Ryan Abendroth {D3} | FINISHED

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came a time
when every star fall
brought you to tears again
we are the very hurt you sold

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Reyna cupped her hands around her face and the glass, looking within the little building on a corner near the District Square. Within, she saw the gorgeous works of art she had come all the way to the art shop for, along with a severely pale guy with uneven black hair sitting behind the counter with worn boots kicked up on the top of it. His lanky frame leaned back into the chair, and he had his small nose so close to a book it was like he was trying to inhale the words. Reyna felt a small smile twitch at the corners of her mouth and she directed herself from the window to the front door.

Bells above jingled and created a high pitched noise that reached the guy at the desk. His sharp-featured face with high cheekbones and straight jawline appeared from behind the yellow cover and his feet fell to the floor like he was absolutely forbidden from putting his feet up and he had just been caught in the act. He soon composed himself, realizing it wasn’t one of his coworkers but just a customer. The boy rose up from his chair, and he slowly swung himself over the table, a smile crossing his face, revealing his crooked teeth (and when she began talking, she could see a cavity on a tooth in the back of his lower jaw).

“Oh, uh, hi! How are you today?” Reyna smiled and extended a hand towards him. “I’m fine, thank you. And I’m Reyna.” When she glanced down at their hands, she noticed the extent of how pale the guy was. She noticed he was extremely pale before, but now, she might have well have been talking to a ghost. “I’m Ryan Abendroth. Nice to meet you. Did you pay to have a picture done or are you just browsing?” “It’s my friend’s birthday soon, so I wanted to get her a painting. She’s really into art and stuff.”

Ryan nodded, his crooked-toothed smile appearing again. With a sort of grace a cat would have before it pounced on prey, his towering (if she were to guess, she would say 5'9) skeletal body stalked down around the islands of paintings, the smell of the fresh paint splattered on the canvases spreading into the air with a vengeance. “Is there something certain you’re looking for?” Reyna’s eyes drifted around the room, thinking of the kinds of things her friend Thalia would like. Her eyes drifted to a small painting of wine, and then to a picture of the ocean with jagged rocks. They were all so different and beautiful and exotic; if she could’ve afforded it right then and there, she would have bought half the store. “She loves lightning and stuff. Like, kind of dark but pretty types of paintings.” Ryan snapped his fingers saying “I swear I painted something like that two months ago” and waved Reyna to the corner of the shop.

The north corner of the store, what with the paintings of night and rain surrounding them, was almost like clouds had covered the area. The canvases had mainly dark colors delicately spread along them, including a set of pictures of a mermaid. Reyna glanced at them curiously, admiring the attention to detail; it was almost like the mermaids brown eyes (that she noted were almost the exact shade of Ryans – a sort of color like the earth after rain) were truly watching with tears rimming her lower eyelids.

Her train of thought was crashed when Ryan’s spindly fingers flipped through small paintings that were put on a rack on one of the islands in the stores, absentmindedly muttering to himself about where the painting could possibly be. When Reyna’s eyes had flickered over the mermaid painting but found an interest in a painting of a girl playing violin in the rain. When Reyna was about to ask who had painted all of the pictures in the isolated corner, she was interrupted by Ryan, who held the 10 by 15 painting in his pale, needle-like fingers. “Is this what you’re looking for?” A half smile forces its way on the redhead’s lips, and she nods. Ryan holds it out to her and she takes it as if it is something ancient and irreplaceable. Purple lightning flashed over darkened, grey waters as the waves lapped onto the shore with a lighthouse nearby, the night sky as jet black as Ryan’s strands of messy hair.

Staring at the intricately mixed colors, her green eyes slide over it with wonder, only imagining Thalia when she sees it in three days time. “This is really gorgeous! You painted this?” Ryan nods solemnly, his thin lips curving into a small smile and raising a thick eyebrow at the work of art within her hands. “Yes I did. It took me a total of, um, two days? I can paint faster when I don't have distractions around me. That's why I like to paint when everybody is on break or when I'm at home." "So, everyone is out on break right now? How long are they?" He turned ninety degrees away from her and worked on pushing the paintings up so that the front faced out where they could be seen instead of them facing the bottom. "Yeah, everybody's on break now. They last an hour, so people go to stores nearby and get something to eat or whatever. They leave one person behind to look after the shop, and I was that one person today. So then I got out everything to paint and then I got lazy and started reading. I love painting, but sometimes I really don't want to."

