✾ Evening Primrose ✾

The city noise kept me awake for a while, but it was more than just that. My mind kept spinning a mile a minute, jumping from Ren to those people to mom and back to the strange situation I was in with this stranger.

I kept wondering why I had decided to follow him. Why was I even curious about him in the first place? He'd called out to me from nowhere, but why had I answered? I could have walked away from the sound of his voice searching in the dark, but instead, I walked towards him like a moth to flame.

Had I been looking for a way out? Had I been looking for some sort of light to illuminate my sad life, my loss, my mistakes? I was hanging on by a thread.

And now I was here, sleeping in his apartment. Or...not sleeping, for a while. But once my exhaustion had become more pressing than the loudness of my thoughts and the noises outside my window, I was gone to the world. I didn't dream much of anything, which was strange. I'd had some heavy dreams about my mom lately. Almost every morning, I'd wake up expecting her to be alive since I'd just seen her moments before. I had to realize all over again that she was dead.

But in this new place, I woke up without that feeling, peacefully. I'd slept better than I had since mom died.

Sunshine streamed into the room through the slightly filthy windows. Fine particles of dust floated in and out of the beams, drifting gently. I slowly sat up. My body felt unfairly heavy. My muscles struggled to lift the weight of my grief.

The dust moved steadily through the sunbeams. I could hear the cars honking outside. Life was so fast. It was always go. Nothing was ever enough. The dust made the room feel slow, and I needed slow.

Somehow, Ren must have understood that because he didn't even attempt to wake me up. Maybe he just didn't want to disturb a guy who'd just been on a rooftop the night before. It must have been afternoon by the time I pulled my body out of bed. I felt somehow both restored and burdened as I cautiously ventured beyond my door.

"Ren?" I asked. He wasn't in the living room. The apartment wasn't that big. There were two bedrooms, a living room, a kitchen-dining area, and one bathroom. But still, it was more than I would have been able to afford, especially in New York. Ren had saved me, even if he acted like he was the one indebted.

"Ren?" I repeated. He didn't answer. I wandered out into the living room, walking past the leather couch we'd sat on the night before. The huge blank canvas, Ren's masterpiece, stood in the corner. I narrowly avoided banging my shin on the coffee table. My mind was absent.

He wasn't in the kitchen, either. I wondered if he'd gone out for the day. He hadn't told me anything, but it wasn't like he should have. I had no reason to expect anything more from him than I'd already gotten. He didn't owe me a note.

I stood in front of his door. The wood was scuffed in places and the paint was flaking. I reached out and peeled a little piece off, staring at the black space the white paint left behind. I crushed the peeled paint in my hand and knocked on the door. "Ren? Are you in there?"

I didn't hear anything from inside. I knew I shouldn't have, but I gripped the doorknob. The metal was cold under my skin. Oddly, it reminded me of how cold Ren's hand had been when he'd touched me the night before. I felt my face heat up as I pushed the door open.

It creaked softly. My blush deepened when I saw the inside of his room. It was full of canvases of all shapes and sizes, but they were all covered in sheets. I wondered why he bothered painting if all he was going to do was cover his work up. I wanted to see what he'd created, how he saw the world.

But it wasn't the vast number of veiled canvases that were the most shocking to me. Ren was standing by the window, hands in his pockets. I immediately started struggling in the quicksand I'd cannonballed into by entered Ren's room in the first place. "Oh, sorry! I didn't know you were in here. I knocked, but you didn't answer, and-"

"I was thinking," he said. Ren slowly turned around and looked at me. His eyes bore into me, and I shied away a little bit. "Why did you come in if you thought I wasn't in here? Curious?"

I hugged myself. "Um, sorry."

He smirked. It was strange how lopsided this conversation was. I was out of my league with this guy. I thought back to the connection we'd had—or I'd thought we'd had—the night before. Now, though, it was strange. In the light of day, I was suddenly aware of how different we were. We were speaking normally, but it was obvious how much more experienced he was.

The smirk said it all. "Don't worry about it. I guess you'd want to know a little bit more about the person you've moved in with."

"What's..." I cleared my throat. "Why are all your canvases covered?"

