Since I Found You

by Ashelyn Drake

  The painting is in a large package resting up against the bookshelf that runs the full length of the back wall of the study. I immediately go over to it. Holding it in my hands, I know it was meant to be mine. I hate how I had to go about getting it, but I’m glad it’s in my possession.

  “Can you stay for dinner?” Mom asks me.

  “No, sorry,” I say. “I already have plans this evening. I just didn’t want to leave this sitting here, cluttering up your house.” I’m sure that’s exactly how Mom views having the package in her study, as clutter.

  “You’re so thoughtful. And we received your check. You really didn’t need to pay us back, though,” she adds.

  “Of course, I did. I’m not sure why I was still logged into your account to begin with.”

  “We should close that,” Dad says. “You never can be too careful with your money these days.”

  “I can close it for you if you’d like,” I tell him.

  “Good boy.” Mom pats my cheek and then kisses the opposite one. “Don’t be a stranger, okay?”

  Sure. Except the reason why I stopped coming to visit is because every time I tried to they told me they were going out of town. “Of course, Mom.”

  Dad shakes my hand, which in his mind is a huge gesture of love considering his hands are his paychecks.

  I give Buster another pat on the head and carry the painting to my car. Now to drive the two hours back to Priority to get ready for my date with Whitney. On the ride back, I consider coming clean about what I did. The painting in the passenger seat is making me feel guiltier than if I’d paid the rent money for her. Which in a way, I guess I did. It’s been eating at me since Monday morning, though. She was so excited when she thought she’d made a sale. And when I showed up at the art school with lunch, she seemed to sense my unease. She kept pushing through with her plans despite any nerves she felt about opening the school. She’s set for the doors to open on Monday. She decided to go with afternoon and early evening hours since most of her students will most likely be in school during the day. She’s also working Saturdays. I’m not sure how much time that will give us to spend together, but I’m not about to bring that up.

  I pull up to my apartment complex and carry the painting upstairs. It’s only when I look up from the package in my hands that I see Whitney standing at my front door.

  “Whitney.” I stop in my tracks. “What are you doing here?”

  “We have a date. Did you forget?” She moves toward me, and I can’t figure out how to hide the painting. There’s no way to keep her from recognizing her own packaging. Her eyes lower, and she stops. “What’s that?”

  I could lie and say it’s a different painting, but she’ll ask to see it. And she’d probably be insulted that I bought someone else’s artwork instead of hers. “Let’s go inside,” I say, moving quickly past her, my keys already in hand. I hug the painting to my chest so she can’t see her handwriting on the front of the package, and I rush inside the apartment.

  “Alex,” she says, following me inside.

  I close the door behind her so she can’t run out the second she figures it out. Though I’m sure she already has.

  “Why do you have that?” she points to the package, her face red with rage.

  “I know the buyer,” I say.

  “You know the buyer, or you are the buyer?” she accuses. She rips the package from my hand. “Did you buy this under a fake name and have it delivered somewhere else in the hopes I wouldn’t find out?”

  “No. I didn’t use a fake name. I swear.” At least that much is true.

  “Start talking,” she says. “And it better be the truth.” Her chest is heaving, and I’m not sure if she’s about to scream her head off or start bawling. Right now I’m not sure which would be worse.

  I move toward her, but she backs up to the other side of the couch. She’s still gripping the painting in her hands. “John Harris is my stepfather. Well, he’s more like my dad because I never met my real father. He died before I was born. John raised me, and I call him Dad.”

  “Stop rambling, and tell me why you have my painting.” She inhales a shaky breath.

  “Okay. You know I wanted that painting, but you refused to let me buy it.”

  “Do not try to turn this around on me. You went behind my back and intentionally deceived me.”

  “Whitney, please. I didn’t mean to hurt you, and I felt guilty as soon as I did it, but I was afraid of what you might do if you didn’t sell another painting.”

  “So you don’t think I can sell another painting?” Her eyes widen. “Wow. You know, I thought something was wrong on Monday. You went from wanting me to open the school to thinking I was rushing things by opening so soon. I should have figured it out.” She tears the packaging from the painting.

  “What are you doing?” I ask, moving toward her. She can’t destroy that painting. “Whitney, please don’t. I love that painting. I love—”

  She shakes her head. “Don’t. Don’t you dare say it. That would be the lowest thing you could do right now, Alex.”

  I hold my hand out. “Okay. Just please put the painting down.”

  “I’m refunding your money,” she says.

  “No. I don’t want my money back. I just want the painting. You painted it for me.”

  She looks down at the painting and then spins it around to face me. “No. I painted it for him. For this man. The one who looked at me and made me feel like I was the most special person in the world. He looked at me that way even when he didn’t even really know me yet.” Her shoulders rise and fall with her quick breaths. “I felt so connected to you, and then you had to go and ruin everything we worked to rebuild. You lied to me, Alex. And worse, you made your stepfather buy my painting.”

