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The inside of Phil’s apartment smells like new furniture and wet paint. The air outside smells salty and fresh. Phil sits on a chair on his balcony, taking one more long drag from the cigarette held tightly between his fingers before extinguishing the glimmering butt in an already full ashtray, his eyes lingering on the view before him. Wind is tousling his black hair. It is low tide right now. Lovers are walking hand in hand on the sand, people are playing with their children and dogs. The sea looks calm so far away from land, untouchable. But only hours from now the tide will come in, and the sand will be covered by water, and waves will crash against the stonewall with the stone steps leading from the beach up to the promenade. Phil prefers when the sea is rough and he doesn’t have to watch happy people living their happy lives on this happy beach in front of his apartment. He likes it when the water sloshes against the walls, when the sea becomes destructive.
Destructive.
The one word his parents know to describe him with. He’s the hurricane destroying houses on land, he’s the tidal wave flooding the shore. He’s everything bad and poisonous all at once, and the seagulls circling over his head sound like they agree with him.
His hands are shaking and he has to squint to make out where the ocean begins on the horizon. The pack of cigarettes on the round glass table is empty now. He’ll have to get new ones. He’ll have to go inside his apartment, the one that smells of new furniture and wet paint, and put on shoes and take his wallet to go downstairs to buy a new packet. He’ll have to go inside his apartment. He’ll have to go inside.
He doesn’t want to go inside.
So he decides to stay seated and clenches his hands to fists as they tremble, and there’s a stale taste in his mouth, and he squints at the ocean and waits, waits for the high tide to return and for the ocean to claim the beach in front of Phil’s apartment again, claim what is rightfully his.
He waits for hours.
And when he enters his apartment that night, it still smells like new furniture and fresh paint, and all Phil wants to do is take the expensive looking chair and smash it into the expensive looking mirror, and take the shards of the expensive looking mirror and scratch patterns into the expensive looking floor.
Phil doesn’t like comparisons, but he likes to compare himself with the ocean, because the ocean is destructive.
And so is he.
__
The market hall of St. Helier is always bustling with locals and tourists at this time of the day. There are only approximately 102,700 people living on Jersey, and it seems like all of them decided to visit this place at exactly the same time, a cloudy Monday afternoon. Dan jostles through the crowd, bumps shoulders with some people and apologizes under his breath. Many people working in the booths are waving at him and spare him a smile, and Dan quickly waves back. On a normal day he would stop to talk, but he’s already late for work as it is.
“Oh thank god you’re finally here,“ Louise sighs with relief before he’s even entered the small tea shop fully. She’s standing behind the counter, five of the seven small tables are occupied.
“I’m sorry,“ he apologizes, not even bothering to come up with an excuse as to why he’s late. They both know that he was simply too lazy to get ready in time to get to the job on time. He’s late most days anyway.
Louise throws him his white apron and he catches it in his left hand, and while he ties it around his waist and behind his neck, she’s already busy untying hers.
“I need to pick Darcy up from school or she’s going to be late for her ballet class.“
“I’m really sorry,“ Dan apologizes again sheepishly.
Louise pinches his cheek, because she knows he hates it and he knows it’s his punishment for making her late most of the days. Honestly, by now she should know always to make plans after work about fifteen minutes later than usual, because the day Dan is on time will most likely never come around.
“I know you are, munchkin,“ she laughs as he pulls a face. She then ruffles his hair and presses a swift kiss to his cheek before leaving with a wave and a goodbye, promising to give Darcy Dan’s love.
There’s a constant stream of customers at the little tea shop today, Dan’s most sold tea of the day being peppermint tea. Sometimes the employees make bets on what tea gets sold most a day. It’s not exciting, but that’s the most exciting it gets on this island, and Dan likes it a lot. He likes the tranquility and the seagulls that sometimes wake him up at 3 a.m., and he likes watching the tide.
The shop closes at 5 p.m., just like every stall and shop in the victorian market hall with the nice fountain in the center does. There hasn’t been a customer in since fifteen minutes and Dan is already finished cleaning all the tables and counters when the little bell over the entrance door rings.
