So What?

EPILOGUE

EPILOGUE

Seven Months Later.

Venice, Italy.

I come up for air as I breathe through my mouth. The water is so cool today. The weather, in general, is beautiful. I'm about to go underwater again when I hear Laverne's voice.

"Babe, you gotta start getting ready. Francia just called." He says and I stop floating and stand on the tiled pool floor.

"Already? Was I swimming for that long?" I ask him, walking towards the marble steps leading out of the Olympic-sized pool.

"Here you go." Laverne says, handing me a towel.

"Thank you, baby." I say, wrapping the towel around my cold body. He kisses me on the cheek.

"Let's get you inside." He says, wrapping his arms around me from behind, as he leads me inside our two-bedroom apartment.

"Wanna take a hot shower to wash all that chlorine off?" He asks me and I roll my eyes at him.

"Seriously? I thought you said we didn't have time?" I ask him.

"There's always time to take a shower with you." He tells me and I giggle.

"You're something else." I reply as we walk to the bedroom.

***

"I am totally freaking." I tell Shannon.

"Relax. You're gonna do great and remember you deserve this. You were literally top of your class." She reminds me.

Shannon and I attended the same art school here in, Venice. Her art style is more on the impressionistic side while I'm a cubic painter. We weren't classmates, but we just vibed with each other and are now friends.

I graduated from the six-month art program a week ago and today I am holding my first art exhibition at the local gallery. It's literally unheard of that someone as young and unknown as I am in the art scene, was able to achieve this.

"I just hope they like it." I tell her.

"They will. Now go out there and show them the face behind the art." She tells me.

I let out a breath and walk to the stage from the backstage curtain. The crowd cheers as they see me and I smile at them. I am handed a microphone and I tap it and the microphone screeches. The wailing sound filled the ears of everyone in the room.

"Sorry." I say into the mic, embarrassed.

"Hi, I'm Jasmine Prentice. And you're welcome to my very first art exhibition." I say and they clap.

"This is a really huge deal for me. I like to pretend like things aren't as important as they seem, but when it comes to this, it is. It is a big deal. And I am so honored to be opening this exhibition on my nineteenth birthday, which is today." I tell them and they cheer.

"I wrote a whole speech about my entire experience in Venice and how it has shaped me as a painter, but I threw it out with my takeout bag, so there's that." I quip and they laugh.

"Guess I'll just wing it like I've always done. Picasso is the main inspiration for the entire collection that is displayed around the room. Cubism is an intriguing art form. That should be given way more credit than it already has. His painting, "The weeping woman" is the muse of this collection. Picasso made that painting to depict his grief about the Spanish civil war that was going on at the time. Likewise, I made these paintings to allude to the turmoil and disarray that overtook my life some months ago."