The Dark of You (GxG)

40. You are truly captivating

The pencil moved across the notebook as her lips became unbent. A straight line that has become as familiar as the sun. It's the smile that I cannot capture. It's as if trying to catch the breeze. She smiles as rarely as an eclipse, but once she does, it's overwhelming. If my heart had knees, they would bend to the view of that beauty.

Those distant blue that is the glass to her very soul. They contain a breathtaking current that could pull me through the deep end until the waves would cast me out. No matter how often I struggled to catch my breath, I would still go back in. The will to sink so far down only to get a piece is so powerful that I would let myself drown. I'm in over my head, but I can't help but want more.

"What are you doing?" I jumped in my seat and closed my book in a hurry. With a speeding heart, I turned on the couch to face Lola, who was grinning from ear to ear.

"Nothing," I frowned and gazed over at Rylan, who seemed to have been pulled out of her mind.

"Great," I muttered in disappointment. The best time to draw her is when she is lost in her own head. Then, she would sit as still as a statue, which is perfect.

"What?" Lola shrugged as she climbed over the back of the couch to sit down next to me.

"Nothing," I shook my head, but then she snatched the book out of my hands.

"Give it back," I demanded as she looked through the pages. I reached over, but she lept out of the couch.

"Lola!" Shantelle shouted.

"These are good," She said and I rushed off the couch to follow after.

"Who is this?" Lola asked as she stopped and showed me one of the drawings I had scrambled over a long time ago.

"She is everywhere, but you seem not to be happy with them," She mentioned and I froze as I stood face to face with the one person I could never draw perfectly. If time could stop, this would be one of those moments—the flashes of my endless torment of trying to place my mother's face onto a painting. Canvas after canvas on the floor as paint splashed all over the place. How could I ever be an artist when I can't even paint the person who meant the world to me? Months it took before I found myself again. I don't know what happened that led me to such a dark place. It was years after her death.

Slowly a hand took the book out of Lola's hand and closed it. Rylan bent down to gaze into my eyes with such tenderness and with a sort of tension that I can't recognize.

"Hadley, are you okay?" She asked and laid her hand on my arm.

"I'm fine," I managed to whisper but still feel as if my mind had just frozen over. Rylan furrowed her eyebrows as she opened the book to glance into it. With a loud sigh, she closed it and glared at her sister for a moment. It's not Lola's fault and I know Rylan knows that.

"Are you okay, Hadley?" Shantelle asked and I don't know why, but her voice made something in me break. A tear slid down my cheek on its own command.

"Come on," A light push of my arm, and my feet moved after Rylan. Before I knew it, she had pulled me down the stairs and into the bedroom. When she let go of my arm, I shuffled to the bed and laid down and hid underneath the duvet.

It's as if someone had snatched the air out of me and left me with emptiness. The weight of Rylan made the bed sink next to me.

"I'm sorry about Lola. She can be a bit too forward sometimes," Rylan said.

"I like Lola," I admitted.

"First time I have heard someone say that," Rylan's words made me push the duvet off. I stared at her with fascination.