AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I tugged my beanie down, peeking around the room like I was hiding from someone. Because I was.
There was a low hum of art talk all around me, people who used words likechartreuseandNeoclassicismand I wondered where Noa fit in all of this.
Is she one of these people now?
There was a woman standing just a few feet away and when I heard Noa’s name, I turned her way. Her black hair is cut with straight lines that accentuate the beauty that’s seen time pass her by.
“…bold strokes and a poignancy that you don’t find in young artists these days. She’s fearless, right?” I watched as she lifted her glass of wine toward the painting she and her friends were standing in front of. “I was lucky to have found her.”
I stared at the painting to my right, my lips parting as I took in an image I’d know anywhere.
That damn white dress.
Noa.
She painted herself—drowning at the lake house.
A tear escapes my eye, and someone comes up beside me.
“Powerful,” I hear the man whisper, and the woman next to him murmurs in agreement.
“I want it,” she tells him.
And as I hear the transaction take place, I am both broken and overjoyed.
Noa found success in a life that’d only offered rotted roots.
She weeded them out, planted new seeds, and shot out of the soil like the woman I always hoped she’d become.
And I wasn’t here for any of it.
My phone vibrated, and I stepped outside to answer it. As I brought it to my ear, I turned away from the glass windows of the gallery.
“Is she there?” Tammy asked, quick to get down to business.
“No,” I said on a sigh. “No sign of her.”
“Well, we can try that restaurant my brother said she goes to when we head up there next month and…”
But Tammy’s words fell on deaf ears as I turned, taking one last look inside.
There she was, refusing a glass of wine that another woman—the same one who’d been talking about her—whisks away.
There was a shared secret between the two of them, like this woman knew a few of Noa’s demons and they’d wrangled them together. They gave each other looks that spoke a language I was no longer fluent in and I realized that, although I knew Noa once, I didn’t know her anymore. I didn’t know what made her smile anymore. I didn’t know if she was married.
I prayed she wasn’t and when I saw no rings on her fingers, I snapped out of my trance.
“I’ll call you back,” I said to Tammy before disconnecting the call.
Noa smiled with everything but her eyes. And once the moment was gone, her face lost the expression of happiness—quickly. And she looked like she didn’t quite belong, as she fidgeted on the outskirts, eyeing the crowd.
Her hair wasn’t blue anymore.
But she couldn’t be more Blue if she tried.
Dexter
Noa had been datingTheo for three months now.
