails. I'd washed my hands with soap, two, three times, but I guess there are some things that speak so loudly that you can't drown them out with water. The paint was telling me that it was here to stay, that it was going to become a part of me. As cheesy as it sounds, I took it as the first physical sign that I was becoming an artist.

Gabe was standing by the door of his classroom when I got there, his arms crossed over his chest with his back rested against the wall. He looked down his shoulder as I walked in, nodding his head in silent greeting. I nodded back, sticking my own hands in my pocket for once, if only to hide the paint. I don't know why I was feeling shy about that new part of myself.

"Alright, class, pass your homework up to the front," Gabe said, kicking off the wall. I watched him walk to the front, his eyes trained on the whiteboard. Had he been waiting for me to begin class? It wasn't like I was late, or even the last person to walk in. But then again, this was Gabe we were talking about. Of course he'd be waiting for me. I couldn't figure out exactly what was so special about me, or if there was anything special at all, but the fact that he cared, the fact that he saw me when I was invisible... well, that made him special, at least.

For the next hour, I listened to my dream talk, to the inspiration that had become the man that stood before me, pacing and talking fearlessly, self-assuredly. He was color—vidid and fascinating and beautiful and complex and broken in his own beautiful, tragic way. He was unapologetically himself, showing us what it meant to be human, what it meant to be raw and starched of the fear of failure, what it meant to be more; more open, more brave, more ourselves.

"Writing is about discovery, expression, awareness and exploration of the self," Gabe told us. It was why he'd had us write a paper on inspiration, setting us off on that journey to finding ourselves. I wish I could've told him that some people didn't want to be found, that some of us wanted to stay lost. I liked being in the unknown, a stranger to myself, protecting myself from the monsters that I knew lived inside of me.

I was the first to finish the classwork that he'd assigned. When I looked up, Gabe immediately caught my eye. His lips were parted, like he wanted to say something, but the distance and twenty teenagers between us seemed to stop him. From the way he was looking at me, I could tell he'd read my homework from the night before.

I wish I could describe his expression. I couldn't tell if he was sad, happy, or even confused. Like a tortured blank canvas, he stared back at me with a look that tore at my insides, scaring the shit out of me. What if I'd freaked him out?

Gabe was trying to read my eyes, and I was trying to read his. I held his gaze, speaking as best as I could because it was something that I wasn't allowed to say with my mouth:

I'm falling for you.

We looked away when the bell rang. Gabe effortlessly composed himself, dismissed the class and put on the most convincing smile to answer questions on the homework for a handful of morons. Just when I thought I could sneak away, he said, "Grace, can you give me a hand here?" For the next ten minutes I stuck post-its in textbooks, underlined notes and answered questions as thoroughly as I could.

When the last of my classmates finally left, I let out a sigh and perched myself on the edge of Gabe's desk beside him. It was quiet for a long time, the both of us stalling, putting off the inevitable for as long as possible. Neither of us wanted to break the spell, to finally have that talk to end it once and for all. This game, playing with fire, getting close, touching—too much, it was too much. We had to stop.

"Am I the thunderstorm?" He asked, his voice hoarse.

"Yes."

He wasn't so composed anymore. I could almost hear the emotions that stuck to his throat, the way his voice had gone thick, his fathomless eyes setting my mind off-course, sending me into the unknown, to that place where the two of us were somehow allowed to exist together.

"How did you get in my head?" He asked, looking away. "How did you figure me out?"

"You let me."

He ran a hand through his hair and let out a deep sigh.

"You guessed my identity," he said. "My emotions, insecurities—all of it. You scare the hell out of me, Grace."

"I'm sorry."

"It's not your fault. I'd be afraid regardless. Just being around you scares me."

"Why?"

"Because I want you," he admitted, surprising the shit out of me. "And I'm not sorry. That's what really fucks me up. I'm not even sorry for wanting you and I have no idea why."

