How Long is Forever? Full Chapter 13

I can't believe that I made it through weeks without event thinking about the letter. I finally remembered it this morning between bites of my waffle, my eyes ready to pop out of their sockets in remembrance of it. I was on the verge of practically flying up the stairs if it not have been for my mother and her need for Thai hot tea in the morning, which I had to purchase at the grocery store that very moment. And so here I was again, standing on weak knees before my drawer, in hopes of finally gathering up all the courage to get whatever was inside of the envelope in my hot little hands. I rushed to put Caleb to sleep for his usual nap and drop Serena off at the arts center. Most importantly, I made sure Mom had left the premises. Just as I pulled open the drawers though, I heard heavy thuds coming from the stairs, indicating that someone was definitely coming. I jammed the drawer back in so fast and hard that the bottles of perfume and lotions standing above the dresser rattled and clinked against each other. I waited for it, whatever and whoever it was, it had to be Noel since his car was in the driveway. Then there was the knock.

"Destiney?" A deep voice from the other side of the door said.

"Yes? Noel?" Short-breathed, I answered, pushing my hair out of my face before tucking it behind my ear.

"We-well I, have a problem."

Minutes later, we were driving down Chastity Street. Noel had forgotten the big paintbrushes he used for painting the panels inside his classroom; instead, he took the wrong case which contained all his student's paintbrushes. After the model that sat in front of the arts center came into view, he turned right, pulling into the parking lot. The sun was high in the sky, casting blinding specks of sparkles off the cars and the metal model. I shaded my vision as I made my way up to the building but stopped just as I realized that he wasn't behind me, his shadow no longer following mine.

"Just a sec." He said before I could turn around. I craned my neck, turning around slowly. Moving the strands of my hair which was flowing wildly against the wind out of my face, I took him all in. The back door of the Chevy was open with him sitting in the back, head down as he looked through a stack of canvases on his lap, his hair swaying gently against the breeze that rolled on by. I blinked once, twice. But my daze still had me locked down. He slowly looked up, a sly smile on his face. That's when it began. My heart was pounding as I swallowed, my eyes seemingly unable to go anywhere else. He looked back down, flipping through some canvases and pictures. I slowly looked at the ground, not understanding the emotion I got just by seeing him there. I slipped my hands into the pockets of my jacket, slowly starting to make my way over to where he was at.

"It's alright, I'm done looking at these. Just go inside, I'll be there." He pulled out a key out of his pocket, which he laid on my palm as I walked up to him. "Room 416." Speechless as a new feeling came over me, I solemnly took it.

"You alright?" He asked, smiling at me.

"Never better." I looked at the key in my palm, to avoid awkwardness, I looked back up, forcing a smile upon my face.

The halls were empty, glowing as the sunlight projected through the glass doors and throughout the walls that contained art work done by the students themselves. After climbing up 2 flights of stairs, I finally had reached the 400's. Inserting the key into the keyhole of door 416, I walked in to find canvas stands and paint stained stools lined up in rows, taking up most of the space inside the room. Hearing the door shut gently behind me, I walked down the aisles, sunrays whipping my face with each canvas stand I passed until I came face to face with a counter that held countless numbers of used paintbrushes inside tin cans. Blankly, I lifted a finger up over all of them, feeling the bristles and their rough and dry texture against my bare skin. Then I saw the tubes of paints scattered all over the counter, which was vibrant with color, paint stains covering most of the surface.

"Yeah, I'm sorry. I don't really tidy up this place much."

I didn't even notice Noel come in, much less hear him walk through the door. I jumped a little, quickly turning around. "How did you get in here without making a sound?"

He raised both arms up. "Ninja skills." He said, just before letting them drop at his sides.

"Brilliant. You'll have to teach me sometime." He smiled and walked over to where I was standing as I said this. "It's better this way, isn't it? I mean, for artists anyway."

"I guess so." He answered, picking up a purple tube of paint. "They're so hard to wash off at the end of the day though, but it's worth it." He walked away, bending down in front of a cabinet to my left.

"I think it's in here." And with that, he pulled out a white bucket filled with fat and thick paintbrushes. "Yupp, here they are." He set them down on top of the counter just right by the sink, walking towards his big metal desk sitting at the right hand corner of the room where he went through some drawers. I heard items clank against each other. After looking around the room once more, there it was. It hung high and proud against the wall, the painting twice the size of one canvas. The girl on the portrait looked familiar, her dark, short hair curling at the ends, a blood red rose placed at the right side of her hair. Her eyes were as cold as the expression on her face while her red lips seemed to pout. It was clear to see, it was Audrina. I was questioning myself if her real hair color was black or the light brown I'd seen before? Based on what Narcissa informed me about Audrina's hair habits, I wasn't so sure.

"She said she never had the time to pose for me." Noel came up beside me as we both stared at the painting.

"So how'd you get to painting this?" I asked.

"She shoved a picture that looked just like the painting in my hand, I remember because she was leaving for a trip to Pawtucket. I was with her, waiting for her boat to come and before she left, she gave it to me last minute."

"It's still beautiful, nonetheless." Well, his skills and painting techniques were, anyway. "She doesn't look too happy, though."

"Typical Audrina." His tone was flat.

"How come you have it?" I asked, my eyes still glued to the portrait. "Shouldn't you give it to her?"

"Eh." He sat himself on a stool behind me. "I was...until we got into a huge fight about painting. If she doesn't approve of my painting, then how much more with this?" He nodded towards the portrait.