Dan looks up with a forced smile. He doesn’t like it when the guests come five minutes before the place closes, especially if they decide to linger, but he can’t bring himself to not at least pretend to be welcoming.
The young man that just entered is dressed in black, the clothes matching his obviously dyed hair and contrasting his pale skin. Colourful tattoos decorate his arms, and blue eyes pin Dan to the spot and almost make his breath hitch.
“Are you still open?“
“Yes, we are,“ Dan says and picks at his apron to straighten it. “How can I help you?“
“I’d like a black tea to go with milk.“
Dan rings up the order and takes the cash, hands back the change, and notices the dark rings under the stranger’s eyes that match his black clothes and his obviously dyed black hair. He looks like he hasn’t had a decent night of sleep in a while.
“Here you go.“ Dan slides the cup with the lid on it over the counter and the stranger waits until he has drawn his hand back before grabbing it, unlike so many customers that often can’t wait for their drink and awkwardly brush Dan’s fingers ever so often.
“Thanks,“ the stranger says, and then he leaves the shop, one minute before official closing time. Dan watches him leave with curiosity, the way he moves elegantly but with his shoulders drawn high, his chin up and staring blankly ahead. He’s beautiful and Dan’s eyes follow him through the glass window until he can’t see him anymore, before his eyes catch Zoe’s, the young florist from the stall across the little tea shop that he occasionally has small talk with, and she wriggles her eyebrows at him suggestively.
Dan blushes and quickly looks away, before stepping away from the counter and turning the sign on the entrance door from open to closed.
He tells himself that he doesn’t think much about the ghostly looking customer as he spends his evening with friends at the beach, except for that he does, because these blue empty eyes haunt him.
___
Sometimes Phil leaves his apartment. It doesn’t smell much like fresh paint anymore, but it still smells like new furniture. The walls are bare. The shelves are bare. The canvases tucked away in his walk-in closet are bare.
St. Helier is cosy. It’s small, but the streets are full of people. There are seagulls everywhere, and people are way too bloody friendly. He stumbles into the market hall by accident, and he buys tea in a tiny tea shop with pastel-coloured walls and white wooden chairs and desks. Some brown-haired guy that looks his age works behind the counter. Phil hates cosy, but he decides to still come back to the little tea shop after that. The tea is decent.
And then he walks to the shore with a cup of tea in his hands, because he doesn’t want to return to his apartment quite yet, and the wind ruffles his hair. He watches as the high tide comes in and reclaims the beach.
That night, when he looks at his phone, he finds five unanswered calls and seven messages. They all are from his parents. Phil throws his phone on the expensive leather couch and goes to sleep.
___
He’s at the beach on a Sunday early noon. The tide is just low enough to leave a thin strip of sand free at the moment. Elisabeth Castle is still surrounded by water. In a few hours, the sea will be far enough away to only make it out at the horizon, and shells and crabs and algae will be uncovered, and rock worms will make their presences known by leaving little heaps of sand behind.
He’s still smoking as much as he used to a month ago before moving from London to St. Helier, but at least he doesn’t smoke more. His mother still calls daily, but he never picks up the phone. His father stopped trying. He’s made the reasonable choice. Phil doesn’t want to talk to the people in his life that should have supported him but instead just shipped him off when they decided they couldn’t deal with his antics anymore.
“Hey, you’re that guy that always orders black tea with milk!“
Phil cringes. He wants his peace. He recognizes that voice to be from the bubbly guy working at the tea shop he likes to frequent, and he can’t pretend he hasn’t heard it, because the guy is less than two meters away from him and speaking loudly.
Phil still thinks the pastel-coloured walls of the tea shop are hideous and the cosy interior design makes him want to throw up, but he has somehow become fond of the market place and its quirky shops and flower stalls.
Turning around, he spots the young man in a pastel pink jumper and white skinny jeans, a dog trotting next to him that breaths stertorously. He looks cute. The man, not the dog. Phil wants to plunge him into the deep end of the ocean.
“What kind of rat is that?“ Phil can’t stop himself before the words are out.