My heart pulsed, anxious and afraid, squeezing and squeezing—and then I lost my fucking footing. My sneakers slipped against the carpet, and I went down, ready to crash and burn, but right before I fell, just before I became the rain, he caught me. He had his powerful hold around my middle, hoisting me up, sliding me up right onto one of his legs. I turned my head, looking over my shoulder to find him staring down at me, frowning.

"I-I should go," I whispered. My entire body was shaking, my lips especially, trembling, making me look like a goddamn idiot. I blinked, my eyes pricking, and tried not to cry. I was overwhelmed, so fucking overwhelmed.

Because I want you too.

"You should," he agreed, but neither of us moved—neither of us dared. He should have pushed me off his lap and sent me on my way, but I felt his muscles flex, his hold tightening... like he was afraid to let me go. I clutched at his forearms, telling myself that I was only doing it to regain my balance, but really I just wanted my hands on him, right where those scars hid underneath his shirtsleeves. I wanted to be close to him, to take all the pieces of him that he'd glued together and take them apart, one by one, to find out exactly what made his heart tick in that way that watches do.

"You are not a victim," I said, my hands trailing down to unbutton his cuffs. I just wanted to feel him, those scars, to touch them and show him that they were a part of him, a part that I cherished because it was proof that he was fucking alive.

I looked up at him, right into the amber. "You're a survivor, Gabe."

He swallowed, eyes burning, and breathing, fucking breathing because he was alive and he was here and that was all that fucking mattered to me. He was vulnerable but unafraid, his heart worn on his sleeve, the one that I was rolling up, revealing that intimate part of him that he hid away, that he'd shown me once to prove to me that he understood grief, that he understood pain. I got a good look this time, the raised skin, leached of color in some places in jagged lines and patches. It looked like a map, like a place where I could get lost, a place where I could hide away from the world. With him.

"Does it hurt?" I asked.

"No."

This subdued version of him was bizarre, but I didn't mind. I knew he needed the silence the same way I often did. We were both the stuff of stars: oxygen and carbon and all these other elements, reacting, and here, in all the noise of this, the quietness was a blessing, a release.

"You're still here," I murmured, feeling the scars beneath my fingertips, rough, soft, warm, and perfect, so fucking perfect. How could I make him understand that?

"So are you, Grace," he replied. I didn't fight him when he slid me off of him. I expected him to let me go, but instead he gently turned me around to face him.

"Fuck, I don't know how to stay away from you," he said. I held my breath as he brought his face close to mine. His forehead touched mine, finding support in me for once. I could've counted his eyelashes, could have counted the lines of his crow's feet, tiny and adorable. They reminded me that he was something to protect, something to save.

"You have to," I said determinedly. "You'll lose your—"

"Shut the fuck up, Grace," he said, cutting me off.

"You shut the fuck up," I retorted. "We can't—we can't do this. I can't let you—"

"Shhh.."

I almost cried when he let go of me, but then he was taking my face in his hands, stroking my hair back from my face, his eyes intense, closing...

And then I cried when he kissed me.

In silence he spoke his truth, communicating all the lies, all the despair, all the mistakes and all the loneliness with his lips. Every breath was an apology, every sigh a consolation, every moan a renounce of all reason. He held me like I was fragile, like I could shatter, and the tenderness made me lose all my equilibrium, draining my body of all the rain, chased away by the thunder. Our movements were all natural, all familiar; the warmth of his lips, the texture of his hair between my fingers, and the silence he gave to all the deafening noise in my brain.

The kiss tasted raw, almost like it had been torn out from us by force because we weren't supposed to do this, we weren't supposed to destroy ourselves in each other, but we couldn't help it because this was our war zone, and this was where we fought the world. We surrendered only to each other, our mouths moving together, our lips swelling like our hearts, our bodies burning. And fire—we were fire.

