Chapter Six

The world feels solid for the first time in a long time. My body feels more like my own than it has in a long time. Muscles in my back press against something firm, and shift on what feels like a mattress. The soft turning of the page of a book taps at my consciousness, and my eyes flicker open softly. The world is tilted at an angle until I sit and press my back against the headboard behind me.

“Hey,”

Gabriel says, looking so much more ordinary than the being I’d come to know. “How are you feeling?”

My mouth doesn’t seem to know how to work yet, and so silence ripples out.

“You’re in one of the guest bedrooms,”

he says, sullying the quietude. If this is a guest bedroom, I don’t want to see the master. This place is as big as my whole flat.

Gabriel puts down the book he’s reading and steps towards me. His face seems a tad gaunt, his eyes a little lacking in clarity. How long have I been out? How long has he sat there, watching over me?

My body shifts as he sits on the mattress. He leans over and grabs a glass of water from a bedside table. He offers it to me, but I just eye it warily.

“I suppose that’s fair,”

he says, putting it back down. “I probably wouldn’t want to drink anything anyone offered me in this place either if I’d just been what you’ve been through.”

“What have I just been through?”

My throat feels tight as I try to keep my cycling emotions buried.

“Mr Grant calls it a spirit-opening. Most would call it a trip.”

My words seem surprisingly hollow. “You drugged me?”

His cheeks flush, his head turning down, revealing the angular turn of his jaw. “I…”

he begins, before falling away. “Most people don’t react like you. You must be extremely sensitive.”

“That’s what my dad told me,”

I mutter, fidgeting with the duvet cover.

I’m surprised by how quickly my emotion falls away; how lacking in anger I suddenly am. Instead, I mostly feel…empty. But not in an unpleasant way. In fact, it feels quite nice to be free of any strong feelings. To simply sit in this comfortable bed, dry and warm. I feel so present. Everything seems to come to me free of my own judgement or assumptions or impositions. I notice the steady rhythm of my breath, the gentle batting of Gabriel’s eyelids as he continues to look down, the crick in my neck. I notice the dryness of my throat.

“I will take that water, actually,” I say.

“Of course.”

The water feels so refreshing, as though it’s cleansing something I hadn’t known lurked in my throat. As I lower the now-empty glass, Gabriel takes it out of my hand and puts it back on the table.

“Hey,”

I say. “You know, you’d probably make a pretty good waiter.”

The fluttering of his eyelids as he smiles is like a painting in motion, like poetry for the body. I catch myself. Remind myself that he isn’t the person I’ve been talking to for the last who knows how long. He’s a guy I met. And a guy I crashed into. And he’s probably no different from anyone else, or to me.

But then I think back to what he told me, what I told myself. And then I know he is me. He has all the fears I do, that every human being does. The fear of being alone. The fear of unfulfilled potential. The fear of it all ending. The fear of being misunderstood. I see someone who might appreciate someone reaching out after a weird shift at whatever fucked up job this is.

“How are you doing?” I ask.

“I’m okay.”

He’s softly spoken now. “I feel guilty.”

“What even happened?”

I try to stay soft, too. “What kind of party was that?”

“Mr Grant has a firm belief in people and their potential. He throws this party every year to unlock more of that potential. Can you stand? He wants you to see something.”

I nod. My feet plant themselves firmly against the floorboards, and I take a moment to ensure I’m steady before I follow Gabriel out of the room and down a corridor. All the guests have gone. A few cleaners are dotted about, hoovering, polishing mirrors, collecting abandoned glassware. The fun is over, it would seem.

We turn into a room already in good order. On the floor is a huge, sprawling piece of art. It takes me a while to circle it, trying to take it all in.

“What do you think?”

Gabriel asks. He stands with his back against the door, arms crossed.

I don’t have an immediate answer to his question. I’m still absorbing the rich interplay of colour, the sweeping boldness of the line work.

“He’s offered to buy it from you,”

says Gabriel.

My head darts up, and my brows twist in confusion. “Buy it from me?”

“Yes. You know, give you money for it.”

“Why would he…”

I trail off.

At the far end of the room is a rolling ladder. The knurling in the rungs grasps at my bare feet as I climb as high as I can. Below me sprawls a beautiful tree. The paint has been layered on thickly and in different shades to give the impression of breath as you walk around it. The roots reach into an ocean of colour, the whole rainbow feeding the tree. The entire piece seems to breathe. Above are two eyes, looking towards each other. They’re different, though. One is a greenish-blue. It has the same iris that I saw in a printout when Rhys paid for us to have our eyes photographed. And the other is a rich golden colour.

“I did this?”

My voice is quiet.

Gabriel nods. I climb back down the ladder and sit in a chair.

“But it’s beautiful,” I say.

Gabriel nods again. “Mr Grant thought you had potential. He wanted to see if he was right. I don’t think he was expecting this.”

“One eye is yours,”

I say, before I can stop myself.

A pause. “It is?”

I nod.

“Why?”

Gabriel hasn’t moved, seems incapable of moving.

My cheeks flush. “You… were important. During what I went through.”

He looks down.

“Sorry,”

I say. “I know that’s a bit weird.”

“It’s a really beautiful piece. I can forgive a little weirdness.”

I have no idea how to respond to that. But that doesn’t seem to matter. The words pour out of me, anyway. “I don’t suppose you know anywhere to get breakfast around here? I’m starving. And, no offence, but I’d like to get out of here.”

“What about the art? Mr Grant wants to discuss purchasing the work.”

“Mr Grant can wait.”

Gabriel smiles like I’ve told him a secret. “There’s a cute café around the corner. Bluebells.”

“Sounds perfect. Gonna join me?”

“I—”

Gabriel forces himself to stop walking towards me. “You’re quite forward.”

I shrug. “Life is short. You’re pretty, and you seem nice.”

Gabriel looks at me, eyes glittering with colours that could spark an inferno. “I’ll grab my coat.”

He heads out the door and down the hallway. As I go to join him, I look back at what I painted. At my understanding of the universe, of existence. I look back at the need to represent the meaning of life or to understand it, the need to explain it. And I walk away. I follow the pretty boy who might turn out to be just a guy, and we walk out into the frosty November air.