He waits for the kid to be offended, because people are usually offended when one insults their dog, and maybe Phil just wants this guy to be offended and leave him alone. But he’s surprised when the guy just throws his head back and laughs.
Laughs.
A full belly laugh, as if it’s the funniest thing he’s heard in a while.
“That’s my pug. Her name’s Sushi.“
“You called your pug Sushi?“ Phil asks sceptically and gets an enthusiastic nod as answer. He slowly starts to wonder if this guy isn’t exactly right in his head anymore. Maybe he should take a step or two back, especially now that Sushi - and really, that’s the most ridiculous name for a dog Phil has ever heard - is sniffing his shoes with her tiny nose that she can barely breathe through anyway.
“Do you want some ice cream?“
“What?“
The guy cracks another smile as he patiently repeats his words: “I asked if you wanted to get some ice cream.“
“Why would you want to get some ice cream with me?“ Phil asks perplexed.
“Why wouldn’t I?“
He doesn’t know how to answer that, and the guy still smiles a stupidly ridiculous smile that looks too happy and bubbly and doesn’t fit the rough wind that whips the island today and makes Phil’s hair stand in every direction. It’s cold and stormy clouds hang low in the sky, and yet this strange guy asks Phil for ice cream while his dog is still sniffing Phil’s shoes.
Phil doesn’t know why, but he agrees.
He learns that this guy’s name is Dan, and Dan leads him up the stone steps from the beach to the promenade. A kiosk selling Jersey soft ice is only a minute walk away - because this is St. Helier, and St. Helier is small, they could have probably reached that food truck in ten minutes from anywhere in this town - and Dan doesn’t stop talking the entire way.
“I used to work here when I was still at school,“ he explains excitedly, and Phil hums under his breath because why should he care? “It was my summer job and always great fun.“
There’s a gangly kid with pale skin and freckles on his nose inside the food truck, looking bored out of his mind. Dan orders two soft ice for them.
“Do you want a flake on your ice cream?“ the gangly kid asks.
“No,“ Phil says.
“Yes,“ Dan answers, “and put one on his ice cream as well.“
Dan pays for their ice creams, he firmly insists on it. Phil’s not going to complain about that, because he never wanted a stupid flake in the first place, so why should he pay for it?
The ice doesn’t melt away quickly. It’s too cold for that. They lean against the railing and look down at the beach, and Sushi finally stops sounding like she’s choking on thin air after a few minutes. Neither of them says a word for a while, and Phil thinks that this silence is actually nice, that this is better than expected.
And then Dan decides to talk.
“So did you move here recently?“
“How did you know I moved here?“ Phil asks, and his lips press into a thin line. Suddenly the ice cream is not enough anymore. He wishes he had a cigarette between his fingers instead.
“You have a northern accent, don’t you? So what brought you to beautiful Jersey?“
Jersey is not beautiful. Jersey is an island in the English Channel close to France. It’s one hundred and nineteen square-kilometers small and everything is cute and cosy but the rough sea that surrounds it. The capital is tiny. People here are all too polite. Phil doesn’t fit in, doesn’t want to fit in, and he doesn’t want to answer Dan’s stupid questions. Instead he turns and walks away, and he can hear Dan follow him and ask what’s wrong, but he ignores him. He dumps what is left of his ice cream into a litter bin and doesn’t look back until he’s closed the door inside his apartment to lock it.
Two days later, someone rings his doorbell. It’s not the housekeeper, because she’s already been here today. Phil doesn’t know who else it could be, and he’s not interested in finding out either. But the ringing is persistent and so he eventually opens the door. In front of him stands Dan, wearing a light-blue shirt and black shorts, carrying a tray with two red cups looking suspiciously like the ones from the little tea shop in one hand and a paper bag with red and white stripes and ‘Daisy’s baked goods‘ written across it in cursive letters in the other hand.
“The tea’s probably cold by now, but I bring raspberry muffins,“ are his first words.