My hands withdrew from his hair, caressing down until I felt his face, my fingertips on his cheekbones, tracing all the lines I'd memorized in my head. He deepened the kiss, leaning into my touch, sliding his tongue along mine, sighing into my mouth, swallowing my whimpers, drawing out every single one of my breaths to breathe them himself. He let me moan, let me clutch his shoulders as his hands moved down and closed around the bones of my hips, holding me steady as he kissed me senseless.

Forever. That was how long it felt, like my whole life had been leading up to this moment, to feeling his mouth on mine, to be in our togetherness, hands trailing, fingers curling, breaths hitching. I let him devour my heart, slaying all my monsters along with it, taking all the ugly insides and twisting them, turning them, casting them out into the dark, and pulling me right into the shadows made of silver and sadness.

Maybe our loss would always make us feel dead, maybe it was hard to live without our loved ones, but at least here, at least in each other's arms, we could pretend we were alive. We were dreams and chaos together: destructive, terrifying, beautiful, pure. We kissed selfishly, filling our emptiness, forgetting for a moment that if we got caught he'd lose his teaching license and I'd lose the only thing left on this earth that had the power to make me feel.

"Gabe," I said against his lips, letting him kiss his name from me, stealing it, keeping it.

"Grace," he responded, his mouth curving, smiling against mine.

I broke the kiss.

"Not here," I said. "We can never do this here."

"We can't do it anywhere else either," he said immediately.

"Why not?"

"I won't be able to control myself."

God. "Then don't."

He kissed my temple, his thumbs rubbing circles soothingly on my hips to comfort me in some way. Here comes the bad news: "You know we can't," he said.

"Again, why not?"

"It complicates things."

I wrapped my arms around his neck and rose up on my toes to bring my face close to his. Tall. He was so fucking tall. I kind of secretly loved it.

"I'm used to complicated."

He laughed, pulling me closer. I stiffened, acutely aware that something long and hard was pressing against my thigh. Fuck me. Temptation was a hell of a bitch. I resisted to the strong urge of reaching between us and—nope. Have to stop thinking about it. Have to stop thinking about how good it would feel to have that thickness enter me, filling me up... Ugh, no.

"I want us to concentrate on getting you better. You're sick, Grace. Your judgment is clouded so there's no way of knowing if you actually want... this."

"Are you kidding? Have you ever looked at yourself? I'd be sick not to want this. Trust me, I would have wanted you last year too, before everything happened."

"Don't say that," he said, making a face. "It reminds me that I'm too old for you."

"I'm nineteen in two weeks, so no, you're not too old for me. If you weren't my teacher and I wasn't your student we could have been together. I mean, like, if you wanted to. I know I'm not that—"

"Of course I would've wanted to."

Like an idiot, I blushed. And like another idiot, he seemed to like it. We gave each other Cheshire-cat-grins, sharing our little moment of madness, reveling in the insanity, fighting the obvious inevitable: fucking. There are more eloquent ways of putting it probably, but when you really get down to it, that's what we wanted to do. We wanted to fuck each other's brains out.

And yet we were both going to try to fight it anyways. Was it really worth the risk? Yes and no. No. Definitely no.

"Let's just go slow then," I suggested.

"Slow's good. I can work with slow," he said, slipping a hand into my hair. He cradled the back of my head, looking at me like I'd just plucked all the stars from the night sky and scattered them across my eyes, like I was fascinating, like I was... beautiful. Gabe looked at me like I mattered, like I wasn't invisible, like I was worth saving.

"Kiss me," I said breathlessly.

"As many times ask you ask me to," he said, tugging me closer as his mouth met mine. It was a soft, rough, lazy, slow kind of kiss; like a ferris wheel with its' highs and lows, taking me on one hell of a ride. Kissing him was a free-fall, like that thrilling, stomach-twisting second where you know you're about to fall just before you soar and rise.

"Gaaabriel?"

We jumped a part. Ohshitohshitohshit.