Chapter 2- Broken

The screen glowed an unsaved number.

The drop in my stomach was so violent it felt like falling from a tree.

The warmth vanished, replaced by a wash of disappointment.

it wasn’t him. He was probably still asleep, untroubled, or already charming someone new in his office. I was an idiot.

“Hello?” My voice was like that of a stranger, rough with sleep and lost hope.

"Ava Thompson?" A woman’s voice, bright, and professional, "This is Clara Vance from The Modernist Group. I am so sorry for the early call!"

A client. A potential client, The words registered somewhere in the logical part of my brain, but they bounced off quickly to the cold hurt that filled every other part of me.

She was talking about my latest art series, my Fragmented Light series. She was at the studio and She would love to pop in.

My studio!, The word flashed image of canvases, the smell of colours, a version of myself with paint in hair and purpose in eyes.

The ache in my chest pulsed, a reminder of "He doesn’t love you. He was with her the weekend."

The thoughts weren’t even words anymore, they were a constant aches in my bones.

"You are… at the studio now?" I managed to say.

"Yes! I know it is a terribly short notice. I just had a feeling when I saw your work. If you are free, I would only need fifteen minutes."

I was stuck. Perfectly, utterly stuck.

One voice Says yes. Get up. Shower. Scrape this broken woman into the shape of a professional artist. Smile. Talk about texture,colours, theme and meaning, Pretend your world had not just been broken yesterday.

The other voice, The bed. The silence. The freedom to finally, fully shatter.

The mere thought of the first path exhausted me more deeply than the twelve hours of sleep I have had.

The energy it would require to powder my face, to use my voice for something other than sobbing, to care about something as realistic as art when my entire love life had just proven to be a lie. It felt Impossible.

The hurt was a living thing, a heavy, wet blanket wrapped around my soul, killing any spark of…….

"Ms. Thompson?"

Clara’s voice was a prompt….I spent the next few seconds deliberating on whether to go or not and I made my choice.

Although I stalled for a while,thinking of my bills, wondering if all this is worth turning a client down. I made my decision, it was not a courageous one. It was more of a surrender.

"I am … I am so sorry," I heard myself say, the lie forming easily on my tired tongue. It was easier than the truth. "I am actually a bit under the weather today, I was just about to leave for the hospital, actually. A… a follow up appointment." The fabrication gained weight as I said it, painting me as a responsible individual, not a heartbroken wreck.

"Oh! Oh, I am so sorry to hear that," Clara said, her tone instantly shifting to one of concern. "Please, don’t give it another thought. Your health comes first absolutely."

"Could we… could we possibly reschedule? For next week, maybe?" I asked, the part of me that still remembered having bills to pay shyly raising its hand.

"Of course! Absolutely. I will email you and we will find a time when you feel better, okay?"

We exchanged hollow pleasantries and hung up. The silence crashed back, heavier than before, I let the phone slip from my hand and slumped back onto the pillows. The relief was immediate, no guilty, no shameful, just comfort. I did not have to be strong. I did not have to be an artist. I could just be hurt.

The day stretched before me, empty and unplanned And I knew exactly how I would fill it.

I reached for the old, carved wooden box on the lower shelf of the nightstand. The one I had not opened in months. With a click, the lid lifted, and there they were. The archive of my own foolishness.

Photo after photo. Printouts from a happier, dumber time.

Austin, laughing, his arm hung around my shoulders at that vineyard. His smile seemed genuine.

He was pretending to steal a bite of my cake at that little café, his eyes crinkled.

Had he just texted her? Or maybe told her he could not wait to spend time with her like he said to me…..this thoughts linger in my heart

In one picture we were bundled up on his couch, a blurry selfie where I was looking at the camera, but he was looking at me. Or so I had thought.

I had thought that look was love. Now, I searched it for lies, for distraction, for the faint shadow of his other life.

I spent the whole day watching my own ruin.

I traced the lines of his face in the pictures, my fingers trembling. I read old, stupid text logs on my laptop, the sweet nothings now sounding like a script he performed.

I let the memories wash over me the good morning texts, the surprise dinners, the way he said my name like it was a secret. Each one was like a glass cut, very painful….. I picked them all up, and I let them cut me, over and over.

The room darkened around me. I did not turn on the lights. I did not eat. The only movement was the slow flow of tears down my face and into my hair. The only sound was the occasional, ragged intake of breath.

This was my work for the day, My only work…..To feel every single second of the loss. To look at every picture of us all loved up and whisper to the girl in them, You poor, stupid thing. You never saw it coming.

The client, the studio, the commission… they faded into a distant, irrelevant dream. This, the sacred, miserable state of grief, was the only real thing.

This routine went on for days.

******

Sunday morning, the buzzer for my apartment building jarred me from my nap, a long relentless beep, It sounded again and again, more urgent.

And a part of me, weak and longing wanted it to be Austin. The one who had shattered my world.

I stood up with the little strength in,headed for the door.

I opened the door, it was a stranger holding a clipboard.

"Are you Ms. Ava Thompson?"

"Yes." I said disappointed.

"Delivery. Can you sign here?"

The box at his feet was unremarkably huge.

It took a long, foggy moment to remember, the art supplies. The order I had placed in another life, when my biggest concern was running out of Prussian blue paint. Weeks ago.

"Thank you," I murmured, my voice scratchy from disuse. I dragged the box inside and left it in the balcony.