“How the fuck did you find out where I live?“
“My uncle works for the city, and he does everything for his favourite and only nephew.“
Phil grumbles. He feels the urge to throw the door shut in front of Dan’s face, to pack his bags and leave this island right now. But there’s already a foot in the door and Dan’s walking in uninvited, making himself at home on Phil’s expensive leather couch.
“Take it as an apology for upsetting you the other day.“
“I find it upsetting when a stranger makes his way into my apartment,“ Phil retorts, and Dan snorts.
“We’re friends now, Phil, whether you like it or not.“
“Lucky me“, Phil grits out, but Dan just tells him to shut up because he brought black tea and raspberry muffins, and there are many worse guests that could be in his flat right now. Phil can’t think of anyone he’d like to see less sitting on his couch right now, and he tells Dan just that.
“Stop complaining, I brought you muffins.“
Dan stays for a long time after that. Not because Phil wants him to stay, but because he makes himself at home against Phil’s insistence to leave. He’s the stain in a newly-bought white shirt that won’t go away, no matter how hard you scrub, and Phil hates to admit that once or twice, that ridiculous guy with his weird pastel clothes and a fucking pug named Sushi actually made him smile that night.
___
“You’re finally here.“
Dan’s entire face lights up as Phil walks into the little tea shop, and Phil just wants to punch one or two of his pearly white teeth out. He’s trying out new tea blends now. Not because he wants to, but because Dan refuses to only sell him black tea.
“You need to live more adventurously,“ he’d told Phil that one time he handed him an apple cinnamon tea. Phil doesn’t need adventures in his life, and he told Dan just that, but the other man had just snorted and given him the most ridiculous tea blends to try ever since.
Some of them aren’t too bad.
“Just give me black tea to go, please.“
But Dan’s already grabbing for one of the ridiculous mugs with animal prints on them that mean Phil has to drink his tea at the store, and he fills it with boiling water. Phil gives him ten bucks, and when Dan gives him his change back, there’s also a white Florida prickly cockle shell in his palm.
“You’re trying a strawberry lavender tea today. I like it a lot, I think you will too!“
Phil stares at the shell in his palm, honestly confused.
“What’s that?“
“It’s a shell.“
Dan is really dangerously close to having his teeth knocked out right now.
“I can see that.“
“When I was taking Sushi for a walk this morning, I found it and I thought of you. So I took it with me and I want you to have it.“
Phil looks at the shell dumbfounded, before putting it in his jeans pocket. He drinks his tea fast, the water scaldingly hot and the blend not yet long enough in to make it taste like much. Dan greets him goodbye and sounds bubbly as ever, and Phil places the shell on his kitchen counter as soon as he’s home. He wants to throw it away, but somehow he can’t bring himself to do that. His hands are shaking and he steps on the balcony and takes out a cigarette. He hasn’t emptied the ashtray in a while, it’s practically overflowing by now. Elizabeth Castle is still completely surrounded by water. The ocean hasn’t released it from his claws quite yet.
That evening, Phil places a canvas on his easel, a small one, and he paints it completely black. It’s the first thing he’s painted in a long time, and once it’s done he takes a knife from the kitchen and slashes right through the middle, and then he rips it completely apart. His heart is beating fast and he’s breathing heavy although he hasn’t done anything physically draining. His hands are shaking, so he smokes another cigarette outside. It’s raining and he doesn’t mind, and it’s high tide and the waves crash against the stonewall, and the wind is cold and painful as raindrops crash against his skin. He stands outside and he waits for nothing, and he watches the black sea, and he only goes inside again when every fibre of his body trembles from the cold.
Phil has the feeling that the white shell sitting on his kitchen counter mocks him.
___
“Jump into the car, nerd, we’re going on a road trip.“
Phil looks at the old Peugeot with raised eyebrows. It doesn’t look like it will take them very far, but Dan pats the steering wheel lovingly, like he does with Sushi’s head so often. He’s called Phil downstairs and Phil doesn’t even know why he ever listens to this weird guy.
