Artgirl

18// young at heart

ARTGIRL 18: young at heart 

  "Love is either in your heart or on its way. Don't you know that it's worth every treasure on earth to be young at heart. For as rich as you are, it's much better by far to be young at heart," Frank Sinatra. Listen to the song at least once, it'll make your heart all soft. 

Nicolas Bear Forrest

IT WAS ALL too good to be true.

From her confession that she thought I was hers, to the kisses. These were the moments I'd been hoping for since the moment I'd seen her again. In fact, from the first time I'd seen her, I was hoping to have moments like this. Where peaceful love could take its place. Everything with her was pure, raw and more real than anything I'd ever experienced.

I couldn't have gotten that lucky—luck and I hadn't been partners for a long time. Then, she came back in my life. Everything was falling into place. Too well, too perfectly. I felt on the edge of something great, but also something terrifying. Because life had never been kind to me; with every beautiful thing, I got misery. Soon, I'd started associating beauty with misery and maybe that was why I saw the beauty in heartbroken people.

I think you're meant to be mine.

God. She could've tried to understand for days, but she still wouldn't have felt the joy I had. The sense of tranquility, that the one great love I had loved me back. I'd read books, watched movies and sang songs about heartbreak so many times that I started believing that happiness only existed in those forms of art, that reciprocated love was a thing of magic.

As wonderful as falling in love with someone was, nothing could match the feeling of knowing that they could love you back. Then, a safety net is all around you, a hammock of "as long as we have this love, all will be well". Ours was unstable, it was slow and it bred bruises. When I looked at her, I got lost. In love, in admiration, in appreciation, but mostly, in the fear of losing her again.

Italy, she had said, when I asked her where she'd want to go. She liked the idea of being in a city where wine and beauty reigned everywhere.

A part of me silently promised her a trip there someday. If I had the money, I'd take her anywhere in the world. I'd take her to Italy and spend time in nice hotel rooms, watch her paint every sunset and sunrise, because she'd say: "every one is different." I'd spend every second making her happy, but real life was cruel.

Real life meant people slipping through your fingers as soon as they slipped into your arms. It meant me taking extra shifts and the café to afford dates, now. It meant dedicating time to helping her find the same love for paint that I had for music; the same love I felt for her.

That love—God, it was the best feeling in the world. It was the love that deserved to be written about, because she was everything artists used as a muse.

I looked at the closed pack of cigarettes in my hand and shoved them back in my pocket. She'd notice, if I smoked. So far, Adrian and I's no-smoking-in-the-flat rule was well-enforced, because if either of us needed a smoke, we'd go on the roof or outside. But if sixteen year old Zoey hated smoking, she probably still hated it now.

"Nico," she walked out of her store, hair tucked into a small ponytail. "What you doing out here? Why didn't you come in?"

"Getting some fresh air," I smiled and greeted her with a hasty hug. "You look nice."

She tightened her ponytail, "thank you. It took me half an hour to get all of my hair in. I love my hair like this, but I might grow it out."

"Hm," I kissed her cheek, "well, it looks nice both ways. How're you feeling?"