by Lexy Timms
It was time all this bullshit ended.
The Uber pulled up to my parents’ place, and I waved the guy off. I wobbled up to the front door and took a deep breath, and then I began knocking furiously until someone answered. My father whipped the door open and looked at me, his nose slightly crinkled as if some dirty, stray dog had just run up onto his pristine porch. His eyes took on the tattoos I hadn’t covered for the memorial gathering, and I pushed by him when he didn’t step over to let me in.
“Where the hell were you two?” I asked.
“Home. You smell like a bar. You good, son?” my father asked.
“Don’t play coy with me. You knew what tonight was,” I said.
“We know what tonight is every year, sweetheart,” my mother said as she came around the corner.
“Then why in the world weren’t you there? It’s your son we’re celebrating, for crying out loud,” I said.
“And why would you be celebrating him? He died a junkie, Bryan. You don’t celebrate the life of a junkie.”
The cool way my mother said that boiled my blood. How in the world could a mother cast out her son like that? How could a mother not grieve over the loss of her own fucking child?
“Besides, I had the boys over for some cards. Couldn’t cancel on them, could I?” my father asked.
“You couldn’t cancel your card game to come to the memorial service of your dead son? Do the two of you even care that he’s gone?”
“Don’t you dare say those words to me,” my mother said. “You have no idea what we’ve gone through.”
“Not much, by the looks of things. You cleared out his room and threw out all his stuff. You don’t come to the memorial services. Hell, you weren’t even there when we put him in the ground.”
“It’s not our fault John wasted his life away and died a junkie,” my father said.
“And that somehow excuses you from not burying him?” I asked.
“Funny. I thought we were talking about the memorial service,” my mother said.
“No. Right now we’re talking about how selfish and psychopathic my parents are to not even grieve over their damn son.”
I felt a sharp crack against my cheek as my mother’s panting rang heavily in my ears. I swallowed hard, turning my head back to meet her fiery gaze. Her eyes were wide, brown like John’s, and swimming with emotions I couldn’t pinpoint in my drunken state. My father stood behind her, his hands on her shoulders, staring at me with the almost-black eyes that looked back at me every single morning.
“It makes the family look bad, and you know it,” my father said. “Having a son that dabbled in what he did—”
“John was clean and you know it,” I said.
“Not clean enough to keep it from killing him,” my mother hissed.
“Can you not set aside your reputation just once to come memorialize your son? Believe it or not, there was more to him than his heroin addiction. There was laughter and goodness and memories and friends. People he touched. People he saved. People he counseled. People he loved and wanted to start a family with.”
“The only thing your brother loved was that needle in his arm,” my mother said.
“Shut up,” I said, growling.
“The only thing your brother loved was seeking out his next high,” my father said.
“There was more to him than that. I was there. I witnessed it.”
“I will not spend my days hyping up the life of a junkie,” my mother shrieked.
“Then you will never be the parents you think you are, so stop fucking acting like it.”
Before they could respond, I stormed out of the house. I was shaking as the door slammed behind me. I couldn’t believe them. The words that had spilled from their lips. I ripped my phone out of my pocket and called for another Uber, putting in a note that I’d tip double for someone to get here quick. I didn’t want to stay here another second.
As far as I was concerned, they were dead to me, too.
The car pulled up into the driveway when I heard the front door open. I climbed into the car as my father shouted at me, chastised me for disrespecting them in their home, and yelled to never come back unless it was to apologize. I had no intentions of apologizing to them after all they’d done and after the way they’d treated my brother’s death, acting like it was just some inconvenience to their image.
I heard my father screaming all the way down the driveway, his voice finally fading away as we pulled out onto the road.
When I got home, I pulled out a wad of cash and shoved it into the driver’s hand. I stumbled up to my porch and got myself up to bed, not bothering to lock the door behind me. I fell into bed, my body heavy with alcohol and sorrow as silent tears poured onto my pillow.
I missed my brother more than I could stand, and I wished my parents were simply better people.
I kicked my shoes off and slid underneath the covers, happy to sleep this alcohol off. I closed my eyes and allowed my breathing to even out, whisking my body away to another world where John was still alive and holding hands with an ebony-skinned beauty he simply couldn’t rip his eyes from.
But during the dream, a woman was holding my hand, too, a woman with purple hair and an IPA bottle at her lips. She donned that same respectful smile as my thumb traced faceless images on top of her creamy white skin.
The ebony beauty might’ve been faceless in my dreams, but this woman was everything but.
Chapter 2
Hailey
“These areas really are up and coming. The buildings have already been outfitted with electric and plumbing, so you could move right in and get to work.”
The commercial real estate agent driving the car was talking my ear off. We were driving through upscale parts of San Diego trying to find a place where I could settle my art gallery. The buildings were beautiful white stucco with swirls and shapes. Some were painted fun, bright colors. Some were black and silver and outfitted with chrome accents. Anything to bring something hip and new to the area.
It was all beautiful, and that was the problem.
