Heart

He was impossibly tall. That was the first thing that caught Missy’s attention that night at the bar. He moved through the throng of drunks like a river crashing through rocks and mountains and boulders. People had no choice but to move out of his way or be trampled. He didn’t shoulder his way through the crowd or intimidate them or anything, but who wouldn’t be? 

The next thing Missy noticed was his smile. Oh, it made her heart beat faster. There were deep grooves in his cheeks, with permanent smile lines that caught her eye. His eyes were brown and warm, with the thickest of eyelashes. The kind that made her think of baby cows.

He’d handed her a drink that first night, a whiskey sour, and stood right next to her as she sat on a tall bar stool. Even then, he loomed over her.

“Do I know you?” She’d asked, hesitating. On one hand, it was a free drink. On the other hand, it was a free drink from a stranger. It could be spiked with drugs or something.

“No, but you’re about to. I’m Rhys.”

Missy smiled and took the drink. He’d charmed his way into her bed in a single night. Something she wasn’t used to. But he was nice, and he laughed from deep in his belly, and his lips were so very soft and warm when he kissed her outside the bar. What choice did she have?

*

It was a whirlwind of a romance even for a whirlwind romance. A handful of months later, Missy had a key to his place and let herself in whenever she wanted. Rhys worked in a studio downstairs. His apartment was straight out of a movie, something so cool and artistic, Missy could hardly believe it. Sealed concrete floors, red brick walls, a kitchen with exposed shelves and pipes that ran all along the walls and ceilings. She didn’t know what they were for, but they whirred to life every so often and filled the space with a noise that lulled her to sleep at night.

“Are we going to that housewarming party for Jackie on Sunday night or did you want to skip it?” she asked him as soon as he stepped into view.

Rhys was covered in paint, his fingers caked in black paint or charcoal. Missy could never tell until she touched them. Sometimes they’d make love, and he’d leave smudges all over her body, but mostly on her thighs and neck.

Rhys groaned and stomped his way to the kitchen sink. He poured dish soap into his hands and washed them with hot water on full blast. “On a scale of one to fuck my life, how important is it?”

Missy chuckled and wrapped her hands around him, enveloping herself in the smell of paint, wood, ash, and his sweat. It always felt so strange to cling to him like this. Rhys was so big and heavy that he could easily smother her with his body, and he often did just because he could, so holding him was like grabbing a mountain. Impossible. Still, she buried her face in his back and inhaled him deep into her lungs.

“I can come up with an excuse. Maybe we’ll both catch the flu for the weekend. Or a stomach bug,” she said.

“I think we used that excuse last time.”

“Hm. Then both our great-grandmothers suffered tragic accidents and we have to spend all weekend grieving. In bed. Together. While watching tv and eating.”

She felt his whole body rumble with laughter. The mountain found her amusing, and that made her body feel tight all over.

“Yeah, our great-grandmothers are dead and so are our grandmothers, so I think we’re shit out of luck.”

Rhys turned in Missy’s arms and flicked water in her face. She flinched and almost told him off, but quickly forgave him when he apologized with a kiss. Soft, warm, gentle lips and hands. They left invisible smudges of charcoal dust and acrylic paint on her clothes and skin. A cacophony of reds and blues and blacks all over her body as he touched. She felt so happy and alive. 

Rhys captivated her still, even after so many months had come and gone. By now, she would usually be tired of her partners. Things would get repetitive and stale. Sleeping with the same person day in and day out, tasting the same lips, being touched in the same places…it got boring. But not Rhys.

He undid her and made her whole every time. Everything was new, yet the familiarity of his skin and breath on hers was soothing. All she could think about was Rhys and his warm, gentle lips. His soft brown hair. Those chocolate brown eyes with long eyelashes. Missy loved Rhys, and she was pretty sure he loved her.

*

At nearly midnight on Sunday, they stumbled into Rhys’s apartment in a tangle of drunken limbs. He held on to Missy’s waist while steering her towards the bedroom. It was usually so difficult to get Rhys drunk, but at some point someone had forced them to drink some terrible concoction that tasted like college parties and terrible life decisions. Rhys had drunk cup after cup of it until Jackie’s housewarming party was over and someone called them a car.