He started laughing and turned back to Reyna who was curling a piece of red hair around her finger as her green eyes bore a hole into the canvas. "So, um, is that all you want for today or do you want to keep looking?" he asks, leaning against of the the many tables that hosted smaller paintings, crossing his slender, outreaching gazelle legs and threadlike arms over his almost sunken in stomach (he's probably a starving artist, literally and physically she noticed) as he waited patiently for her answer.

"Oh, um yeah, I think this is all I want for today. But before I go, I was just wondering, but are all of these pictures yours?" He nods and says paintings are separated by the feeling of them, and most of his end up in the corner (which they were standing in) where the 'emotional' or 'sad' pictures went. Then he asks why.

"Because you seem like a happy person and all, but your paintings are so sad."


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He cocks his head to the side, brown eyes traveling around the paintings around them, kind of sadly nodding at the irony of the situation. "Yeah. I guess. I mean, in my opinion I'm a pretty optimistic person. I see the beautiful things in life. And then I see the poor things too. But I don't focus all of my energy on the bad things; it's a short life and you should be happy with the time you have. I mean, I sure do. I'm following my dream of being an artist and I don't regret any moment of it." Reyna only blinked at him and then looked back to the mermaid paintings that were stood up on the floor so that the top of them reached his waist.

"You say you don't focus on the bad things, but you paint them? That's kind of like focusing." Ryan smiled and shrugged, glancing at some of his underwater paintings that were on a table next to Reyna. "Just because my paintings are sad doesn't mean I am." Reyna bit back her words and apologized, but Ryan, being an extremely passive person, (sometimes he thinks there's something wrong with him; he doesn't have the ability to get mad at things that should truly tick him off. He's not sure if that's a blessing or a curse but he just accepts it) waved her off, telling her that it wasn't that big of a deal.

"So, um, can I buy this before I insult you further?" "Alright, lets go to the front desk. But seriously, don't worry about it. I can't exactly easily feel insulted after hearing critique ever since I got into art, it just kind of lost its glow after awhile." They winded through the store, and Reyna acknowledged that it would probably be difficult to try and find something by herself what with the tall paintings blocking her vision from seeing other tables and aisles. She could almost imagine Ryan coming to the store for the first time and just thinking 'I need help' or something along the lines. "Off topic, but how do you not get lost in here?" He shrugged and stuffed his hands in his pockets. "Before I came to work here, I was totally determined to learn my way around so I wasn't annoying."

"Speaking of which, when did you begin working here?" Ryan breathed heavily out his nose, running the numbers and the dates in his mind, trying to pinpoint the time when he had become a worker in their current location. "I came to work part-time here when I was sixteen, and then full-time when I was seventeen. I'm eighteen currently." "Did you always want to be an artist?" "Actually, yeah. I was always really artistic and colorful, even as a kid. When the other kids wanted toys and clothes, all I wanted was, like, new paintbrushes and other art junk like that. Then when I grew up and I was thinking about what I wanted to be, and I remember just thinking that I loved art and I could see it as something I would love to do for the rest of my life."

Reyna beamed at him, saying she was glad that he did what he liked (and silently added in her head that a nice guy like him deserved it). Reyna explained that she wanted to be a dancer, but due to other people's constant nagging to get a real career, she decided to aim to become a therapist. Ryan told her that she shouldn't try to do what pleases other people.

Reyna remembered the lectures from her parents, saying that dancing wouldn't support her when she became an adult. She remembered the arguments against them, and then eventually the way she caved in and finally agreed with them so that her parents wouldn't be so bitter with her all the time. She couldn't stand her parent's looks of disappointment and disapproval when she was around them, so eventually she just gave up and told them that she would become a therapist. Reyna loved helping people anyways. (or do I? she thought. or is it what I forced myself to believe after I was trying to find a job that was reasonable?)

"I wish I was that type of person. The type that sees something they want and they go for it. Like you." He nodded and smiled and thanked her for being so nice - even though they were mere strangers - and told her that she should try and be a dancer even if it made everybody else pissed. Reyna smirked and thanked him for being such a nice person even if they didn't know each other as people.

In that moment, she envied the way he could be so warm and open and overall pleasant. She envied the way that he didn't listen to anybody else's opinions on what he should do, being totally self-driven.

She envied that he was doing what he loved while she herself was living the life others wanted her to.
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When they had both reached the front desk, Ryan swung himself over the table and took the painting from her hands, his eyes running over the pricetag and then asking for the money from Reyna. As she dug in her messenger bag for her wallet, her vocal cords sprung into action without her permission. "I know I'm probably prying too much, but how did you get into art in the first place?"

