Loner | e.g.d.

- ten -

Manuelle's P.O.V.

As we enter their house, Nina runs to Grayson who was laying on the couch in their living room.

'DID YOU EAT?' She attacks him right away, and he shakes his head and lets out a little laugh at Nina's mama bear mode.

'I'll feed you I swear, you can't be hungry when your stomach hurts.' she says more quietly now and he smiles to her, he looked very weak.

Soon Ethan comes up and smiles to me, I smile back thanking God for sending me Ethan so I don't have to third wheel anymore.

'Hey did you bring what I asked you to bring?' Ethan asks, still smiling.

'I did, let's go to your room' I say, showing him the bag where my art book was. His eyes are glowing with excitement and his smile goes even wider.

Ethan and I soon ended up in his room and he jumped on his bed excited. I give him the bag and he quickly takes out my notebook.

He spent at least half an hour looking and admiring my works, he looked focused and his eyes were glued on my notebook. He would also tell me to shut up whenever I tried to start the conversation.

I wasn't bored tho, I was admiring him while he was admiring my work.

After a while he finally looked up at me and caught me staring, but he wasn't aware of it.

'Out of all your amazing art works I like this one the most' he shows me the one colored with grey sparkly eyeshadow as highlights and a black one as shadows.

It was a butterfly who wanted to be free and colorful but he couldn't. He was trapped in his darkness. It's probably the drawing I worked on the most.

'Oh, I really like that one. One of my favorites.' I admit, thinking if he got the story out of it.

He looks at me one more time and gets off of his bed.

'Let's recreate it together in my art book. I'll do one half of the butterfly, you do another. But you're going to do it with watercolors and of course colored, and I'm going to do my half with pencils.' Ethan says not making the eye contact, looking for his art book.

'I've never done it before though.' I admit, scared that I'll maybe screw up my half.

'I know - exactly.' he says, putting his art book that he had finally found on his desk. Ethan then exits the room so he can get another chair.

I pull the chair and sit on it, looking for the first blank page in his notebook. One drawing that I hadn't seen catches my eye, a new one - it was a girl hidden in her dark, long hair, keeping her lips up with her two fingers and forming a smile full of woes. It looked like a different technique, he was probably doing it with burned matches. 

When I'm ready to flip the page, I see that my finger was covering a little text box in the corner - 'I believe you'll succeed. We will -'

Ethan roughly opens the door and I flip the page entirely, not being able to read the rest.

He smiles and puts a chair next to me, realizing I took his. He gets closer to me and reaches for the pencils and watercolors and I realize how big his arms are. He puts the art tools in front of us and I turn my attention back to the art book instead of his arms.

We reach for the pencils at the same time and I hear his quiet giggles.

'We won't be able to do together, our hand will keep touching and hitting each other.' I say laughing a little.

'Oh no, I'm left handed don't worry.' he says and smiles a bit, making my smile goes wider.

He draws the outline on both of our sides and then we start doing our halfs.

This new technique got me struggling so I needed a little bit more time than usual. Ethan's side was amazing, I even watched his fingertips softly grazing over the paper - to blend some lines that were too harsh - and his hands holding the pencil softly as if it was a magic wand. 

We finish it almost at the same time and Ethan stands up admiring our work.

'Stand up and look at this.' he says and grabs my hand. I stand up and smile.

One side completely colorful and happy, and the other one filled with darkness and sadness.

A perfect contrast. It was really well done.

I didn't realize he still had my hand in his, until he gently pulled his thumb over my finger.

'This is your solution.' he says, removing his gaze from the drawing and staring straight at my eyes.

My butterfly found his way out of the darkness, in a new book.

'So...' i whisper.

'So?' he repeats.

'Halfway there?'

'Halfway there, Mannie.' 

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Words: 808

Written: 24th March 2017

Published: 5th July 2017