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ARIA

Do not check your phone again.

Do not.

I check my phone again.

I've already looked at it twice in the parking lot and once sitting at a red light like some kind of teenager with a crush and no self-respect, and now I'm walking down the hallway at Brookhaven scrolling Instagram like it's going to tell me something different than it told me four minutes ago.

The post is still there.

One photo. Not even a good one—just a work-in-progress shot from the studio Everett built me. A seagull mid-heist, wings spread wide, an ice cream cone clamped in its beak like a trophy. Below it, the blur of a man's hand still reaching. Villefranche. The harbor. That ridiculous blue. No caption except a paint palette emoji and starting again.

I almost deleted it six times before I actually hit post last night. It felt too exposed. Too much like handing someone your diary and hoping they have the decency not to read it out loud.

And it's not the only one. That's the thing. I can't seem to stop painting Villefranche. Different angles. Different light. The harbor at golden hour. The rooftops after rain. The balcony where Everett stood while I sketched and didn't know yet that I was already gone for him.

I keep telling myself it's a series about Villefranche. About my mother's memory. About the place.

But if someone lined them all up—the golden hour one, the rain one, the balcony one, the harbor from the morning he drove me to the village —they'd tell a story I didn't mean to write. You could track exactly when I started falling by the way the light changes. The early ones are cooler. Observational. By the fourth or fifth, everything is warm. Everything is golden. Everything looks the way the world looks when you're in love and too stupid to say it.

If Gabriel ever puts these on a wall, anyone paying attention is going to see right through me.

I'm not painting Villefranche. I'm painting what it felt like to fall in love with my husband, and the village is just the backdrop I'm hiding behind.

Gabriel liked it twenty-three minutes later.

Not that I was counting.

I was absolutely counting.

Then he commented.

This deserves walls, not just an easel. When you have enough for a collection, call me. I'm serious.

A collection. Like he can see where this is going before I can. Like one Instagram post of an unfinished painting told him everything he needed to know about what's happening in my studio.

I didn't answer. I still don't know what I'd say. Thanks, that means a lot coming from the man whose gallery I cried in feels like too much for an Instagram reply. And I don't even know what I'm painting yet feels like a lie, because I think I do know. I just haven't admitted it.

He wasn't the only one, though. A few names from art school are sitting in the likes too—people I haven't spoken to in years. People who knew me when I actually painted. Before the accident. Before I stopped.

That bothers me more than it should.

Not because I mind them seeing it.

Because I want them to.

When did that happen? When did I go from hiding everything to wanting people to look?

There's also a text from Shannon Burbank I still haven't fully opened. Just enough to see the preview:

I knew this day would come. Call me when you're ready.—Shannon

Shannon handled my last gallery show. She's checked in on me every few months for five years, never once making me feel guilty when the answer was always the same. No. Not yet. I'm not painting.

Now I am. And apparently everyone can tell except me.

And maybe that's the thing that gets me the most. Not the likes. Not Gabriel already planning wall space. Not even Shannon reaching out again. It's that I posted a piece of my work on the internet and the world didn't end. Nobody laughed. Nobody said wasn't your mother the real artist?