“Why do you think I have the time to go on a road trip?“
“Well, for one, you don’t have a job-“
“How do you-“
“Because you show up at the tea shop at the most random times. You don’t complain about your job either, therefore, you don’t have one. And you don’t have anything exciting to do like ever when I talk to you. So get in, we’re already late. The tide will come in soon.“
So Phil finds himself in an old Peugeot that smells like smoke, and although he never asks, Dan still explains to him that the former owner was a smoker, but no, Phil is not allowed to smoke in here. Phil scowls.
They reach their destination within thirty minutes.
“I thought this was supposed to be a road trip?“
“We’re on a fucking tiny island, the longest road trip you can take on here is a trip around the island, and you’re done with that in less than twelve hours.“
Dan’s brought him to a lighthouse. A path is leading up to it, rocks left and right, and the water of the ocean sloshes against them every few seconds. Seagulls are circling through the air. It’s impossible to escape these bloody birds on Jersey.
“Welcome to La Corbière,“ Dan says as he shuts off the engine.
“Why did you bring me here?“
“Because I think it’s a nice place. We need to hurry up if we want to make it to the lighthouse and back. The tide will rise again soon.“
The lighthouse is just like Elizabeth Castle built on a rock and only accessible to walk to a few hours a day when the tide is low.
They make their way to the lighthouse on the path surrounded by rocks and water quietly. Phil hates to admit it, but he likes what he sees. He likes the colour of blue that the sky is dressed in right this moment and he likes the colour of green the ocean sports, and the brown nuances of the rocks.
The lighthouse itself is located on a giant rock. It’s white and nothing special. Being up close, Phil doesn’t find it impressive, not as beautiful as it was when approaching when the scenery made it look majestic.
It’s on the way back to the car - and Phil can already tell that the ocean is rising and that if they don’t hurry up, their shoes will get wet - is when Dan starts talking again. Phil should have been suspicious about how quiet he’s gotten. He should have known that something was about to come, because he doesn’t know a lot about Dan, but he knows that the younger man likes to talk. Being completely quiet is uncharacteristic for him, but Phil had been so focused on the sounds of the ocean and the wind and the seagulls crying that he hadn’t noticed.
“I came here a lot when I first moved to my aunt and uncle from England after my parents died in a car crash.“
Phil freezes up. Dan places the palm of his hand against Phil’s elbow to urge him on to keep moving. He’s lived here for long enough to know that it’s better to avoid the high tide at any cost. He knows how many lives it takes every year, and he doesn’t want to add two more to that number.
“Why are you telling me this?“ Phil asks. His voice sounds like ice - not the soft ice they’ve had the other day by the ocean that Phil had thrown away, but icicles that dangled over ones head and threatened to fall down and do real damage.
“I was angry all the time. I didn’t really talk to anyone, spent my days locked away in my room and my nights outside. Let’s just say I mingled with the wrong crowd. I couldn’t see a point in living anymore. But one day my uncle forced me out of my room and into the car and he drove me here and sat me down and told me to just look. And he asked me if life and the earth isn’t beautiful. I remember the seagulls circling my head and watching tourists walk the path up to the lighthouse that we’re walking right now. I never answered my uncle, but something pulled me back here. A few nights later when I snuck out of the house again, instead of walking around St. Helier I got on my bike and drove here. I did that many nights. I don’t know what it is about this place, but it just calmed me down.“
They are making their way up to where Dan’s car is parked now, and Dan’s palm still lingers on Phil’s elbow.
“Again, why are you telling me this?“ Phil asks through gritted teeth, because he didn’t ask for this. He never wanted for Dan to tell him his sob story.
“You’re angry a lot and you don’t really let people close to you. I remember what it’s like to see the world as an ugly place. I guess I just wanted to remind you that it can be beautiful as well.“
“I don’t need a reminder, thank you very much.“
Dan shrugs his shoulders as if he couldn’t care less and then unlocks the car. “Suite yourself. I just wanted to show you this place because I like it, and for some strange reason I like you as well. If you don’t appreciate it then that’s not my problem.“
___
Phil can’t sleep. It’s 3 a.m. and he is wide awake. He can’t lie still and he can’t close his eyes for more then twenty seconds. It’s raining. He can hear the raindrops pelting against the window. Normally it’s a sound that calms him, but tonight it makes him even more restless.