  “I didn’t. I bought it. Whitney, my parents are loaded.” I take a deep breath before I tell her what I’ve never told anyone since coming here in the hopes of starting over. “I’m loaded. I don’t need my job at For the Record. I work there because I enjoy it. I like being a journalist. I don’t tell people I have money because it changes the way they see me, and I hate that. It’s like people can’t see past it.”

  “So you think what you did is fine because you have the kind of money you can just throw around? Should I be thankful you didn’t make an anonymous contribution to my art school?” She advances on me and shoves the painting against my chest. “Here. Take your painting. I hope it was worth every penny.” She starts for the door.

  “Whitney, please don’t walk out,” I call after her.

  She stops halfway out the door. “Your money can’t buy your way out of this one.”

  “I can’t lose you.”

  She shakes her head and starts to close the door.

  “I’m in love with you!” I yell.

  She stops, the door handle in her hand. “Go to hell, Alex.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Whitney

  I wake up on Elana’s couch Saturday morning. My eyes are so puffy they’re mere slits. I cried to her all night after I left Alex’s apartment. She stayed up until four in the morning, listening to me sob. We both passed out some time after that.

  “What time is it?” Elana asks, trying to sit up in the armchair she slept in. “Ow, ow, ow!” She struggles to get her leg out from under her body. “I may never walk again.”

  I check my phone. “It’s 11:17,” I say, draping an arm across my forehead. “I’m afraid to go home.”

  “Do you think he’ll show up there?” she asks.

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if he slept in his car in front of my apartment,” I say. “You didn’t see him when I left.”

  “Crazed?” she asked.

  I didn’t tell her the last words he said to me or how I responded. I couldn’t talk about it when the wound was still so fresh. I could see in his eyes that he meant it. He loves me. So why can’t he see that I can’t be with someone who’d lie to me? “No.” I sit up and hug a throw pillow to my chest. �
�When I was leaving he said he’s in love with me.”

  “Do you think he was saying it to make you stay?” she asks, but I can see by the expression on her face that she doesn’t think he’d do that.

  “I don’t understand him sometimes. He’s so sweet, and he obviously does care about me.”

  “He loves you,” she clarifies.

  “Yeah, so why is he so pathetically dense? You don’t treat someone you love this way. Doing things without their consent. He lied to me.”

  “Why wouldn’t you sell him the painting in the first place?” she asks.

  “Don’t start. You sound just like him.”

  “Answer the question. I’m trying to see things from his perspective so I can help you figure out if we should march over there and castrate him or if you should give him one last shot.”

  “I’ve already forgiven him once, and look what happened. If I do it again, that’s all on me.” I shake my head. “I have to return the money, which means I’ll lose my school.”

  “You don’t have the money to return, Whit,” Elana says. “Mr. Ambrogi isn’t going to give it back at this point.”

  I lean my head back and moan. “What am I supposed to do?”

  “It’s not like Alex needs the money anyway.” She shrugs when I glare at her. “It’s true. Besides, he wanted to buy the painting. It’s done. You don’t owe him anything in return. It was a business transaction.”

  One that cost me my heart. “I never thought the price of chasing my dreams would be so high.”

  “Can I ask you something without you throwing that pillow at my head?”

  I clutch it tighter. “I don’t know.”

  She sighs. “Do you love him?”

  “I don’t know,” I say.

  “You’re a bad liar.”

  I launch the pillow at her head, but she catches it.

  “You’re predictable, too.”

  “How can you ask me that now? It’s not a fair question. You know the heart doesn’t listen to reason. My brain is feuding with it as we speak.”

  “So, you do love him,” she says.

  “As much as you can love anyone who lied to you.” I sit up again, too agitated to be still. “I can’t get past it. I mean, how was he planning to keep this from me? Was he going to hide the painting somewhere and hope I never found it? If that was the case, then why not leave it with his stepfather?”

  “Because he wanted the painting.” She gets up and sits next to me. “Whit, I don’t think he would’ve kept this a secret. I think as soon as you started to sell more paintings, he would have come clean.”

  “You don’t know that,” I say, my brain forcing me to be the voice of reason.

  “No, I don’t. And you don’t know that it’s not true.” When I give her a look, she holds her hands up. “You’re not the only one who can state facts here. I’m the math teacher. Facts are my life. You’re the artistic one who’s supposed to see things from every angle and find all the possible meanings in a bowl of fruit.”

  “What?” I ask, laughing at her awful analogy.

  “Oh, you know what I mean. You teach your students to convey emotions through everyday objects, yet you’re unwilling to see the emotion Alex was conveying through his actions—even if they were wrong.”

  “Loving someone isn’t an automatic ‘Get out of jail free’ card on every mistake, Elana.”

  “No, it’s not. But you can be in love with someone and have the best intentions and still do the wrong thing. It doesn’t mean you’re a monster. It means you’re so consumed by love that you can’t think clearly. You painted that picture because you saw how he truly viewed you, right?”

