If I’ve been taught anything the last few days, it’s that even the most carefully laid plans can backfire. I hesitantly open the door, my suspicions confirmed when my eyes land on Margo working intently on something at a desk in front of the windows.
Even as I step into the room and close the door behind me, she doesn’t look up. The music is too loud. She’s too entranced with whatever she’s working on to notice me. I’d give anything to close the distance between our bodies and bring her into my arms. I want to know what she’s working on, what’s got her so inspired that she hasn’t answered any of my phone calls.
I use her being distracted to my advantage. I lean against one of the pillars, watching her in awe as she works hard at the task in front of her. She shades and erases at the project in front of her. The canvas she works on is massive, far larger than the sketchbook I normally see her work in.
It must be over ten minutes by the time she looks up, the few songs that have skipped by telling me I’ve been watching her for a while. She jumps, almost falling out of her seat when she notices me.
She picks up the speaker system’s remote, turning off the music in the room. In the silence, her whispered, “Beck,” comes out loud and clear.
I’m disarmed by how beautiful she looks. Margo wears one of my dress shirts, the fabric falling to her mid-thigh. She’s got her hair piled on top of her head in a messy bun, tendrils of hair spilling out of it. She’s tied a scarf around the top of her head, attempting to keep the flyaways at bay. It doesn’t quite work the way she’s expected. Her hair still looks a mess, but she’s never looked more beautiful.
“I thought you got home tomorrow.” The pencil she was holding drops onto the table. When I take a few steps closer to her, she stands up, blocking my view from whatever she’s been working on.
My heart hammers in my chest, threatening to beat right out of me from nerves. I’m hopeful. Maybe too much at the sight of seeing her still here. Seeing her wear my clothes, I can’t help but let myself hope this is her actually staying. Maybe this is her forgiving me.
There’s nothing I want more in the world than her forgiveness—than to be deserving of her love.
But I want this so bad that if her wants don’t align with mine, she will crush me. I’ve been desperate for her for over a year. Because of that intense need for her, I always held onto the hope of us ending up together one day. That hope will be lost if she leaves me today.
I don’t know how I’d keep going after that. It’s not a thought I even want to entertain.
“I got your text,” I begin, “and made arrangements to fly back immediately after. I couldn’t wait to hear what you had to say. The anticipation of wondering if you’re going to leave me…if I can’t fix this, it’s been eating me up inside.”
She doesn’t relieve me from my stress. If anything, she makes it worse by hesitantly looking around my old office, the one I’d had converted into a studio in hopes that she’d really become mine forever.
“I don’t want to just assume things, Beck, but did you do this for me?”
“Of course,” I answer immediately.
She moves a piece of hair from her face. She doesn’t give me any indication of where this is going to go, making me even more anxious for what’s to come. “When?”
"After Colorado. After it occurred to me that you may actually one day feel for me what I feel for you.” I think back to the plane ride home where the idea first popped into my head. I’d been determined to make this place feel more like a home to her. I knew she was deserving of a space where she could create art. She’s so fucking talented, I just wanted to give her somewhere deserving of her creative outlet. Her tiny little desk in her LA apartment was terrible. I wanted to do better for her. “I’d come home and put this into place, most of the work being done while we were at the office. I just wanted you to have a space to call your own here. One where you can work on your art. Did I do okay?”
Her eyes gloss over as she watches me carefully. I’m fighting the urge to close the distance and crash my lips against hers. She’s so fucking perfect that she takes my breath away. I swallow, trying to suck in air as I wait with bated breath for her answer.
She looks away from me, her narrow shoulders rising and falling with a deep inhale and exhale. “It’s absolutely perfect. I can’t believe you did all this.” Her eyes scan over the room, landing on one of my most prized possessions.
The sketch she’d drawn of me from the night that’d kept me up many nights as I recalled every moment. For the longest time, I’d kept the picture in the drawer of my desk, pulling it out when I was alone to look at how she’d seen me through her eyes.
I’d obsessed over the drawing. I’d traced over every single one of her pencil strokes, wondering if she noticed the way I looked at her that night. As my eyes memorized every line and shading she’d made night after lonely night, I’d wondered what she was feeling while sketching it.
Surely she felt what I felt. I’d felt so strongly for her so quickly, that I couldn’t imagine her not feeling anything.
It’d been devastating when she left me alone on that beach. I had to steal the picture as proof it happened. To remind myself that while she straddled me, her bare knees in the sand on either side of me, that we had a moment. It was more than a moment—it was insight into everything we could be. Everything we should be.
Hopefully today is the start of that, and not the ending.
She walks over to the picture, stopping in front of it. The tender way she stares at it only fuels the hope brewing in my chest. If she was going to leave me instead of loving me, I don’t see why she’d gaze at the thing that first brought us together with so much adoration. “You had it all this time.”
“I’d snuck into your room and taken it the morning I’d left. I couldn’t leave without it. I needed something to remember the moment on the beach, in case it was the only moment you and I would ever share.”
“Beck…”
“I’ve stared at that picture for countless hours. Wondering how you saw me that night, obsessing over all the things I could’ve done differently. If you’d let me kiss you, would you have climbed back in Carter’s bed? If I’d told you that he didn’t deserve you, that he wasn’t faithful, would you have believed me? There are so many things that have gone through my head while staring at the talent of your pencil strokes on that paper. But one thought was always the most present. The desire to watch you draw for the rest of our lives. It was so intense, that the moment I thought maybe the tables were turning after that night at that stupid inn, I knew I had to create a space for you to do it.”
Margo looks away from the picture. There’s still hurt in her eyes when they focus on me. I hate myself for being the reason behind that hurt, for not coming clean to her sooner. I’ll spend every dollar to my name, use every second of the rest of my life to try and win her back if that’s what it takes.
Her lips tremble as she tries to fight back tears. My fingers twitch in my pockets as I do everything in my power to try and comfort her.