He Called Her At Midnight

"She looks so sad."

"That is one beautiful drawing, what inspired it?"

"Weren't you afraid to show such naked emotion in a design?"

These were some of the comments and questions raised by her visitors. The ones she deigned to let across the front door for she was a private person and valued her solitude. Her hand shook slightly as her index finger traced the lines of a heart-shaped face, big eyes full of incomprehensible sorrow and pink lips pursed in disdain. Save for the pink lips; black encompassed the piece and put forth the emotions that could never be hidden even after the passage of time. 

Looking at her, so dark and laden with emotions; the events leading to her  existence unfolded before her eyes. It took a great deal of effort to bring herself back from the abyss the breakup with Max had thrown her into. There had been days when her despair was too potent for her to get through, days where she turned up to work in full black because that was the only way she could explain her mood and dressing required a lot more effort than she had. Days where she would take constant bathroom breaks at work just to shed the tears in her heart. When the pain was too intense and breathing had become a chore. 

Time was indeed the healer of all wounds. To be able to look back on all that pain and feel a slight niggle of disappointment in the people they failed to be for each other attested to her emotional state. She was even crazier for entertaining the thought of seeing him again. 

“Had he changed? Would he notice the woman she had become? Had their time apart been as hard for him as it had for her at the beginning?” All these questions rotated in her mind like a spinning wheel and almost made it impossible for her to return to the task at hand. One thing was certain, Max was hurting and needed her. That is all that mattered, for now. 

Alexandra gave the piece one last glance and put it back on the mantle. Looking at her work from this vantage point gave her a level of satisfaction she could never get enough of. Art has always been there for her; even in her darkest days, she could rely on it to bring her back from the depths of despair. 

Dawn was soon breaking and she needed to put the finishing touches to the draft she was currently working on for a close friend. He had commissioned a piece from her on a whim so she wanted to knock his socks off with her artistic interpretation of his name. A smile crossed her face as she thought of him. 

Liam. He had came into her life when she least wanted to form lasting ties with anyone let alone a man yet couldn’t turn down his offer of friendship.