  I nod.

  “Then why can’t you see it now?”

  “Because I can’t see through his lie.” My vision and my brain are clouded by all that’s gone wrong between Alex and me. We’ve existed on two ends of the relationship spectrum, being insanely happy and not being able to talk to each other. I need something that falls in between, and Alex can’t give me that.

  “What are you going to do now?”

  “I guess I’ll open my school as planned and see what happens. If I get enough students, I’ll stay open. If I don’t...” I can’t finish the thought. My life has been one nonstop roller coaster. One minute I think I’m going to be okay, and the next everything falls apart around me again.

  The flyers Elana hung up at Priority High School got me a few of my former students. Becky and Noah asked if they could share a class and split the cost. I agreed for two reasons. One, they’re great kids and I know Noah wouldn’t be able to afford the class otherwise. Two, I really need students.

  At one o’clock on Sunday afternoon, my phone rings. “Hello?” I say, not recognizing the number.

  “Is this Whitney Stillwater of Stillwater Art School?”

  I decided to go with the name Elana came up with. “Yes.”

  “This is Arthur Ellison, the manager of Fitness World.”

  “Hi, Mr. Ellison. What can I do for you?”

  “I was hoping I could enroll my niece in your school. She’s been living with me for about six months now after her parents were killed in a car accident.”

  “I’m so sorry to hear that.”

  “Yes, it was rather unfortunate, and I’m afraid she hates having to spend so much time at the gym with me after school. I figured since your art school is so close, it might work out well to sign her up for classes so she’d have something a little more exciting to do than sit around here.”

  My heart skips a beat. “Absolutely! I’d love to have her.”

  “Great. You open on Monday, right?”

  “Yes. That’s correct.”

  “Okay, I’ll bring her by after school if that’s okay with you.”

  “That sounds perfect. I’ll see you both then.” I hang up and write the appointment down in my day planner. I haven’t set a schedule yet for classes since my only students were Noah and Becky. My guess is that they’ll come after school though since neither plays a sport or is an after-school club.

  It’s too soon to get too excited. Three students that amount to two classes a week aren’t exactly going to keep me in business. Unless, Mr. Ellison decides to use my art classes as a babysitting service and send his niece here several days a week. Normally, that would bother me because I don’t want to be a glorified babysitter, but it sure as hell beats waiting on tables at Last Call, so I’ll take it.

  My front door opens, and Elana walks in. “Hey.” She slumps down on my couch. “I have cramps like you wouldn’t believe.”

  “I have Motrin in the bathroom.” I say, not wanting to spill my good news until she perks up a bit.

  “It’s too far away.” She extends a hand, miming that the bottle is out of reach.

  “I’ll get it.” I get up from the armchair, placing my day planner on the coffee table, and start for the bathroom.

  “I had another date from hell last night,” Elana calls from the living room.

  She’s been having a lot of those lately. I wish Marco didn’t turn out to be such a piece of crap, secretly dating two women. I thought he sounded too good to be true, though. Like Alex. He was perfect until his true colors started to show.

  I pour two Motrin from the bottle into my hand and grab a bottle of water from the fridge. Then I bring both to Elana, who is now sitting up and looking through my day planner. “So much for personal boundaries,” I say, handing her the water and Motrin and then taking the planner from her.

  “Sorry, but you left it open and you wrote in all caps, so how was I not supposed to notice you have students for your art school?”

  I look at the planner. I did write in all caps. I laugh at myself. “I guess I was a little excited.”

  She downs the Motrin, chasing them with a swig from the water bottle. “We need to celebrate.”

  “You said you have killer cramps.” I motion to the couch. “A second ago, you were sprawled out and unable to make it the
twenty feet to my bathroom.

  She waves a hand in the air. “I took the Motrin. I’m good.”

  “Wow, just like that. Those must be super drugs or something.” I’ve never seen the placebo effect work so quickly.

  “What kind of a best friend would I be if I didn’t take you out to celebrate the grand opening of your own art school?”

  “A pretty crappy one,” I say with a smirk.

  “I’m just glad you got some students,” she teases. “I thought I was going to have to throw one sad party and have to plaster on a fake smile while I told you everything was going to be all right.”

  “Gee thanks.” I swat at her arm as I sit down beside her.

  “Yeah, well if it makes you feel better, I didn’t get the job bartending at Last Call.”

  I place my hand on her knee. “I’m sorry.”

  She shrugs. “It’s fine. I can’t blame Caleb for not hiring me. I did give a guy at the bar my number after Caleb had me make some test drinks for people. I guess he was afraid I’d be hitting on all the customers.”

  “It makes for good tips, right?” I joke.

  “Yeah, but after he lost the last bartender to two failed relationships with people she met at the bar, he was hesitant to hire someone who might follow in her footsteps.”