There’s an image in his head, the image of a lighthouse on a rock in the ocean, waves breaking on the rocks and seagulls flying above. His fingers are tingling and he clenches them to fists, but when he realises that it’s no use, he gets out of bed and grabs a small canvas that he has hidden away in his closet. He places it on the easel and gets out colours. The shirt he’s wearing is old, so he couldn’t care less when he gets paint all over it. It takes a long time, longer then it used to, to finish the painting of the picture in his head. He’s made the sky purple and the sea dark green, the rocks black and the lighthouse he painted white, white like the original this painting was based on. He doesn’t add too many details of the waves breaking on the rocks or seagulls in the sky. When he’s done, the rain has stopped and it’s morning. He can hear the town come to live. Something in him itches to take a knife and force it through the canvas, destroy what he’s just created. Instead he forces himself to bed, and when he wakes up he takes the painting, puts it into a paper bag and takes a walk to the Victorian market hall.
Dan’s not here. Instead it’s Louise behind the counter, who greets him with an enthusiastic smile. She’s nice enough. Phil hands her the bag and asks her to give it to Dan. He leaves without ordering anything, and as he walks out everything in his body urges him to go back and destroy, destroy what he’s created. As soon as he steps out of the market hall, there’s a cigarette between his lips and he inhales the sweet disgusting taste of it.
His hands shake harder than they have for a while now.
____
It takes two days for Dan to show up in front of his apartment door on a Thursday night. Phil is surprised it took him this long. He carries a white and red striped paper bag with the ‘Daisy’s baked goods’ logo on it and exclaims that he hopes Phil likes blueberries as he forces his way in.
Phil’s not a big fan of blueberries, but he doesn’t mention it. Instead he breaks open a bottle of wine and pours it into tumblers, because Phil doesn’t own wine glasses. He lives in a luxurious apartment in an overpriced town on an expensive island, but he refuses to spend an unnecessary amount of money on a certain type of glass when he can drink wine out of any glass.
Dan doesn’t mention the painting, so Phil doesn’t either. They don’t even talk for the most part of the evening, just sit together and drink in silence. Phil’s staring at the white wall lost in thoughts when he feels Dan’s gaze on him. He looks over to see Dan’s face flushed from the alcohol, his lips lightly parted and his eyes lingering intently on Phil’s own lips. He pulls them into a smirk.
“Like what you see?“
As if being pulled out of deep thoughts, Dan looks up in surprise and Phil can’t help but think that the brown of his eyes is a beautiful colour. It reminds him of the rocks the lighthouse had been built on.
The raven-haired man never gets a verbal answer. Instead Dan leans in and kisses him.
Dan’s lips taste like saltwater and blueberries, and Phil thinks that he’s never tasted anything better. It’s an odd thought and he doesn’t know where it comes from considering he doesn’t even like blueberries that much. And then Dan’s fingers thread into his hair and his tongue begs for entrance, and Phil just turns his thoughts off, just for once.
The kiss is messy and anything but gentle, and Dan’s eyes are a shade darker when it ends, pupils blown wide with lust. Phil leads him to his bedroom that night and spreads him out on the white sheets. He marks Dan’s body with love bites and makes the younger man quiver under his hands. Dan makes the most beautiful sounds when Phi thrusts into him, and he scrunches up his face when he comes, eyes closed and lips formed into an ‘o‘. It’s such an arousing sight that Phil comes seconds after, his hips stuttering and fingernails pressing crescent shapes into Dan’s hips.
While they’re catching their breaths, Phil leans down and steals another kiss from Dan. It’s the day he decides that he likes blueberries, but he doesn’t realise that until a few months later.
Only clad in boxers, Phil sits on the balcony and smokes. It’s not that warm and goosebumps are decorating his skin, but he doesn’t care. Dan follows less then a minute later, fully dressed. If Phil didn’t know better, if he couldn’t see the red marks left on Dan’s neck, he’d never have guessed that Dan just got fucked. Only his hair is a bit messy and curly at the edges. It suits him.
