Missing a certain Asshole

If life was a painting or a sketch, each stroke would be a story to tell, and each color used would be expressed as an emotion. I had been drawn to art for as long as I can remember, be it the lines of faces I now drew.

Art was my heart. It was the place I was most calm, a place where my soul and mind resonated, yet the stroke of my pen aligned his jawline. Why? Why was he in my art?.

I did not know when my hands had started to shade his image into my sketchbook, but I knew that it was Axel, even with the uncompleted portrait. Suddenly the world of art which I carved upside down was now destroyed.

I heard a silent sniffing from behind the library stairs. I looked down to see a familiar figure. I stayed quiet, and I continued to sketch. It was not Axel's face I was drawing this time, but the library stairs turned upside down. My pen breaks from the frustration I feel to hear the constant sound of someone's weeps.

"Can you keep it down? Some people are busy," I asked in my most polite tone.

Danni raised her head up with her teary eyes,

"Have you been here all this time?" She asked while cleaning the tears from her eyes.

I nodded.

I watch her climb up the stairs and sit by my side. She gazed at my work. Her eyes were still red, and her sniffing did not stop, but she was no longer crying.

"You are such an amazing artist," she complimented. Her smile does not diminish. It was as if she had been given her favorite toy.

"What do you say I give you 20 bucks for that sketch? Of course, it is not worth much, but when you do, become a world-famous Artist, I will tell them I had one of your first original works."

I grinned, tearing out the page and handing it to her

"I will give you for free," I told her. She took the sketch with a smile, turned it around, and marveled at the art.

She returns it to me and points at a particular spot in the sketch.

"Sign here, and if you can, also draw me underneath the stairs."

I nodded again at her request.

"It might take a while to make a drawing of you."

"I will wait," Dani replied.

She waited. Her ears were plugged with the earpiece that had been in her pocket before. Dani tapped to the rhythm of the music.

I observed her serenity; I wanted to portray something in this picture that represented her.

My eyes spot the bruises on her ankles. The bruises looked like that of hands wrapped around her ankle. I leaned in, stroking the bruise on her left ankle.

My touch lingered before Dani immediately pulled away when she noticed I had not only been staring at her wounds but also touching them.

She stared at me with so much contempt.

"Stay away from me," she said as she sprinted down the stairs while she had forgotten the sketch that she was supposed to have collected.

This was not my business, I told myself.

Yet here I was a few houses away from Dani's home from the address I had gotten illegally.

I stopped walking when I saw Dani come out of her house in a short black dress with a red wig on her hair and makeup that made her look older than she was. She entered a car which was more expensive than her house and her dress combined.

I asked myself a question, did I want to get more involved in anything that had to do with Dani?

Okay. I concluded I would just follow and give the sketch to her. This was enough meddling into someone's else affair. I had told myself that.

So I followed the car which Dani had entered.

She stopped at the most expensive hotel outside our town, a few miles away. I clenched my fist at the amount I had to pay a bystander to drive me here without going back.

A man came down from the passage seat and opened the door for Dani. He held her hand gently while she giggled at this small decency act. He goes to the front seat window and says a few words to the driver before going back to where Dani had been standing. His hand lingered on her waist as he directed her to the hotel while the driver drove off.

I walked forward to approach her, but she had stopped. She said some words to the man and smiled. She left him to handle the booking of the room and moved to the bathroom on the left side of the hotel.

She had been retouching her makeup when I entered after her. Her powder blush fell down on the skin when she saw me.

"What are you doing here?" she shutters.

I take out the complete sketch from my bag.

"You forgot your sketch," I drawled.

She twisted and protruded her enter the body to me; her eyes studied me with each second that counted.

"It was not important," she said with her left hand, now placed on her waist.

"Here," I stretched out my hand to offer her the artwork.

She ripped it out of my hands and folded it into her bag. She was careful not to squeeze it, for someone that had dragged it forcefully. Her hands were trembling as she packed her belongings into her small mini bag.

She slung it over her shoulders and looked me in the eyes.

"Look, if you tell anyone about this, I will make sure I find ways to make your life miserable," she threatened me. I don't do well with threats.

"Between you and me, an underage 17-year-old girl with a man above 29. I think we should establish who should be threatening who"

Her facial expression changed to fear.

"You do not know me! And what I have to do to survive," she stammered.

"It's your life, Dani, but the bruises on your legs are what you call survival?

With that guy."

She shakes her head.

"No, he is one of the good ones" she held the tears.

"Whatever you do is your business. I just came to return a sketch."

Those were my last words as I left her in the ladies' bathroom. I was not someone who sticks her nose in someone's business.

I cursed myself as I walked back home. This was the consequence of not minding your own business.

"You are late?" my mom said as I entered the house.

"I know," I said.

I crashed on my bed and spent some time thinking about Dani.

Before I took out my sketchbook, my mind was filled with an unfinished drawing of Axel.

I was curious about the shape of his lips. I will be sure to memorize them when I see him so I won't forget.

I missed him.