“No. I thought… I thought it might come in handy one day. Not like this though. I never thought we’d be here like this. Me trying to remind you who we are, what we were to each other.” The frustration burns in my chest. This is not how I’d imagined our reunion to be.
She sighs. “Xavier.”
“Look, I don’t know what happened to you, what happened to us. But if you’re so intent on not acknowledging what existed between us in here,” I tap myself on the chest, “then that is something that you can hold. Can touch. To help you remember.”
She looks down at the envelope again, her fingers running along the crumpled surface of the paper, along the torn edges. I know she’s going back to that day, like I have, the thousands of times over the years when missing her.
I watch her eyes soften, the slight part of her lips.
“You remember now, don’t you?” I lean in, so close my words move her hair. “Close your eyes,” I whisper, like just like I did all those years ago. And for just a moment, like all those years ago, she obeys. “Remember us. How we laughed, how we talked, how we touched each other.”
There’s a fluttering of her eyelash against her face, then they snap open.
“No,” she says. But it’s not to me. She shakes her head and says it again, “No.” She’s talking to herself.
I slide my arm around her waist, pulling her into me before she retreats back into herself.
“Stay with me, Malynda.” I tilt her face up to look at me, and tears spring to her eyes.
“I’m sorry, Xavier, I can’t. I can’t do this.” The utter sadness in her voice pierces my skin and I let her go.
I don’t know what happened to her. But I will find out and I know I need to give her the space she needs to open up.
“Fine.” I say, more brusquely than I mean to and even through the tears, I can see the confusion in her eyes at my change. “Let’s get to work.”
“Work?” her voice trembles.
“Well, you came here to help ASH Industries with the design of our youth center, right?”
She nods, slowly, unsure.
“Then let’s get down to work.”
“Xavier, I don’t think I can. I can’t work with you on the youth center, it’s too much.”
I nod, hands sliding into my pockets to hide their shaking as I fight to maintain my composure. “That’s fine, too. I can get Jade to take point if you want.”
There’s a look of relief on her face, one that stings almost more than anything else that’s happened since she came back into my life.
“Thank you, Xavier.”
“No problem. Anything for the youth center.”
Her front teeth sink in her bottom lip and she nods. “Okay, then, I guess I’ll make an appointment with Jade.”
I take a step towards the door, controlling my breath. Thinking of how to deliver the next line. “But, while you’re here, I guess we can talk about the other project.”
“The other project?”
“Yes, my apartment. I paid to have you help me with the interior design of my apartment, remember?”
She sucks in her breath, before exhaling hard. “I can’t do that either, Xavier.”
I shrug and force my gaze out one of the dirt stained windows. “Well, okay, no problem. I’ll just get Jade to return my check to me. The donation, that I made to Ash Foundation. For your services.”
“You’re going… to take the money back?”
“Well, of course. You don’t expect me to pay all that money for a service I’m not going to receive, do you? It’s too bad, though. That’s what pushed us to our fundraising goal. Without it…” I make a show of turning around slowly, looking at the space around us and shrugging.
I watch her swallow hard, her fingers wringing each other before she forces herself to speak. “What do you want, Xavier?”
I drag my eyes back to her face, locking my pupils with hers.
“Just what I paid for.” I shrug. “You.”
Her
Present Day
I was eight years old the first time I realized I loved color. I loved the way the world was essentially just blocks and lines and dots and endless permutations of different colors. Colors shaped our feelings, our behavior, the way we tasted food, the way we heard music.
My mother once served me a slice of ham and pineapple pizza and I refused to eat it because it lacked the speck of black that olives made when scattered over a slice of supreme. Even before I took a bite, I knew it would not have that flavor, what the black represented. That’s when I knew my relationship with color was more than just through sight.
Unfortunately, it was also around the time that I realized I could not draw. While even the most simplistic drawings of my classmates would be obvious representations of houses and gardens and their pets, I couldn’t put pencil to paper to draw what I saw in my head.
So I gave up the dream of being an artist, and doggedly pursued my love of dance instead.
But I never, ever, not for a second, gave up my love affair with color, or the joy that the perfect shade of yellow on spring’s first daffodils could bring me, or the way the rain would intermittently wash out the world and coated it in shades of grey and sadness.
But it wasn’t until that day, that day standing in front of the paint swatch wall at Home Depot with Xavier, did I ever think that I could make something with my obsession. I had never thought that there was any room for me in the world as an artist, but that day he awakened something within me.
I pull the crumpled envelope out of my pocket, remembering the first time he returned it to me, pushing it into my hand almost twelve years ago.
How we’ve changed since then.