"Still, who wouldn't love to get their picture painted? Especially as brilliant as this." I touched the bumpy surface of the painting before turning back, the sunlight reflecting off his face, making his eyes seem glassy. I walked past him and down the aisles, touching everything that came in contact with my fingers. I stuffed my hands in my pockets, stopping slowly but suddenly in the middle of the room before facing his back. I had something in my chest that I couldn't quite make out. Before I knew what I was doing, I found myself withdrawing in a breath.

"Just...no matter what you do, no matter what anyone tells you...don't ever stop painting." He slowly got up from his stool, turning around to face me. "I...I think it's incredible."

He was slowly walking up to me now, his hands in his pockets. Once he reached me, he took hold of my hand, which was cold with nervousness. I swallowed, looking into his eyes at that moment seemed to blank me out, it was overwhelming.

"Well...I'm glad you feel that way." His voice was deep but soft. "About something that means more than the world to me."

Then, just as quickly as it all happened, he let go of my hand and walked away as he grabbed the white bucket from the counter. I couldn't move. My face was getting hot, but I turned around to face him, regardless of myself looking red as a cherry.

"Let's go?" He asked, beckoning me to the door. I nodded; it was all I could do to not go completely weak.

"I met her at a carnival in Newport." Noel was on top of a ladder, carefully painting the designs carved into the panels. We had just arrived from the arts center and I was now sitting on the front porch swing, watching Noel concentrate on trying to keep the yellow paint inside the lines and curves. "I don't know, I guess she was just there."

"Just there?" I asked. We were talking about Audrina and what kind of role she ever played on Noel's life. "What do you mean by that?"

"Well..." He stopped for a moment, a thoughtful expression plastered on his face. "Ok, well, I took my sister to the carnival when she was beginning to feel much better. Audrina was at a booth, handing out tickets for the kissing booth. I wasn't really together at that time, I was still a wreck just watching my sister, fearing that she'd be there one day and then be gone the next."

The sound of wind chimes intertwined with his voice, the breeze gently making it dance. "I met her and thought she was different. Beautiful too. I leaned on her for support, for everything. She took me in, the only one who did at that time, even though she never gave me quite any good advice, she was just there. And that was all I needed. Somehow, I was okay with that. After a while though, she wasn't the same anymore, I felt like her true colors weren't there the first few months I'd spent with her." He went on. "After my sister would fall asleep, I would always drive on over to Narcissa's house. We would spend days in either silence or our usual activities, some days were spent arguing." I processed this all in, Blake slightly reminding me of a past I had once been a victim of, held capture by the emotion as Noel went on. "My sister died in July of the summer after I met Audrina. It was raining that day and I was trying to find her. Narcissa told me her flight to New York had left the day before that, which I never knew. I sat there, on her doorstep, drenched and soaked under the rain. "

Picturing him a wet mess in front of someone's doorstep didn't seem to fit quite right. Noel had always been the one who seemed to be capable of holding anything together, or so I thought. But now, here was a person who had the ability to hurt too, coming undone. I smiled a little, and suddenly, a thought started playing in my head. This made me remember the time I sat in the rain as well, waiting for Blake at the park, where we usually met. It was Valentine's Day and that day's weather was an unpredictable one. One moment it'd be sunny, the next would be gray skies, a light shower just falling over Providence.

"What is it?" He asked, looking at me from the ladder.

And then, like a melody rolling out of the tip of my tongue, the words were coming. "I sat in the rain too. Waiting for a guy. Lame, right?"

He smiled, looking back up at the panels. "Oh, do tell."

I sighed, playing with the ends of my hair. "It was a year and a half ago. I had been waiting for my past boyfriend to meet me at the park just blocks away from here. It was Valentine's Day...as I waited, it had started raining, and of course when he got there, he was afraid of getting the leather on his car wet, so I had to run back to our house and change. I was sick with a cold for three weeks straight." I chuckled, remembering how confused I was as to why he had put me through all of that. Even as caring as he said he was, sometimes, it was a mystery to me as to why he could never get over himself for me, just once. I tried to prepare my words for something deeper. "It was the first time I ever leaned on anyone for my own needs, the relationship we held, I mean. Well, they weren't material needs, more like from within, you know? Like there was this hunger for satisfaction just because I couldn't drug myself with anything else, or to drown out all sounds and problems from the outside world. So I looked to love. So much maybe, that I couldn't even see the reflection of my own."

"Because love is the greatest, most universal thing in this world that blocks out any, if not all, traces of hurt. Or at least numbs us from reality. I used to be that way with Audrina." He answered.

"Exactly." I responded. "I never thought I'd be capable of being in need so much that if that person had gone away, I knew once and for all I'd be a broken limb." I laughed as I said this, feeling my embarrassment hang in the air.

"Well," He said, climbing down the ladder. "Like they always say, 'even the best fall down sometimes'."

And this, I was starting to believe.

How could a person I had never even known before find me and have a somewhat similar copy of pictures, text, and even memories engraved into our past and some of our most memorable experiences? Of course it was different in some way. He and I were not similar, not in life, not in touch. Yet, like the weird combination of my favorite childhood sandwich, he had been the peanut butter and I was the banana, something much more, even as silly as it sounds, than the whole 'opposites attract' theory because in this case, that wasn't exactly, well...the case. What a weird analogy of two different things blending in one accord, I thought. Needless to say, it all fit just quite right, and I didn't have the answer as to why. But it was ok, it was fine just the way it was. It felt perfectly flawed, Noel and I, that is.

He sat down next to me. We stared straight ahead as an ice-cream truck rolled on by, stopping as a swarm of children surrounded it like the huge kid magnet it was. I felt the heat from his body next to me radiate, the hair on my arms standing straight up all the way from its roots to tips. I could feel the cotton from his t-shirt brush against my arm as he inhaled and exhaled, his shoulders rising, then dropping. Doors were opening. I could feel it right then and there.