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E L L A
“Talk to me,” Logan had said on the sidewalk a few hours before.
I almost did. I almost told him things I hadn’t even dared to say to
myself.
That I looked forward to seeing him in the mornings. That when he was
away, I missed him. That I felt neglected in a way I didn’t have a right to.
That I wanted him with an indefinable longing.
I still had feelings, and not having sex with him wasn’t killing them.
Denial was only feeding them.
But he was Logan, and he did what Logan does. He’d assumed it was
about business, saving the yearning of my heart from slipping out of my
mouth. I made him promise to start the buyout because I couldn’t bear his
refusal to promise what I couldn’t even define.
He’d walked me to my car, and when he kissed me on the cheek, I could
tell there were things he wanted to say and couldn’t either.
What a mess.
I went to the studio.
The Big Blank still leaned against the warehouse wall, and I went there
a few times a week to stare at it while I sketched possibilities, filling blackbound
books with pasted headlines, broken thoughts, and disjointed ideas.
Amilcar and Tasha came soon after to kill a few hours between her
school dismissal and the opening call for the musical.
“Just throw a paintbrush at it,” Amilcar said. “Break that shit up.”
He rocked in the swing I’d hung from a ceiling beam, curating his
playlists while Tasha sat on the floor, surrounded by her thick history
books.