Free I Call Him Brady by K. S. Thomas Page B

Our dad died when May and I were only eight. I think we were just too young to fully process it, although May handled it better than I did. I barely spoke for two years after it happened. I was just stuck in my own head, trying to sort out how it had been possible that I had seen my father leave alive and well, only to find out that he was never coming home again.” I paused, wondering if it was too late to back out of telling Brady the whole story. It definitely was. “Then, one day, my mom came into our room. She had this huge cardboard box with her. It was filled with all these different paints and brushes. It was the coolest thing I’d ever seen. She said to me, ‘It’s fine if you don’t want to talk about it, but you have to find some way to let out the darkness so you can make room for the light again.’ Then she handed me a paint brush and said, ‘Paint it out. Put it all on this wall. Maybe if you can see it, you can understand it better.’
    “So, that’s what I did. For the next three weeks, every day after school, I ran straight to this room and painted. And after twenty-three days, you know what I saw? I saw hope. I had painted a beautiful meadow with flowers blooming everywhere. Sunshine pouring in from the sky on my ceiling and right there in the middle of it, I had painted two little girls, holding hands.
    “All the pain and confusion had somehow transformed as I added color after color until the dark black and brown had become the earth that morphed into the grass which grew the flowers. It was the most extraordinary experience.”
    When I turned to face Brady, he was staring at me, glued to every word I had been saying.
    “Tell me about this one,” he said, never taking his eyes off me.
    “I can’t.” I dropped my gaze to the floor. Something told me, if I didn’t, I’d be telling Brady about every last hurt inside of me in hopes that he would be the one to heal what time had only hidden.
    “Then I’ll tell you what I see when I look at it.” The tone of his voice was raw and oddly shaken. “I see a pain. But not the kind of pain that is felt on the surface. Deep pain. Pain that has seared itself to the very soul which carries it, and in turn has made it beautiful. The depth of this is evident in the darkness of the water, the turbulence in the crash of the waves and the grace of it in the magic of the starlit sky above.”
    I stared at the floor with such a force, I hoped it would drown out the magnitude of his words as he continued to expose every last inch of me.
    “That’s the pain. The landscape. Then there’s the ship. A pirate ship. The soul of the painting. Of the painter.  Rebellious and brave, risking everything in search of the ever elusive treasure. Happiness. Freedom. Love.”
    I felt his hands first brush against my face, then hold it tenderly as he cupped my chin and lifted it toward him.
    “I know you probably feel like I’ve barged into your most private place and stripped you bare emotionally,” he stopped to take a deep breath before he went on, “but the truth is, when I first saw this painting, I didn’t see you. I saw myself.”
    My heart was pounding out of my chest as I listened to every word so intensely I nearly forgot to breathe.
    When he went on, it was barely a whisper. “This whole time, I’ve been trying to figure it out. Trying to understand this connection to you. This inexplicable feeling that I knew you, that you knew me, that you could just get what I was about without even trying…and now, now I finally see why.”
    Tears were streaming down my face, but I had barely even noticed. Every last emotion I had denied myself since first meeting him had come crashing to the forefront and I was no longer willing or able to push them back.
    I closed my eyes and got lost in the moment as his lips came soaring down on mine, ravaging my mouth and my tongue in an instant. I felt his hands as they slid down my neck and onto my back, pulling me to him