"Oh, you aren't prying. Don't worry about it. And it's a really long story." Reyna explained she had time; all she had to look forward to for the rest of the day was her house.

"Um, well, my dad was a mechanic but he was also really good at art. So, like, when I was nine I thought it would be really cool to do art too, so as a kid I really got into it. Like, I would beg my parents for paper and coloring pencils and stuff like that and I wouldn't shut up until they gave me what I needed for one project or another. At first, I was really horrible at art. Like, I was horrible. I am totally embarrassed of my old art. But I mean, I was a kid at the time so I thought it was just the best thing since sliced bread.

I still kind of did it as a hobby until I was thirteen, and I got better and better until it was actually presentable. When I joined art club at school, I learned new skills and stuff and I improved my art even more until I was winning art contests and stuff like that. I was really, really confident in myself, and I just thought it was really cool that my art and drawings and sketches actually made people stop and look at them say 'wow. That's really cool.'

When I was fifteen, I decided that I really really wanted to be an artist when I grew up. My parents and friends never really approved of it - they told me that there was a chance that I would crash and burn as an artist and that I should go for having a real job, and that kind of just killed me on the inside, knowing that my parents and friends weren't exactly supportive of something I love.

So after that I kind of dropped art for awhile. But when this store opened when I was sixteen, I just kind of remember sitting home alone and then thinking to myself that life isn't about pleasing other people; it's about pleasing yourself. I was really happy with this realization and I started getting into art again. So one day I applied for a part time job here and a couple of the other artists that worked here taught me techniques for painting and stuff and when I turned seventeen, I was hired full time.

Now, I'm eighteen, and... I'm glad that I didn't listen to everybody. I get to paint pictures in my spare time and I get to run this store and sell artwork and I'm not fixing things and making things and being miserable."

Reyna, having found her wallet while he was telling her how he became the person who he was today, pushed the money across the table and he pushed the lightning artwork back at her. She smiled and waved goodbye, telling him that she would definitely see him again in the future. He waved back at her, and after Reyna and the painting exited the store, Ryan kicked his feet back up on the table, bring the book back up to his face.

With the painting tucked under one arm, she walked herself down the streets of the District Square, watching as other people glanced at the canvas that she carried carefully along with her. When a woman muttered about the portrait being pretty, she felt herself smile.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Lily demanded to know what the blindfold was for, and Reyna only said it was a secret. As the redhead guided the blonde into her own living room, going slow so that Lily wouldn't trip over herself, Lily kept asking what she got her but Reyna told her to shut up and that she'll see in a second. Her green eyes looked over the rectangular artwork that sat, propped up on the couch, and she placed Lily in front of the couch, so that when the black cloth was removed from her grey eyes, she could see it the instant it was gone.

When Reyna told her friend that she could take off the blindfold, her spindly fingers ripped it from her face ferociously, and she set her eyes on the lavender lightning that flashed over the dark waters that had been dimmed when the moon appeared. Waves lapped onto the shore, a lighthouse seeming to stand guard over the ocean itself.

"Oh my gosh! This is so pretty! Oh, this is going in my room ASAP. Who painted this?" "A guy at the art shop near the District Square named Ryan." "Ripred, that guy is talented." "He's also really nice and chill. I'm going back there later to get some of his mermaid paintings."

After both of them had bounded the stairs to Lily's room, they both tried to find a place on the wall where the picture would look good, and after seven or six minutes of looking, decided to hang it on the wall next to her bed. After they had both agreed and put the painting aside for later, they both sat on Lily's bed.

After awhile of conversation, Reyna asked Lily if she could ask her a question free of judgement. "Yeah, go ahead. I'm all ears." "Well, you know how I used to dance a year ago, when we were seventeen?" Lily nodded, remembering the times when Reyna sacrificed the time they would plan together to go learn how to dance; Lily never truly got mad at her, she was just doing what she loved, and if Lily was holding Reyna back from doing that, then she would have preferred to have let Reyna go. But then she just stopped. "Yes, I do."

"Well, three days ago, I kind of just thought to myself about my future. I came to the conclusion that if I became a therapist I wouldn't be doing what I wanted to do with my life. I was doing what everybody else wanted me to do." "Oh. Well, what do you want to do, Reyna?"

"I think I want to be a dancer."

The End.

Odair
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