Neither of them liked drunk sex, really, but somehow they still ended up on the bed, moving together like a pair of snakes. All twisted limbs and sweaty flesh sliding against each other. Then they passed out in a puddle of dirty bedsheets and discarded clothing, breathing in sync, holding hands and exchanging groans of nausea.

When Missy came to again, she had to run straight for the bathroom to puke. The world spun and teetered on its axis, threatening to hurl her off with no remorse or regard for her life. She coughed and heaved into the white porcelain.

“Fuck, I’m never drinking again,” she swore for the millionth time to herself, the earth, and the bathroom tiles. She was on the floor surrounded by their dirty laundry. Rhys wasn’t good with household chores, and Missy was just too lazy. She had never even learned how to do laundry.

“Rhys?” She called out for him pitifully from her new home on a pile of his paint stained clothes. “Hey, can you bring me water?”

There was no answer, but she wasn’t too surprised. He’d had far more to drink than her. Maybe he was still passed out on the bed, too far gone to hear her dying of alcohol poisoning.

She lay naked on his dirty clothes, her eyes opening and closing as waves of inebriation washed over her. The ceiling tiles were old and stained like those of an abandoned building. Stark white speckled with black and gray. The bright fluorescent lights pricked her sensitive eyes, and she groaned. Maybe a shower would help? Rhys had a great shower. Half of the reasons she still stayed revolved around his shower and its pretty cerulean blue glass tiles. The shower head was one of those fancy ones that imitated a waterfall. She could sit under the water and whisper promises of sobriety to the drain.

“Rhys?” Missy tried again. When he didn’t answer, she crawled into the shower and surrendered to it.

Water somewhere between ice cold and lukewarm flowed down her back and she sighed, giving in to its mystical powers. Showers were magical. They gave her a nice, safe space to unwind and think. It was like nothing existed anymore when she was taking a good shower. Baths were nice too, but they didn’t provide that sense of nothingness quite like a shower did. The sound of water soothed her nerves, it settled her stomach, wet her hair. She melted under the faux waterfall and waited for the nausea to fade away.

Rhys never answered her pleas for water, so she drank from the shower head until it sloshed around in her now empty belly. She toweled off and creeped back into his bedroom, looking for him among the bedsheets. When she didn’t find him there, she went to the living room. Sometimes he needed a late night meal, so she went to the kitchen. She checked the guest bathroom and the spare bedroom, but still no sign of her lumbering sweetheart.

She caught sight of a crimson door down the long hallway. Ah. The basement. Maybe he’d gotten some strange inspiration from the impending hangover. Though, as magical and big as Rhys was, he probably didn’t get sick or hungover. He hardly got drunk. Rhys spent most of his time taking care of her during parties and get-togethers.

Quietly, she crept down the black steel staircase leading into Rhys’s basement studio. About midway down, she was hit with the smell of him. The scent of his skin, the paints, chalk, and something so terribly strong and unfamiliar that she couldn’t place. Like plastic and wet stone. Earthy yet artificial. She wrinkled her nose and called out for him.

She found Rhys shirtless and covered in smudges of charcoal and paint again. His hair was a mess, like he’d just rolled out of a fitful sleep and wandered to his studio without looking at a mirror first. He was bent over the table, a pencil in hand, furiously scratching thick lines onto a large sheet of paper. At his feet were three white buckets and dusty white bags of plaster. His bare foot rested on a crate of wires and thin metal sheets.

“I finally found you,” she said.

He whirled around, eyes wide and so very dark. The pencil in his hand snapped in half and both ends clattered to the ground. Missy jumped. He reached out and grabbed her shoulder. “You scared the shit out of me.”

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to.” She pressed a kiss to his sternum and tasted ashes. He wrapped his arms around and drew her against his body. Glancing over his shoulder, she saw what he was working on. A sketch of a woman, with a small waist and long slender legs, wide hips, streaming hair, a small nose, full lips. A picture perfect depiction of beauty and everything Missy wasn’t.

“Who’s that?” she asked.

“Just someone I saw in a dream.”

His arms tightened around her and he gently pushed her towards the stairs. They climbed back up hand in hand, Missy’s stomach still swirling with the remnants of alcohol in her system. Rhys offered to make her pancakes, and she accepted with a smile on her face.

*

“I have a favor to ask you, baby.”

“Hmm?”