“You’re really good at painting.“
And there it is, the conversation Phil doesn’t want to have, the one that crushes the high he’s just been on.
“Are you a painter?“
“I don’t paint anymore,“ Phil mutters
“But the painting you-“
“I don’t paint anymore,“ he repeats louder this time. He says it as if speaking to a toddler while looking out at the dark ocean.
Dan finally gets the memo and seals his lips shut.
___
Phil doesn’t paint anymore, but he still paints a torso covered in lovebites once Dan is gone. They don’t kiss goodbye. They don’t hug. It’s just a simple “See you soon“ with which Dan lets himself out of Phil’s apartment. As soon as he’s gone, Phil gets a new canvas out.
It feels foreign to be painting again. The smell of the paint, the feeling of a brush in his hand, the sound it makes when it scratches against the canvas. Back in the days, Phil used to paint every day. It came to him like breathing, he’s always had a feeling for it.
And he was also really good.
He’d paint everything. Landscapes, people, buildings, random undefined shapes that were floating through his mind. He saw it all like pictures before his inner eyes and he could see the details, and it had always been a fun challenge for him to try to recreate what he saw in his mind on a canvas.
He’d painted for his parents, a lower-class family, and when his works sold better than anyone could have expected at a young age, they could finally move from a dingy flat into a respectable one, and from a respectable flat to a nice house later on.
He’d painted for the people that loved art, his works adorning galleries not only in the UK but in all of Europe and even further away. But his work turned from art into money, and the more popular his work got, the less people cared about it. They only cared about the money it could make them one day.
He’d painted for Lily, his childhood friend. She had been there for him since the beginning, the one that had sat next to him colouring out of the lines while he decided which colour of blue fit the sky better when he was five. Deep down, he’d always painted for Lily. She’d been his muse, his best friend, occasionally his lover. She’d been the one he wanted to spend the rest of his life with in any way possible, but then she went too soon. It had been cancer, and none of the money that Phil had earned over his years with his paintings that had helped him gain worldwide recognition as an artist had managed to save her.
His work had been less than average after that. Something had been missing. He started drinking. He started smoking. He stopped adding to his colourful tattoo collection that he had gotten over the years. His works stopped selling well.
One and a half years after she had died, Phil had finally snapped. He’d destroyed every painting in his atelier one night, destroyed his entire atelier when the anger in him still hadn’t subsided. And then he had gotten drunk and lied down in the middle of the remains of his atelier, and he had stayed there drunk for days until his parents finally found him. That was when he had hit rock bottom. It was the day they had decided that their son needed a change of scenery and bought him a newly-built apartment in St. Helier with some of the money he had stored away for them. Instead of helping there son, they had watched him fall apart for a year. And when they had seen how he had destroyed their income, they had just shipped him of like an unwanted dog back to the shelter.
And now, after only a few months of living in Jersey, he actually holds a brush between his fingers again. Something he had sworn himself never to do again the day he had been lying drunk on the floor in the middle of his ruined art, of his ruined life.
Phil Lester hates Dan Howell, he hates him for bringing the colours back into his life.
___
It’s weird what they have because they never define it. Phil likes it that way. Sometimes they meet up and fuck. Sometimes they just hang out by the beach and Phil watches as Dan plays with Sushi. They get soft ice and Dan still insists each time that Phil gets a flake with his as well. Dan takes him out with a group of his friends and Phil hates to admit that he actually enjoys it.
Phil draws most nights now. He draws the sea and he draws seagulls, and he draws Dan’s back marked with scratch marks and a cigarette and Sushi and Jersey cows. Dan looks at the paintings but never loses a word about them, but sometimes he smiles at a motive. When Phil sees the way Dan’s face lights up when he recognises Sushi, he gives him the painting as a gift. Dan thanks him with the most beautiful smile and a blowjob. His lips are skilled and so is his tongue, and he swallows every last drop of Phil’s cum.
When Phil calls his mother back for the first time since he’s moved to Jersey, she cries on the phone for fifteen minutes. His father tells him that he’s happy to hear him again too. It’s the first time in a long time that Phil’s not mad at them for sending him to an island in the middle of the English Channel.