Ren's face remained neutral. "They're not all covered, are they?"

It took me a moment to realize what he meant. "You're talking about the blank one?"

"I'm talking about you."

What? I stared at him. "I don't know what you-"

"All of these are terrible. I can't bring myself to throw them away because they're kind of my history. But I hate them a little bit," Ren said, dropping down onto his bed and glancing around him. "They're like ghosts to me now."

I couldn't decipher any of it. But...I got a feeling from what he was saying. I felt sad and heavy, but also a little bit relieved. Ren was revealing something personal to me, even if I didn't really know what exactly it was. Maybe that's why he was doing it. I didn't know what he was saying, but I still heard him. He could tell me the truth without worrying about the consequences.

I was getting swept away by this man. That's what I felt like. It was like the sound of his voice brought me to this strange, suspended reality where I somehow didn't understand anything but everything made sense. So far, nothing about Ren was neat or obvious.

"Well, you worked hard on them, didn't you? It feels like a waste to just forget about them like this," I said.

Ren's eyes landed on me again. He stood and slowly approached me. The floorboards creaked under his weight. He came to stand over me, close enough that I got another chance to try and determine where his pupils stopped and his irises began. I swallowed hard but didn't look away from him.

I placed a hand over my stomach as the butterflies raged once more. I was waiting for him to say something, but he didn't. "What?" I asked, staring at him. It didn't really make sense that he was still so intimidatingly beautiful up this close. I was suddenly unfairly aware that I was not as beautiful up close and averted my gaze. 

"Copper," he started. My stomach flipped. I liked it when he called me that. "Have you ever felt like you were trying to catch light in your hands?"

I let out an awkward half-laugh. "What does that mean?"

He reached up, and his hand hovered beside my face. I wondered if Ren could hear my heart beating. The thing was trying to pummel its way out of my rib cage. "I've felt like that my whole life. I think that's why my canvas is blank."

His hand dropped back to his side. I stared at it, wondering why he hadn't touched me like he had last time. I wanted to feel the coolness of his skin again. "I don't get it, so I can't really explain it to you. I guess."

"That's ok," I said. And I did mean it. I didn't understand what he'd been through or what he was experiencing. So it was ok. For now.

I wanted to believe that something was starting. If this was, indeed, something...I didn't want to skip through anything or cut corners. 

Ren sighed and smiled. For some reason, my mouth went dry. "My clothes are huge on you." I felt the strange moment slip away all of a sudden, like jerking out of a trance.

I glanced down at myself. He was right, of course. I frowned and looked back up at him. He was around an inch taller than me and definitely more muscled. "I can't help that."

"Where's your stuff? Do you have stuff?" he asked.

I leaned back against the wall and crossed my arms over my chest. "I do," I replied. "Or, I did."

"Where did you leave it?"

I grimaced. "At the house of Satan spawn."

"You know Satan?" Ren asked, raising one eyebrow. "I'm impressed."

I bit the inside of my cheek and stared at Ren's elbow for some reason. "There's this family. They hate me. But I left my stuff in their house. I sort of left in a hurry."

Ren sighed and leaned against the wall beside me. "Well, you need your stuff."

I groaned and ran my hands over my face. "There's no way I can talk to them again." I let my arms fall back to my sides and looked at Ren. He was watching me still. I wondered if I'd get used to that or if I'd always feel that childish spark of excitement when I realized he was staring at me.

"Well...can you sneak in and steal it?" He offered me a charming smile. He knew it was a shitty proposal. But it was cute. I rolled my eyes. "Ok, so maybe not. But getting your shit is step one. You've got to start somewhere."

"I'm scared," I said. The air stilled. Ren stared at me like he was surprised. "What?" I asked.

"You admitted that really easily."

I crossed my arms over my chest. Ren's t-shirt hung loosely off my thin arms. "Yeah, I guess." Was that surprising? I hadn't really thought about it.

"Well, this seems like a pretty clear starting line, don't you think?" Ren said. He coasted out of the room, leaving me alone, surrounded by his ghosts.

I sighed and closed my eyes, whispering under my breath. "Fuck it."