Page 152 of Undone

I didn’t remember the day it happened. I barely remembered the week after. A hospital. Then my dad’s room—not mine, and him in the chair across from me. Nothing but anger across his face, which only made me want to close my eyes and recede back into darkness again.

Toren looks much the same way now, fists against his thighs sitting on the side of my bed, his shoulders heaving with breath.

Bennett and Paloma were both downstairs when we got home, the former cooking dinner while my roommate sat atop the counter and watched, a familiar sight. I hadn’t seen them since last night at the final party before Frozen Four when we ended up with pizza at what they called the “Hockey House.” So, when Toren ignores their polite greeting, already halfway up the stairs, I’m sure it was easy for them to tell something has happened. I only lingered a moment, letting her know everything was fine, before I rushed upstairs after Toren.

Even if I didn’t know if it was.

Toren Kane had never been difficult for me to read. I’d say he went out of his way to always make it easy for me to read. His emotions, his responses . . . none of it was ever left to chance or a surprise to me. I always felt comforted by that.

Now, I’m unsure.

And I’m still sweaty from skating and then the adrenaline, and it’s turned cold since the ride back on Toren’s bike. My brain can’t concentrate enough to have this conversation with him if I feel like this.

Toren clears his throat, and I look over at him just as he pushes those ring-adorned fists into my soft bedding to stand, eyes tracking my every fidgety move.

He’s not angry. Upset, yes, but not mad. And it’s not directed at me.

There’s a distinct line between his brows that I ache to soothe out with my thumb. I’m chewing my lips raw as I shuffle on my feet again, leaning against my wall, then, thinking better of it, pushing off and crossing my arms.

I clear my throat, mouth opening like I’m going to say something. I should say something.

Will Toren understand? There is no part of me I’ve wanted to hide from him, and this isn’t what my dad has made it out to be. It isn’t.

My stomach swoops again as I replay my father’s words. Nostrils flaring, eyes burning half in anger, half in pain. My hands climb to cover my face, just for a moment of relief, like Sorrowing Old Man (At Eternity’s Gate).

I remember the day I told Toren I didn’t like that one, as my fingers danced over the page. “Van Gogh’s Final Paintings” the header read. Everyone liked to focus on that one, because I think to some it represented his immense struggles, like a signal to his forthcoming suicide. I always believed it had to be more complicated. He’d also painted Almond Blossom then, and that painting was for his newborn nephew.

My eyes track to where Toren’s sleeves are rolled up, the replica of that floral twining down his arm.

Most believe Van Gogh’s last painting to be Tree Roots, though many argue it was Wheatfield with Crows. Could it be argued that those were expressions of grief and depression? Maybe. But it wasn’t the obvious answer.

Besides, I painted sad things all the time. My dad in that dark room. A blurred version of our family portrait with the flames of the grand fireplace just licking up it. Toren’s scar and my matching one.

Was it so bad to want to capture that and hang on to it? To feel it intentionally rather than as something I couldn’t control? Was it bad to want to look at a painting and feel not joy but sadness, and in that moment realize I could find something beautiful in it?

At seven years old I’d seen something sad in Toren and thought he was beautiful because of it, not in spite of it. Did he see me that way?

Was that the purpose of the painting of the old man?

“Do you think the Doctor Gachet portrait is so sad because he thought Van Gogh was a lost cause?”

The words spill out accidentally, but Toren doesn’t look surprised. If anything, he looks almost comforted. A deep breath enters his lungs, and I watch as it expands the already wide breadth of his chest. Slow, steady.

I doubt anyone else would describe Toren Kane as steady. But he’s always been that for me. He’s always been, in a way, whatever I needed. A foundational rock to cling to. A match to light the dampened fire within me.

“You’re not a lost cause, Lil,” he says soft, stepping toward me.

There has never been anyone else in my life that could read me like him. No one else would follow the strange train of my thoughts. It’s as if Toren holds a road map to my brain.

“Come here,” he says. “Let’s take a bath.”

Confused, and still frustrated that we’ve been here and I’ve yet to say anything that really means something, I follow him into my bathroom.

He runs the tap, waiting until the temperature is downright boiling, before sliding the stopper closed. Then, he turns to my left-side second drawer. My chest pulls, watching his massive, tattooed hands grab for the silver and gold bottles of all my usual products—lavender-scented foam bubble bath that was way too expensive for me to use as often as I did, almond oil for my skin, another bottle of expensive milk bath.

Toren chooses the last of them, pouring just enough.

In high school, I used to do this for him. He’d complain lightly about it being “overkill” and not to waste my “stupid expensive soaps” on him. But I bought half of them so that I could spoil him.