I didn’t like the vibe of the places we were visiting. It wasn’t that I had anything against being upscale. It’s just that upscale was already labeled as beautiful. There wasn’t anything I could add to the area, nothing my art would bring that was different. I wanted my art to inspire and bring beauty to the darkness.
The darkness had already been eliminated by the outsides of these beautiful little shops, which meant my art couldn’t contribute anything.
“So, what do you think? Any of these areas strike your fancy?” she asked.
“Honestly? Not really. Is there an area that’s a bit darker?” I asked.
“Darker?”
“Well, maybe not darker. But not so upscale?”
“These types of places are where you’ll gain the best foot traffic. You’re opening an art gallery, correct?” she asked.
“I am.”
“You want your pieces to sell, right? So you can pay your rent?”
I shot her a wary glance as she continued to drive me through areas I didn’t want to be in. I knew she was trying to sell me on a more expensive building, so she could get a nice cut for herself, but the only thing about to be cut was her because I was about to cut her loose.
“My art will sell anywhere. That’s the beauty of it, but I can’t bring beauty to a place that’s already beautiful.”
“Ah, you want to be the center of the beauty, not merely enhance it,” the agent said, grinning.
“No. I want to introduce beauty to a place that isn’t always labeled beautiful,” I said.
“Like the ugly duckling at the prom who takes off her glasses and woos the captain of the football team?”
“What?” I asked.
“Never mind. Let me show you one more area. I promise you’ll adore it. It’s super quaint and your artwork would do well there.”
“You’ve never seen my artwork,” I said.
“
Oh, well. I’m sure it’ll be fine. Come on. I’ll show you.”
I could tell the agent was annoyed with me, and honestly, I was getting annoyed with her. Part of me felt bad because I couldn’t express what I wanted clearly enough, but it was important that I find the right place. I watched out the window, seeing the whole of San Diego pass by as we got onto the highway.
At least she was taking me to another area of the city this time.
This gallery was a lifelong dream of mine, something I’d saved up for over the years, but it wasn’t just a gallery. I wanted to help the community with it and to breathe life back into a part of the world that had been abandoned by the landscaping beauty we thrust upon other neighborhoods, like the one we were driving away from. I wanted to draw people into my shop for classes and get-togethers to paint and find therapy for their soul. I wanted to reopen that part of myself again and allow people whose beauty didn’t have a chance to add to the world to finally be heard.
Be seen.
Be appreciated.
“Expressing the soul is important when nurturing the body,” I said. “My parents didn’t believe any of that, though. They thought a practical career would be better for me if I wasn’t going to marry right out of high school.”
“Oh, honey. I could not have handled that,” the agent said as we exited the highway. “Career-oriented all the way.”
“See? So, you get it. My parents wanted me to go to med school. Well, my father did. He was a pediatrician, an excellent one. My mother, however, kept trying to set me up with all the boys in her infamous circle.”
“Yikes. No thanks,” the agent said. “If my mother chose the men I dated, I’d be married to some overly sensitive soul who poured out his emotions into music or something like that.”
“See, that sounds like a wonderful man to me,” I said, smiling.
“Your parents helping you with this endeavor?” she asked.
“Nope. I haven’t talked to them since I dropped out of the pre-med program I was in. I took some art classes at the college behind their backs, and when they found out, they forbade me to take them. Said they wouldn’t pay for my education if I didn’t stop. So, I told them they wouldn’t have to pay for an education period and dropped out.”
“I like your style,” the agent said. “That’s shit they haven’t talked to you, though.”
“It is what it is. I’m chasing a dream that makes me happy.”
“Speaking of dreams, we’re here,” she exclaimed.
I took a look at all the shops lined up in a row. All the same cookie-cutter designs, with brightly-painted doors and intricate designs fused into the building. They looked exactly like the rest of the building we’d come from, except these were a tad bit smaller.
Apparently, this real estate agent had no idea what I was looking for.
“These little shops would be perfect for your gallery. They aren’t very wide buildings, but they extend back. You could line the walls going back with your artwork and then maybe have a little concession table—”
“No. None of these will work,” I said.
“Are you sure you don’t want to go inside and take a peek?”
“No. They won’t work,” I said.
I heard the agent huff in frustration as she whipped the car around in the middle of the small street. Parents yelled at her as they clung to their kids, and I waved my hand and tried to apologize. This was going nowhere quickly, and all I wanted to do was go home and try again.
With a different agent this time.
We crept along the narrow street and slammed on our brakes as a man ran across the road. He was chasing after a ball his son had thrown out into the road, and I couldn’t help fixating on his arm. It was sleeved with a bunch of colorful tattoos, and I noticed the agent gawking at his arm just like I was.
“I love me a nice tattoo,” she said.
“I do, too. I love the idea of tattoos as art. I’ve seen online where some people take infamous paintings and have brilliant tattoo artists do renditions of it on their skin. Someone online posted a picture of Van Gogh’s Starry Night that has been tattooed on their back. The entire thing! Can you believe it?”
“I’m a simple gal,” the agent said. “Give me a nice black-outlined skull-and-crossbones. Maybe a tribal tattoo right in the dip of the bicep. Oh baby, come to mama.”
