CHAPTER 8

I watered the peace lily after Levi Anderson left and I watched it come back to life over the next few days.

In some offbeat philosophical way, I decided that my new painting and this poor potted plant complemented each other nicely.

They are the same – dreary and depressing at times – but both have the potential to be amazing with some love and care, and perhaps a different perspective.

Evaline took great pains to tell me how happy she is that I'm taking care of Nicholas's plant.

Her possessiveness over Nicholas's things angers me as much as it comforts me. I love how much Evaline loved Nicholas. The part I hate is her need to outwardly preserve his memory, and everything connected to him. It's already too much to remember Nicky in my heart. Having his things displayed around the house, like Evaline and the rest of my family gently badgered me about from time to time, would end my life, surely. I wouldn't bear it.

By Wednesday, I haven't heard anything from the gallery, and my dissatisfaction over it is uncalled for. I could have any painting commissioned anywhere in the world by anyone, yet here I am pining over the works of an unknown artist from God-knows-where. My preoccupation with Levi Anderson is equally infuriating.

Friday comes around, and the more I study the painting on my wall, the more I make sure my peace lily is well taken care of, and the more I look through old videos and pictures of Nicholas and me. I avoid online videos, for fear that I would come across videos of me carrying Nicholas's coffin. I know they're there. So, I stick to the videos we made together. Pictures we took away from the prying eyes of the paparazzi. They are images of Nicholas and me that the outside world will never see.

Now, once again, I find myself in my office, scrolling through Nicholas's old phone. He didn't have a passcode – he could never remember them. And when he was manic, his paranoia was sometimes uncontrolled. He used to think someone was watching him from inside his phone, so he never used the face ID feature.

I keep his old phones charged so I can go through our videos when I miss him too much, when my body craves Nicholas in a way that forces my hand into my pants, and I jerk off to videos of us fucking like rabid animals. Nicholas filmed us many times. I hated it, but he wanted to know what he was like when he was manic. It was just one more way for him to hate himself – and me – afterward.

Nicholas may have been America's sweetheart to the rest of the world. Behind closed doors he was a masochistic animal. But only when he was manic. And Nicky's mania would last for months sometimes. We crossed every line at the beginning of our relationship, before I knew about his illness. And to my great shame, many times after too.

Bipolar Disorder was not a part of my regular vocabulary then. I knew nothing about it. I hadn't known anyone who struggled with it. After Nicholas, I knew everything there was to know about Bipolar Disorder, and still, I didn't know enough. Still, I couldn't fix him.

I didn't know it at the time, but I met Nicholas while he was manic – eight months of uninterrupted mania by the time I met him – and I fell in love with that version of him first.

He was insatiable, and that was what I loved most about the sex we had. Nothing was off limits. He wouldn't have it any other way. I used and abused his body in every way he wished for. The world loved and knew him as the powerhouse of a man he was, in charge of his world. But when we fucked, he was the one who bowed, and I gave him everything he ever asked for.

Until he crashed and our world changed when he was forced to tell me the truth.

I became a student of Bipolar Disorder, learning and researching and learning and researching. Nicholas went through many manic episodes and depressive lows, and each time we learned something new. A new way to cope. A new sign to look out for. A new way to understand.

And it was a long time before I would deny Nicholas sex when he was manic. Many times, I gave in, and the uncontrolled sex would go on for months. And then I couldn't bear his self-hatred. The pain of denying him sex became more bearable than the pain of hearing him accuse me of using him. That's all you want me for, he'd say with murder in his eyes, even though he was the one who'd begged for it.

Many times, I love yous became I hate yous. Stay with me forever became I'm leaving you. And sex became a weapon to destroy or comfort, depending on which side of this terrible disorder he fell. When stable, Nicholas was a soft, gentle lover. Manic, he was animalistic, unstoppable, and demanding. And because his mania was the furthest from who he was when he was stable, Nicholas was always ashamed of his – our – behavior during sex. He hated himself, and then he hated me.

But through it all – the highs and the lows, the self-loathing and self-harm, the mania-induced disappearances, and the accusations of using him for sex – I had loved him truly, and he had loved me.

Yes, when Nicky hated, he hated. But when he loved, oh man, did he fucking love. And when he was stable and you could see the real Nicky, he was simply breathtaking. I would've chosen both the love and the hate over and over because I knew the real Nicholas. I knew that Nicholas was not his mental disorder. What we had was far from perfect, but every day was a chance to try again. And we did.

For three years before his death, I got to see the real Nicky every single day. We had one-thousand-and-ninety-five days stable before he spiraled one final time. Before he made a terrible mistake. A mistake he tried to fix but ended up destroying us all.

"You saved my life," Nicky told me once during the early days, while we lay in bed. He assured me he wasn't manic, but I was beginning to recognize the signs and I didn't believe him. He left me the next day, disappearing to a remote town in Eastern Europe for two months. Nicholas left me many times in the early years.

My eyes drift back to the painting on my wall.

I exhale sharply and place the phone back into the drawer. I would do it all over again if I could. If I could, I would live my and Nicholas's lives together a hundred times over. But that is not an option.

Now, all I can do is search for him among the stars, aching for him, knowing I can never, ever have him again.

Unable to deal with the radio silence from the gallery, I make an impulsive decision to drive out there.

"Hayden? You're going out?" Evaline gives me a shocked look when I pass her in the kitchen.

"I have some work outside," I murmur.

"Okay, take your time," she calls out happily.

When I reach the gallery, I drive around the back side. If my car is spotted outside this building twice in one week, it'll make international headlines. I'm not prepared to deal with the unnecessary spotlight.

I park next to a Ford with the sign Gallery 180 written across the passenger side door. It's a small parking space, which seems to also serve as a smoking area, complete with a bench and a trash can.

My eyes settle on the person presently making use of the space as a smoking area.

Levi Anderson's eyes widen for just one second when they meet mine, before quickly settling into a bored stare.

He's got his Gallery Assistant badge on, so I move toward him, expecting to be treated with the appropriate amount of customer service. "Hi," I say, stopping to maintain a two-feet distance between us.

"Hi." He watches me across the small space.

"May I see your manager?"

"Yes. He's inside. I'll let him know you're here." He puts out his cigarette, picks up a sketchbook from the bench, and turns his back to me. I follow, but something about the sketchbook catches my eye.

"Wait."

He turns, his eyes following mine. The sketchbook is open to a page with a sketch on it, and I don't need to look long to know that the sketch is almost the same as the painting hanging on my wall in my office.

I reach forward. He tries to pull the book away, but he's not fast enough.

"You're the artist?" For reasons unknown to me, my heart begins to thump. This shouldn't mean anything to me.

He lowers his eyes and turns to walk away. Uncharacteristically, I reach out and grab his forearm. I'm close enough to smell him. Cigarettes and mint. I have to stop myself from inhaling deeper.

"Why didn't you say anything when I asked you?" I demand. This feeling of being duped is both unnecessary and unreasonable and I'm . . . pleased with the information.

His chest moves up and down too quickly. I release his arm and take a step back. "My apologies. That was rude of me."

"Uh, I'll get Daniel for you," he says.

He all but bolts back into the gallery. I follow with his sketchbook still in my hand.

When I get inside, he's nowhere to be found, but I'm distracted from my search for him by the gallery manager.

"Mr. Ashford. It's good to see you again. I imagine you"re here about your request for more artwork. Come through to my office, please."