I turned away when he abruptly opened his eyes and asked, “You want to get going?”
“You mean you are going to put me out of my misery?”
“Yeah, that was the deal. When you finally relaxed…oh, I would say somewhere in the middle of It’s A Small World After All…the mission had been accomplished. You know, when you’re not hyperventilating, you’re actually kind of fun to be around.” He smiled. “Ready to get moving?”
I thought about it. “In a minute. Let this song finish.”
Jake winked at me again, and suddenly, I wasn’t sure if I ever wanted to leave.
CHAPTER 8
The next morning I woke up to another paper bat by my bedside that said:
You didn’t run…you saw it through.
Mr. Bat is proud of you.
I wondered when he had put it there and if I was asleep and drooling when he did it. I clutched the bat to my chest closing my eyes, grinning from ear to ear. I had felt such a sense of accomplishment after yesterday. The subway ride home was a piece of cake, too, after surviving the elevator.
It was Friday, so Jake had already left the house. He usually took the Amtrak train to Boston for the weekend straight from work. I wouldn’t see him until Sunday night or Monday, depending on how late he returned to Brooklyn.
The house was basically boring on weekends without him around. Tarah and Ryan would ask me to tag along with them to the city or to a movie, but I usually declined and opted to stay home and study or catch up on laundry.
***
Early Sunday evening, I had finished most of my homework and errands and found myself alone in the house again. The door to Jake’s room was left cracked open, so I went inside, plopping down on top of his bed. His signature scent was all over the comforter. I buried my nose in it, imagining that it was him.
I sat up on his bed for a bit and looked around, bouncing ever so slightly on the firm mattress. There was a collection of pens on his bedside table as well as a cigarette lighter. Oddly, next to the pens were four of those pinwheels that kids might get at a carnival. I took one and blew on it, watching it spin. Jake was so puzzling.
I opened the bedside drawer and immediately shut it when I noticed a strip of condoms inside next to a pack of cigarettes. It reminded me of the upsetting fact that the guy I was infatuated with was having sex with someone or some people other than me. Cigarettes, condoms…pinwheels, you know, the usual stuff you found in 24-year-old guy’s bedroom.
I got up and walked over to the picture on his chest of drawers of his twin nieces that sat next to the gargoyle figurine collection. Maybe the pinwheels were for them? The girls were beautiful and looked so much like him with the same dark hair, light eyes and dimples.
His closet was open, and it smelled even better than his comforter. I ran my finger across the hanging shirts that were mostly black and navy with a few plaids mixed in and looked down at the closet floor at the mess of shoes strewn about, mostly Converse and Doc Martens.
I sat back down on the bed and noticed a stack of large sketchpads left out on his desk. I grabbed the first one off of the stack and got chills as I flipped it open.
What my eyes were met with took my breath away. The first picture was an amazingly lifelike drawing of a man on a motorcycle. The man was drawn from behind, and only his face was turned around looking over his shoulder. His eyes seemed to be staring at me right off of the page. How you could make that happen with pencil was beyond me. The drawing, with its texture and shadowing, just seemed to come to life. Jake drew this? It was unbelievable.
I kept going through the book, and each drawing was better than the last. Another one was of the same man riding the motorcycle into the clouds in the sky. There were also a lot of drawings of the same woman or girl, with wild curly hair. In one of them, she was dancing in the rain and had a long skirt that seemed to move within the picture. They were all done solely in pencil with blends of charcoal and graphite.
There was another picture of a butterfly, but the center was a lifelike woman, instead of a thorax. The drawings were so intricate, and the attention to detail was impressive. I felt guilty for looking through the book, but Jake left it right on his desk, so it couldn’t have been something he was trying to hide. Right? At least, I made myself believe that.
I finished going through the first sketchpad and became hungry for more. I grabbed the entire pile and devoured each one with my eyes. Some were of people and others were just nature scenes. Certain ones were so stunning, that I had to stop and stare at them for several minutes at a time, examining every last detail. Then, I would go back to some of the pictures again if I couldn’t get the image out of my head.