The silence of the apartment pressed in. The four walls felt like they were breathing with me, absorbing my misery.

I spent the rest of the morning sorting out paints to be taken to the studio.

The need to get out, to be anywhere but here, became a itch beneath my skin.

I was gradually losing myself,that moment I decided I needed to stop by at the studio.

The decision was a lifeline. I pulled a little black dress from the back of my closet the one I had been saving for a special occasion.

Today’s occasion is survival, I thought, the fabric cool against my skin. I styled my hair, applied makeup not to enhance, but to mask.

A mask of glitter and gloss over my puffy eye I slipped on heels that made me taller, straighter. In the mirror, I looked like a woman who had her life put together, not a woman who had spent the past few days sobbing over printed photographs.

It was a convincing lie. I almost believed it myself.

A few hours later, I stood outside my studio. The familiar door felt foreign, like the entrance to someone else’s life. I turned the key, the click too loud. The smell hit me first paint oil, the dusty scent of canvas. It was a smell that used to make my heart lift. Now, it made me want to throw up.

I placed the new paints on the shelf, lining them up with precision. Cadmium Red. Cerulean. Prussian Blue. I said the name as I arranged. My hands moved automatically, organizing brushes, wiping down surfaces, straightening framed prints of my older work. Fragmented Light. The irony of the title made a bitter taste rise in my throat.

I tried to work.

I stretched a fresh canvas and mixed a palette, earth tones today, ochres and umbers, colors of solid ground. I picked up a brush.

And then I was staring at the blank board, the brush hovering. My mind was a blank screen, and then, unbidden, the film reel started.

Austin, smiling over his shoulder at that vineyard, the sunbeam catching his stupid, perfect hair. Had he been thinking of the other girl?

I shook my head, a physical tremor then dipped the brush in to the paint. touched it to the canvas. A single, hesitant streak of umber.

The weight of his arm around my shoulders in that photo. The feel of his wool sweater against my cheek. The specific scent of his cologne mixed with autumn air.

The brushstroke wavered again became a muddy smudge. I stepped back, gripping the brush like a weapon.

"Work,"I whispered to the empty room. "Just work."

I turned to a half finished piece from weeks before a swirl of cool blues and grays. I had called it Equilibrium. I tried to lose myself in blending it.

My hand jerked severally, A slash of pure, violent phthalo blue cut across the delicate gradients, ruining the composition. A gasp escaped me. It was a perfect metaphor for everything. Austin had ruined the composition of my life.

The tears came then, not the storming sobs of yesterday, but a silent, steady leak. They tracked through the layer of the powder on my cheeks and fell onto the palette, diluting the paint.

I spent the afternoon like that, lost in the texture of the paint, and then a memory would slice through me, the sound of his laugh, the fake concern in his eyes when he lied, the devastating warmth of his kiss.

As the sun began to lower, casting long, shadows across the paint splattered floor, I finally surrendered. I cleaned my brushes with a numb thoroughness, covered the ruined canvas, and turned off the lights.

I had gone through the motions of my daily routine. But every single motion had been haunted. The studio had not been a refuge, it had been a proving ground, and I had failed.

Locking the door behind me, I felt emptier than when I had arrived. The organized paints, the cleaned brushes it was all just a tidier arrangement of the wreckage.

Suddenly the loud buzz of my phone cuts in…

It wasn’t a potential client, it wasn’t Austin’s name that flashed on the screen.

It was ELEANOR RAIL.

Austin’s mother.

The blood in my veins turned cold. In two years, she had never once called me. She had rarely even acknowledged me at those stiff, glittering family events, her gaze always lingering just past my shoulder as if I were some dirty wretched church rat invading her perfect world.

Her disapproval was a constant, solid “no”in the background of our relationship.

Why now? Why today, of all days?

My thumb hovered, trembling. This was the last voice I wanted to hear. She had probably called to finally say what she had always thought,….."I told you,you ain’t fit. You can never be enough for this family.”

Cold….yet the exhausted part of me needed to hear her say it. To have the final seal of condemnation pressed onto my disaster.

The phone kept buzzing in my hand.

I pressed accept and raised the phone to my ear.

"Ava." Her voice was exactly as I remembered clipped, cool, perfectly modulated, There was no sympathy in it. No greeting.

"Ma…" My reply was flat, drained of all fight.

"I understand you paid a visit to my son’s office some days back.” it was a statement, not a question.

Of course she knew. She had eyes everywhere.

"The scene you caused was… noted."

I closed my eyes, humiliation warming my cheeks. “Ma…" if you are calling to shame me, you can save your breath. I am done with him.”

"Shame you? Oh, please Ava." A soft, humorless sound, almost a sigh, traveled down the line. It was worse than laughter.

"This isn’t about shame. It’s about clarity. Meet me… Meet me at the Absinthe Lounge. Tomorrow, 2pm. Ask for the Lillian Suite."

I listened as she spoke, my heart a drum against my ribs.

"Come alone. And do not speak to Austin. This is between us now."

The line went dead.The silence it left behind was loud. I lowered the phone, my fingers numb, as I stared at it.

The thought of Austin and his lies still lingered in my heart. But their power was gone, drained away and replaced by a new, far colder dread.

Walking away from Austin was a battle. Walking into a meeting with Eleanor felt like stepping onto a different kind of battlefield altogether.

I have just few hours to make a decision on going or not.