A pause, then a voice I haven’t heard in almost a year. Clear, measured, with a trace of city in the vowels.
“Nate. It’s me.”
My spine goes rigid. I slide onto the nearest stool, careful not to knock over the jar of turpentine. “Melissa?” I say, and the name is a stone in my mouth.
She laughs, soft and familiar, and for a second I’m twenty-seven again, standing in the kitchen of our old apartment with the window open and her hair a storm cloud around her face.
“I didn’t think you’d answer,” she says.
“I always answer,” I say and then want to take it back. The truth is, I’d stopped expecting to hear from her. Stopped expecting to hear from anyone, really, except the three people who make my life feel less like a waiting room.
I breathe in slowly, trying not to let her hear how fast my heart is running. “Is everything okay?” I ask, because I don’t know what else to say.
She tells me about the city, about her new job at the museum, and the apartment she finally bought. Her voice is warmer than I remember, or maybe I just forgot how easy it is to get lost in it. She asks about my gallery, about the coast, about the weather. She doesn’t ask if I’m seeing anyone new, and I’m grateful for that.
We talk for a while, about nothing and everything, until Melissa’s voice changes, a note of intent threading through. “I’ve been thinking about coming down,” she says. “Just for a weekend. See the gallery, maybe catch up.”
There’s a hollow where the words land, the kind of silence you only get from old wounds. I study the horizon on my canvas, the place where sea and sky refuse to meet.
“I don’t know if that’s a good idea, Mel.”
“Oh?”
“It’s just… I’m not sure that’s what either of us need right now,” I reply, and this time the words fit.
From the other end of the line, I can almost hear her deflating. “I see.”
“I'm sorry, Mel,” I say, and it feels inadequate, this apology that can mend neither old wound nor dashed hopes.
“No, no, it’s okay. I just thought…maybe we could… I miss you, Nathan.” Her voice is a whisper, a ghost of the woman I knew.
I squeeze my eyes shut, clutching the phone tighter as if I could hold onto her through the miles. I miss her too. But I’ve learned that missing someone isn’t a good enough reason to invite them back into your life, especially when the wreckage of your past still litters the ocean floor.
“I miss you too, Mel,” I admit. “At least, I did. But some bridges are better left in ruin.”
There’s a sharp intake of breath on the other end of the line. It’s like she’s been struck, and that sound, that tiny gasp of pain, it cuts through me like a scalpel, dissecting old scars. “You’re right,” she says. “You always were. Well, goodbye, Nate.”
And then she hangs up. The line goes dead, and the room plunges back into silence. I return to the canvas, pick up the brush, and draw a new line where the old one blurred away. Not perfect, not clean, but solid enough to build on. I work in the dark, letting the sound of the water and the memory of other voices fill the space around me.
When I look up, the horizon is still shifting, but it’s closer than before.
37
Nathan
SEPTEMBER
At first, there is only the ocean and the brush in my hand. The ocean breathing beneath my windows. I’m working on a gift for Diane and Cassie, two blurred bodies running barefoot across the sand, Rolo trailing behind them. The light in the studio is all wrong for flesh, but perfect for memory.
I’m so deep in the rhythm of brushstroke, water, pigment, wipe, repeat, that I barely notice the shift at first. But then I do. A break in the quiet, the echo of footsteps on old porch planks, and then a knock. Three short, one long. My whole body goes rigid.
The brush freezes mid-stroke, balanced precariously on the lip of the easel. The sound is ridiculous, anticlimactic, almost apologetic, but it detaches something in my spine. I know this knock. I have heard it in stairwells, in city apartments, through ten years of shared doors and mornings. I know the sound like I know the back of my hand. There is a tremor in my hand and a flutter in my chest that feels less like a heartbeat and more like a bird battering itself against glass.
I set the brush down and move to the window, stepping over stacks of empty frames and boxes of dried-up tubes. Theglass is wavy, old, and everything on the porch looks slightly melted around the edges. But she’s there. Melissa. Her shape is unmistakable, shoulders squared, one hand clutching the strap of a leather bag, the other tucked into the pocket of her jeans. She rocks on her heels, impatient and fragile at the same time.
My mouth is so dry my tongue sticks to the roof of it. I drag my palm over my face, leaving a streak of sweat, and try to steady my breathing. I want to stay hidden behind the glass. I want to rewind the last ten seconds and pretend I never heard the knock, never saw her waiting outside my studio. But the rules of the world, even mine, don’t allow that.
I descend the steps and cross to the door. I reach for the knob and realize, too late, that my fingers are still smeared with titanium white. The paint presses into the ridged brass, leaving a fingerprint that will never quite come out. I hesitate with my hand on the knob, feeling every stupid, familiar heartbeat in my veins.