Chapter Text

Chapter Ten — The Painting

When Ryan arrived home that evening, he didn’t notice anything at first.

He turned on the lights, checked his messages, sat down on the couch, and wondered what he should have for dinner.

He looked around the house, suddenly noticing just how empty it felt.

Then his eyes caught a neon-colored note stuck to the coffee table.

A cute little message so I won’t miss her, he thought.

He picked it up between his fingers and read it.

“I’ve watched all your movies. I like Project Hail Mary the most. We’re like Rocky and Grace.”

He smiled.

It hadn’t occurred to him until that moment, but it was actually a beautiful comparison.

One had saved the other.

He ordered dinner and headed into the kitchen to get a plate.

That was when he noticed another note stuck to the counter.

“I didn’t love you from the very first moment. But in the last one, I loved you like no one else.”

Strange.

But maybe there was more.

He began walking through the entire house, looking for more messages.

There was one glowing on the front door, too.

“Your home is this house. Mine is that island.”

The short sentences no longer seemed cute.

Now they grew heavier between Ryan’s fingers, as if the words themselves were turning to lead.

He kept looking.

The one on the nightstand said:

“I took your sleeping pills. I know you don’t need them.”

Another one was waiting on the television.

“Make a movie about us. The world has a right to know the wild Ryan. The honest man who can’t keep a fire going.”

The bathroom mirror had something to say, too.

“I’ll miss your fingers in my hair. The way you gently washed away the painful memories I wanted to run from.”

Slowly, despair began to take hold of him.

He found another one beside a piece of paper containing one of the drawings of his eyes.

“Augen, die nicht lügen können.”

Now he knew exactly what it meant.

Eyes that cannot lie.

He dialed her number.

The ringing echoed through the house.

Weird Fishes by Radiohead was playing from the nightstand where she used to sleep.

It was slowly beginning to dawn on him.

Not because he was stupid.

Because he didn’t want to admit it.

She had never planned to come back.

This was a farewell.

This was the end.

Finally, he found one more note on the door leading out to the garden.

“You taught me how to breathe properly, but there isn’t enough oxygen for me here anymore. I have to fly. Don’t try to catch me.”

The ink was smudged.

The handwriting uneven.

Tears glistened in his eyes, but he didn’t cry.

He saved that for the shower, where it would hurt a little less.

He didn’t know if she would ever come back. If he would ever see her again.

Or if she had gone to end it all.

And that was the most devastating part of all.

Iris felt like a coward.

Maybe because she was one.

She hadn’t had the courage to tell him.

If she had looked into those blue eyes, she would have believed him when he said everything would be all right again. That they would be happy.

Because those eyes never lied.

But just because he believed it didn’t mean it was true.

There had never been anything wrong with Ryan.

She was the one who was fundamentally broken.

A useless woman in a world that didn’t need her anyway.

Sometimes love doesn’t conquer everything.

Sometimes it’s only a distraction, or a path toward a truth that has been hiding right in front of us.

Ryan followed one of the last messages Iris had left for him and made a movie about their adventure.

But he left out the ending.

The bitter one.

The one that sometimes made him angry.

The one he simply couldn’t come to terms with.

He missed her every day, but eventually, it stopped hurting quite so much.

Therapy and hibiscus tea helped.

Then, two years later, while he was deeply immersed in another project, a package arrived.

Delivered straight to his home, not to his agency.

The package made no attempt to hide what it was.

Inside was a painting, wrapped in layers of bubble wrap and brown paper.

At first, he didn’t understand.

Still, he opened it.

And there it was.

A landscape he could never forget.

The island where he had lived through so much.

A little piece of paradise on Earth.

It wasn’t a single scene, exactly, but rather a collage of all the beautiful places he could never force out of his heart.

The waterfall.

The lagoon.

The beach.

The ocean.

At the center was a Japanese character that unmistakably meant Ibasho.

The colors seemed to dance.

It looked happy.

And yet, it was longing for something.

On the beach, there were two pairs of footprints in the sand.

And that was enough.

She was somewhere out there, living her own life.

Not his.

Hers.