Fixing Noah / Finding Noah - #ForNoah | +18 | BWWM

22 | Part 4 - Eye of the storm

The stretched shadows of night loom over the museum. Those shadows feel more like a mausoleum than a cheery museum filled with masterpieces. My heels echo in the empty museum in search for Noah. One shadowy room at a time I crisscrossed. But he's in none of them. The last room was the one where we left off earlier on the tour with Noah, Theo, and me.

Found him.

Relief with a mix of apprehension settles into my stomach because Noah doesn't look like Noah to me. He sits on a bench in front of the painting we left off with. It's large and manages to make even Noah look small. His sandy blonde hair gathers down, blocking his ocean eyes. His sizable body is rigid, the opposite of the rocking from the press conference. But these fingers move in a mystifying pattern. Fidgets overtake him and his fingers move in a pattern I'm learning to dread.

Thumb to his fourth finger, then pinky, third finger, pinky again, the fourth finger, the pattern loops again.

This Noah unlike the Noah at sea, a big smile, sandy hair ready to catch the wind, and a bigger heart. So very married to the nature that embraces him freely. Whipping in the wind, his long sandy hair ready to catch every trade wind from the sea. But he's stuck on land like a fish without water. My heart breaks for the man on the bench because this Noah is one I've never met before. This Noah is unmistakably a man I might have glimpsed at through a lens at a distance. But for the first time, I see his ocean has abandoned him. There's no Neptune here, no sea, and not a blue wave in sight.

It's then I realize the truth. Or a truth. A tiny small little truth for Noah. That his life isn't all trade winds and Neptune. It's not all beautiful paintings and wondrous woodworking. Quite kind words and him trying to tell me more without a real way to know-how. That for Noah, it's also not being able to do things. Simple things like mingling, or going to crowded places. That a ton of things I see as normal simple stuff might not be on the table for Noah. The way I see Noah isn't the way the world might see Noah. Because look how Theo saw Noah in those fast few seconds in a hallway. That could have gone really bad. Unsaid words locked in my throat. Unshed tears burn the back of my eyes.

I sit next to Noah on the bench. His gaze never falls away from the painting. Sometimes shit just doesn't work out. The divide between Noah and me grows. My iPhone vibrates in my pocket with notifications. The phone was at the insistence of the world, wanting attention. The next scandal and drama for awful people to exploit to make themselves feel better for a second. This time, thanks to Trisa from the drama kiss, it's our turn and another happy home falls into the bottom of an empty dried-out sea.

He clenches his fist tight; it stops his fidget fingers. A lip print on his neck from another woman looks more like a scar than lipstick. I lift my hand carefully. My thumb wipes the blood-red lipstick from his neck. Noah flinches away from my touch. His fingers go back to decoding the world around him. Noah's breathing runs a race as he gobbles up the air in the art museum. We sit in silence together until his breathing slows. His big muscles relax, finally unlocked from his rigid pose. The silent stretches following the shadows of the room in the dim light. Until Noah finally speaks.

"Stephen Kaltenbach, Portrait of My Father, the painting is 10x14. It's one of my favorites," he whispered. He smiles at the painting instead of at me. A sad, desolate kind of smile. "When you stand close to it. It is as if you are inside the painting." My eyes shift from Noah to the painting. He's right, it dwarfs you almost like you're climbing inside the moment of the painting. "The artist spent seven years painting his dying father. In the passage between life and death." Little wisps of blackness encroached on the older man. His mouth opens wide for the last breath halted, forever frozen in the moment of in-between. Bright colors dance over the man's body in the painting, but the blackness trickles in persistently. The multi colors and darkness mix. Weighing down the man as he stretches up in the moment of death.

"Death oozing to engulf his dying father?" I question, trying to find the meaning of the painting. The whispered words did not dare to echo in the empty museum. My mind locked on the reason why someone would spend seven years painting so intimately a moment of his father. Melancholy drips in the words, I told him, but I didn't notice it before.

"In my mind, it is... life rising up," Noah stated. He laid his hands flat on the bench. Little fidgets, but not as big as they were before. The storm recedes, leaving the world exposed, stark. You can get no idea how powerful the painting is until you stand before it. Until the painting dwarfs you in its frame. You find yourself brought to the passage of life and death. Not looking for answers, but because of Noah, I now see the beauty of life.

Life rising.

My heart breaks a little opening up. Not all heartbreaks are for the worst, sometimes it's for the better. Heartbreak can be a way to let a little something magical in through the cracks. Noah's fingers move on the bench. The pattern is less noticeable, but still there.

I move my hand on the bench so the tip of my pinky touches his hand; we connect. A hard, shaky sigh escapes his lips. And then Noah stills, and his big muscles relax.  

A/n: When I make stuff on wattpad I always want it to be more multimedia than a standard book. I've been working on a new project really having that in mind. This was the kind of multi-media moment that I want a bit more of I think. see you next week!  (goodbye Crooker art for now!)