It’s on a Wednesday when they sit on the rocks and look at the lighthouse of La Corbière that Phil tells Dan about Lily. He tells him about everything really, and Dan listens. He’s a good listener, and once Phil’s done talking he does nothing more than say that he’s sorry to hear what happened, but that he’s not sorry that he met Phil.
Phil isn’t exactly sorry that he met Dan either.
___
“Would you ever consider having your work displayed in an art gallery again? Maybe sell it?“
Phil’s body feels hot and sweaty post-orgasm. He doesn’t drag himself out of bed and on the balcony for a smoke right away like he used to. He hasn’t done that in a while. Instead he stays next to Dan on the bed. They’re not cuddling, but they are close enough to feel the heat radiate off each other’s body.
“I haven’t thought about it really. Why?“
“Remember PJ?“ Dan asks and he turns from lying on his back to his side and looks at Phil, draws patterns on his pale chest with the tip of his finger. Phil knows that the tattoo of a lily on his chest is Dan’s favourite, has been before he’s even told him about Lily. It tickles but Phil doesn’t flinch. It’s a nice feeling.
Phil remembers PJ. He has curly hair and a fun personality, and he seems like the artsy type.
“Yes.“
“He’s been thinking about collecting work from the locals and opening up a gallery.“
“There are already a bazillion galleries in St. Helier.“
Dan punches his arm lightly and tells him not to destroy PJ’s dreams. “I told him once in passing that you paint and that you’re really good at it.“
“Stop bragging about me.“
“Don’t act like you don’t like it.“
They drop the topic and just rest next to each other in comfortable silence. Dan follows him outside when Phil goes on the balcony for a cigarette. He has a ridiculous ashtray out there now that looks like a pug’s face. Dan has given it to him as a joke because he had seen it in a shop and found it cute, and he's not a smoker so he has no use for it. Phil uses it every day. When he’s halfway through his cigarette, Dan picks up the topic again.
“So will you do it?“
“I’ll think about it.“
___
The day before the opening of PJ’s art gallery, Phil and Dan walk along the beach hand in hand. The tide is low and so they walk up to Elizabeth castle. They do the very thing Phil had hated to watch from the balcony of his apartment shortly after moving here. Now he’s come to like the low tide. He marvels at how the sea can be both destructive and calm all at once.
Phil’s nervous like he hasn’t been in a long time the night PJ’s art gallery celebrates its opening. He’s wearing a suit and so is Dan, and he looks really good in it. Phil is PJ’s featured artist, PJ having fallen in love the second he saw his artworks. He doesn’t paint under the name Phil Lester anymore though, signs the paintings with a TW instead. It stands for tidal wave, and Dan says he likes it. Phil Lester, the well-known painter, was painting for Lily. This local from St. Helier that decides to show his paintings anonymously paints for Lily, but he also paints for Dan now.
His parents fly in from London. They both have aged a lot over the past two years with worry for their son, and when they hug Phil, who had come to pick them up at the airport, his mother starts crying again. Phil holds her close.
This is nothing like the art shows he used to attend during his most successful times in London. The gallery is smaller and the people attending are less important. But they talk about Phil’s paintings not like they are money nailed to the wall but actual pieces of art, and that’s nice.
At the end of the night Phil takes Dan home with him. He’s tipsy and he’s in a good mood, and their fingers are interlaced as they walk into his apartment. There are paintings on the walls now, lots of them. There are paintings leaning against the closet and against the breakfast bar and lying on the coffee table, and they are colourful and beautiful and fill the space with life.
Inside the hallway, the second the door falls shut behind them, Phil wraps his arms around his companion and hugs him tight. Phil’s nose is pressed against Dan’s collarbone, and the fabric of Dan’s blazer smells like detergent and salty ocean water, and Phil’s fingers card through Dan’s messy brown hair, and he closes his eyes and just feels, and he realises that he hasn’t felt this kind of lightheadedness in such a long time that he had already forgotten what it had felt like.
It feels good.
It feels intoxicating.
It feels like happiness.