The sense of closure after seeing Liam was a quiet, profound liberation. It wasn't a triumphant victory, but a silent, internal click, like a dislocated joint snapping back into place. He wasn't a monster; he was just a man. The story wasn't a tragedy about my replacement; it was a simple, common tale of people growing apart. With this final ghost laid to rest, the air in my life felt clearer, lighter.
That weekend, I continued the slow, methodical process of making the apartment truly my own. In the bottom of my wardrobe, beneath old sweaters, was a flat wooden box I hadn't opened in years. My watercolor set. It was a beautiful, expensive gift from my parents from before college, with pristine cakes of rich, vibrant color.
I remembered showing it to Sera when I first got it. "It's gorgeous, Ellie," she had said, "but isn't it a bit... messy? Your digital stuff is so clean and professional. This seems like a step back." She hadn't said it unkindly, but the subtle judgment had been clear. Watercolors were for hobbyists; professional designers worked on screens. I had accepted her verdict without question and, after a few attempts, the box had been put away, and my focus had shifted entirely to the clean, precise world of digital design.
Now, I ran my fingers over the smooth wood of the box. I opened it. The colors were just as bright as I remembered, a perfect, untouched rainbow. On impulse, I took it to my kitchen table. I found a block of thick watercolor paper, filled a glass with water, and selected a brush.
My first strokes were clumsy. My hand, so accustomed to the perfect control of a stylus and the "undo" command, felt awkward and heavy. The water bled further than I intended, the colors mixed into muddy, unexpected shades. It was imprecise. It was imperfect. It was frustrating.
And then, it was wonderful.
I let go of the need for control. I stopped trying to replicate the precision of my design work and just let the medium do what it wanted. I watched the deep blue I chose bleed into the wet paper, creating a soft, unpredictable gradient. I let a drop of yellow touch the edge, creating a starburst of green. It wasn't about control; it was about collaboration with the water, the pigment, the paper.
I decided to paint the simple scene in front of me: my mug of peppermint tea, sitting on the table, with the morning light streaming in from the window. I wasn't trying to create a photorealistic image, but to capture the feeling of it—the warmth, the quiet, the sense of peace.
For the next hour, the world outside my task disappeared. There was no past, no future. No Sera, no Liam, no Blackwood Press. There was only the feel of the brush in my hand, the soft scratch of it on the paper, and the magic of watching colors come to life.
When I was done, I set the brush down and looked at my small painting. It was full of flaws. The lines were wobbly, the perspective was slightly off, and the colors had bled outside my intended shapes. It was nothing like the clean, polished work in my professional portfolio.
And yet, it was more alive than anything I had created in years. It had a feeling, an emotion, a piece of my own quiet soul soaked into the paper. It was a whisper, not a shout, and it was entirely mine.
A memory surfaced of a conversation with Chloe at work. She had mentioned a local art cooperative, a small gallery downtown that held quarterly shows for emerging local artists. At the time, I had filed the information away as irrelevant to me. But now...
A new idea began to form, a possibility that had nothing to do with survival or professional advancement. It was the idea of creating art purely for the joy of it, and perhaps, even sharing it.
I propped up my little watercolor on my desk. It sat there next to the framed photo of my younger, focused self, and the conceptual space I had mentally reserved for my first Blackwood Press cover.
The three artifacts created a perfect trinity of my identity. The past: the driven, talented girl with a fire that others saw. The professional future: the competent, respected designer building her career. And now, the personal present: the artist, rediscovering the joy of creation in its messiest, most honest form.
My old life had been about staying within the clean, crisp lines that had been drawn for me. My new life, I realized, was about finding the beauty in letting the colors bleed, in embracing the imperfect, and in creating a world that was not just well-designed, but also deeply, expressively, and unapologetically my own.