Burned(49)

“I can’t believe you kept these,” I whisper as a tear rolls down my cheek when I get to the bottom of the tote and pull out the one that I was most proud of. It was a silhouette of Collin standing in front of the town fire station like he’d done so many times when we were together.
“Of course I kept them,” he says, standing up in front of me. “They’re brilliant and I always expected to see ones just like them hanging in a gallery one day.”
I swallow down the embarrassment I feel over never mustering the strength to follow through with my dreams like he did. When we broke up, it was just easier to push them aside. Every time I looked at the pile of hemp paper and the bucket of gunpowder my parents stored in their garage for me, it reminded me of him and I could never bring myself to create another one. A few years after Jordan and I got married, my parents brought over a truckload of my old things when they cleaned out their garage. When Jordan asked about my art supplies and I tried to explain to him how it all worked, his eyes glazed over in boredom. A week later, he had thrown everything away because it was taking up too much space in our garage.
“Why didn’t you do it, Lee? Why didn’t you go to art school and pursue this?”
He’s asked me a few times about my art during the phone conversations we’ve had, but I always changed the subject. I wasn’t ready to look that deeply inside of myself and tell him how much of a coward I was back then. I also didn’t want him to feel bad that he was one of the reasons I let that dream fade away.
“Because some jerk broke my heart when I was seventeen,” I joke.
Collin stands up and takes the last piece of paper out of my hands and lets it flutter back down inside the tote. “That guy was a total * and had no idea what he was letting go. But that shouldn’t have had any bearing on your dreams.”
He rests his hands on my hips and I place my palms against his chest. “Well, it kind of did. You were my fire, Collin. I lost the desire to play with it when you left.”
He closes his eyes and sighs and I can tell he’s going to start blaming himself. He needs to know that there were so many other factors that contributed to my not pursing a career in art.
“I took a few art classes in college and quickly realized that my unusual skill would never pay the bills as an adult. When I took an internship at a marketing firm, I really enjoyed the work. Not as much as art, but enough. I switched majors and when I graduated, I was offered a good job with the firm in town as a marketing manager. Jordan and I were already living together by then and the bills were starting to pile up. It was good money and I couldn’t turn that down regardless of the fact that I knew I wanted to be doing something else.”
Collin shakes his head sadly. “You were so talented, Finnley. Didn’t Jordan see that? Didn’t he encourage you to do what you’d always dreamed of doing?”
“I tried to talk to him about it a few times, but he wasn’t really interested in my work. He was too busy trying to become an artist himself. He always told me that he wanted one of us to have steady employment and when he was established in his own tattoo shop, it would be my turn. Since his dream never came true, he probably thought mine shouldn’t either. Now that I look back on it, I think he was jealous. He’d heard my parents mention how talented I was several times and I don’t think he wanted to compete with me.”
Collin pulls me into his body and wraps his arms around my waist, holding me tight.
“I would have sacrificed everything to make your dreams come true, Lee,” he tells me softly.
Another tear slides down my cheek as I rest my head against his chest, so overcome with emotion that I can’t find the words to tell him how much it all means to me.