The Art Of Loving You

Chapter 1

I'm sitting in the middle of my studio apartment the giant window streaming sunlight, surrounded by canvas that I've so furiously painted this place wasn't just a sanctuary. It was the place I told my fiancé that I couldn't do it anymore, the place where I found out my fears became ever so real and my hopes and dreams lifted into reality, art comes in so many forms and I'm glad I get to view it all. Music and coffee make my mind feel at ease and right now my grove has been tuned to Seven Nation Army on my CD player, music makes my painting explosive, all of them perched on sky-high walls, in a not so big studio apartment.

My head nodding to the beat, my paintbrush dancing along the canvas then my music is caught off short, by the screeching call of my roommate Nina.

"Josephine Amber Kendall," I turn to see her hand smitten on my CD player. "I've been trying to reach you all day." she stomps her foot, always short tempered.

She picks up my phone of the stool, dangling it in my face. "You should upgrade on that ratchet ass phone."

"It's a flip phone I don't need anything else," I fumble for an excuse, grabbing my phone from her claws that she calls cat claws. "And sorry I was busy painting a school project." I shrug my shoulders, pointing towards my painting that I've been working on and slum against the one bare wall I have.

"Whatever, you're always doing a school project, Jo." She says popping her bubble gum and starts leaning against one of my freshly done paintings hanging on the wall.

"Nina, look out I just freshly painted that-" I sigh, as I just spent hours completing that painting for my school's art gallery.

"Shit Jo, you need to warn me next time." She touches her shirt in disgust "Follow me while I change." Signaling me like I'm one of her assistant from the newsroom that Nina works at and already starts walking grabbing the hem of her t-shirt and taking it off. Before she even enters her own damn room, "As I was saying, my stupid camera guy flaked, and I need someone."

"And that someone is me?"

As she continues pulling out drawers for a new shirt, "Precisely," as I was just about to say no she cuts me off yet again. "Look, Jo, you're an art student, you are the only one that can handle a camera better than anyone I know. It's a basketball game, state championship the biggest game of a year."

"You know Nathan is on that team Nina, it's his team. I don't think I can do it, I'm not ready yet." I stutter hoping she would understand.

She rolls her eyes, "It's almost been a year. He has obviously moved. Maybe you should as well now, get dressed and hurry game starts in twenty minutes."

Rolling my eyes in utter devastation, I can't complain. Nina has done a lot for me, she got me a spot at an art gallery, and she's been a pretty decent roommate when I had nowhere to turn and a pretty great friend for pushing me out of my comfort zone. But the feeling of seeing Nathan again scares the hell out of me I haven't seen him since that night in my room.

Walking back into my room I glance along my one wall of paintings, past memories taunt me as I still haven't found the nerve to rip them off this very wall and throw them out.

Nathan was my inspiration, my paintings had meaning behind them and I had to get it through my head that Nathan and I weren't Nathan and me anymore and still believing a four-year relationship turned sour. I broke up with him when he was standing right over my painting of the ocean that we went to the first time we met. I found out that I wasn't the one for him even if he was the one that proposed that he wanted something that I couldn't give him.

"Jo, you ready?" Nina shouted from the kitchen, I grab my leather jacket and shut the bedroom door. Placing a ball cap on my head, grabbing the camera and slip on my raged converse, and covering my eyes with wide-brimmed sunglasses.