I giggled at her as we continued down the road. I envied people who could settle on a tattoo to get. Over the years, I’d had over twenty different colors of hair, all ranging between different styles and lengths. I couldn’t keep a specific hair color for more than a couple of months. How in the world would I settle on one tattoo I’d keep the same for the rest of my life?
So, I stuck to admiring the tattoos of others.
We stopped at a few more places the agent tried to sell me on, and I’d finally given up. I told her to take me back, and we’d try this again some other time. She was secretly irate, angry that I’d kept her out all afternoon without so much as going into a building so she could try to secure a sale. But I wasn’t joking about this purchase. I’d dreamed about this for too long to settle because someone was upset with me for being too much of an inconvenience.
I was used to being an inconvenience, so the joke was on them.
But, as we drove through a silent part of town that barely skirted the ocean, I spotted something that drew my eye. It was an old run-down shop. It had massive windows in the front, peering into an expansive area that was covered with dust and cobwebs. I reached over and squeezed my agent’s arm, telling her to pull over so I could take a look at it.
The look she gave me was nothing short of horror, but all I did was take the wheel myself and pull the car over.
The place didn’t even look like it was for sale but more like it was abandoned. It had an awning jutting out from the side like a gas station might have, except it didn’t have any gas pumps. There were two garage doors that closed off one side of the building, a front door that swung open and dumped into what looked to be a nineteen-hundred-square-foot open building, and there was even a small door off to the side that housed a toilet and a sink.
It didn’t have any running water, but I fell in love with it the moment I made it to the center of the room.
“All right, thanks,” my agent murmured.
“I want it,” I said.
“Well, I’m glad you asked all the pertinent questions,” she said sarcastically. “The place is for sale and for a very cheap price, mostly because the owner wants it off his plate. The taxes are eating him alive. But I need to warn you, most businesses in this area, minus that diner across the way, have gone out of business within the first year.”
“I love the retro diner across the road,” I said, smiling.
“The owner’s only asking for nineteen thousand, but it’ll take triple that to get it up and running, especially with the city building codes being updated so recently,” she said.
“Well, my budget was seventy thousand if I was buying, so I’m still in budget,” I said.
“The area’s run-down. You’re not going to get a lot of foot traffic here.”
“And that’s where we disagree,” I said.
“No. Really. No one comes to this end of town to do anything recreational. They all just drive by.”
“But people do drive by, and that’s the point. I could get them to stop,” I said, grinning. “This is the beauty within the darkness.”
“You are an odd one, aren’t you?”
I was no longer paying attention to my agent. I was slowly walking around and envisioning what the place would look like once I was done. I’d set up the checkout station in the back. I didn’t want people coming in and thinking they had to automatically purchase something. I wanted them to come in and enjoy the beauty of the place and then buy something if they felt compelled to.
The space was large enough to host parties. Painting parties for people who simply needed to release their inner artist. Kids could
rent the space for birthdays and adults rehabilitating themselves and seeking something different could come in and paint. I could sell canvases and brushes and colors for cheap. I could make art accessible to the masses again.
I could open my heart to rehabilitating people who needed it, people who craved an outlet other than the demons they were struggling with.
I saw the onyx floor and the cream-colored walls. I saw the paintings hanging with their names alongside them. I saw the little shop in the corner, easily blocked off when a gallery was going on. I saw the folding tables and chairs I could stash away that I’d use for the classes and parties.
I saw everything I’d ever worked for come alive underneath all the dust and cobwebs that floated around my head. I saw a way to pay back those I owed, those whose souls were poured out into their art.
I had finally found a way to keep their spirits alive, a place for them to rest and bring beauty to a world they tried so hard to love.
“I’ll take it,” I said, whispering.
“Then I’ll have the paperwork drawn up and brought to us,” my agent said.
I could hear the relief in her voice as she dialed a number on her phone, but I felt the relief in my bones as I closed my eyes and allowed the salted ocean water wind to blow through the broken windows.
I found it, you guys. I finally found it.
Chapter 3
Bryan
I threw back another shot of whiskey as I growled at the burn. The amber liquid swirled down into my stomach, tainting my vision as my bones went lax against the bar. I dreamed about my brother all night last night. I saw his smile and felt his hugs. I remembered our trips to the beach and how he loved body-surfing back into the shore. I dreamed about us running along the beach as adults, keeping our bodies in shape as we laughed about all the shit we had to do in the coming days. I dreamed about what it would’ve been like to have him own the company alongside Drew and me.
I owed my entire recuperation to Drew. That man pulled me from the brink of insanity when I lost my brother. He was there the night my parents called me, the night the hospital contacted them and told them he’d overdosed. Drew sped through red lights and outran a police car to get me to the hospital before he later had to pull me away from my brother’s dead body. I had thrown myself at him. Picked him up from underneath the white sheet and held his limp body close to mine. I could still remember how pale his skin was and how he had already begun to turn gray as his eyes stared blankly up at the ceiling.