“Can I have one of your dresses? Preferably something in a soft pink or blue?”

Missy eyed him from head to toe, raising an eyebrow and grinning. “I don’t think we’re the same size, Rhys.”

He rolled his eyes and insisted it wasn’t for him. He’d been spending most of his time downstairs in his studio recently and smelled strange. Instead of his usual woody ash and paint scent, he smelled like plastic and dampness. It made her wrinkle her nose and demand he take a shower before crawling into bed with her.

When Missy came back to his apartment the next day after work, she brought him a few dresses to pick from. He chose a blush pink silky number that had once been a bridesmaid dress. It clung to her body in an almost flattering way, with an open back and a flowing skirt that made her feel like a princess. “Good choice,” she said, and he smiled.

That night, he made her fried chicken and mashed potatoes with okra. He slept with an arm around her waist and his nose buried in her hair.

*

“Jewelry?”

“What?”

“Like earrings, a necklace, some rings?”

It was for his sculpture. His beautiful, tall, long-haired, perfectly proportioned sculpture that took up most of his free time now. “I want her to be like you, kind of." That was his explanation. He asked for bits and baubles, things that were part of Missy so he could tack them on his sculpture and think of her while he made it.

“I-I don’t have much.”

But she still brought over her small jewelry box and let him pick through it. His sweet eyes lit up when he found a pair of opal earrings and a long chain with a single teardrop pearl pendant. Missy followed him downstairs this time and watched him work.

Thick, blunt fingers worked at the cold wet plaster, gently molding and scraping away with small tools to get even the smallest of details right. Missy’s eyes followed the way he lovingly smoothed the sculpted woman’s cheek and jaws, a tender smile blessing his lips. Too tender.

“What about dinner?” Missy asked after hours had come and gone. Her stomach rumbled, reminding her she was very much a lumpy human, not some smooth sculpture.

“Order us some takeout, yeah? From that sushi place you love so much.” He didn’t take his eyes off his work.

*

He combed his fingers through her hair, pulling on knotted waves and curls. She hissed in pain and smacked his hand away, but he only crowded her further into his bathroom.

“I think she should have hair, don’t you?”

“Like a wig?”

“No, your hair. She should have your hair.”

Missy swallowed and looked into his mirror. Her hair was unruly and unkempt. She wore it in a ponytail most of the time if she had to go out and didn’t wash it nearly enough. Wasn’t it wasted on her, anyway? And Rhys looked so excited, his lips brushing against the back of her neck.

“I think she’d look beautiful with your hair.”

They didn’t eat that night. He came into bed smelling like his other woman and took Missy into his arms like always, only this time he ran his hands over what remained of her hair, petting her like one would a precious pet. He uttered such sweet devotions into her hair and covered her in kisses, loving on her like it was the only sustenance either of them needed. Missy fed on it. She gorged herself on those tender adorations since she was starved.

Missy loved Rhys, and she thought Rhys loved her, but he truly loved his art.

*

His hand was warm in hers as he walked her down to the basement. He presented her with his sculpture like a proud parent. It dominated the space now, all of his paintings, easels, and supplies shoved to the sides like they were discarded hobbies. Only the sculpture remained perched on a metal pedestal, dressed in the pink dress, opal earrings glowing under the artificial lights. She seemed serene, the sculpture. And her sculptor beamed with pure, unadulterated pride and joy.

“Isn’t she beautiful?”

“Yeah, very.”

Rhys put his hand on the small of Missy’s back and turned to look down at her. Black eyes sparked with tenderness. He looked like he cared. Missy pushed up on her tiptoes and kissed him on the lips, tasting plastic, damp earth, and the sting of metal. Her smile wavered, lips melting around the edges, but his didn’t.

“She’s missing something,” he said.

Missy looked back at the sculpture. So realistic. He’d even carved dimples into her cheeks and freckles across the bridge of her nose. Gray on smooth white. He’d painted her eyes a startling shade of spring green and gold with black ochre pupils.

“What is she missing?”

His teeth were milky white and slightly crooked, points sharp and gleaming. He leaned in close and touched his lips to her forehead, leaving behind a trace of heat. Something cold touched the center of her chest. It bit in, cold and sharp and painful.

“A heart,” he said. “She’s missing her heart.”