The studio apartment pulsed with color and chaos. Sunlight poured in through the cracked window, catching on the glitter still floating in the air like fairy dust that refused to settle. My playlist buzzed softly in the background — a mix of indie rock, spoken word poetry, and ambient sounds of city streets. The noise comforted me. It matched the noise in my head.
I stood in front of my canvas, half-finished, hands trembling slightly from too much coffee and not enough sleep. The reds were bleeding too much into the blacks. It wasn’t working. Nothing I did lately seemed to work.
Knock knock knock.
Three soft knocks on the door. Then silence. I didn’t answer.
“Rhea. I brought you breakfast,” Mom’s voice filtered through.
I closed my eyes.
“Just leave it outside,” I called back, trying to sound calm, normal, not like someone who was unraveling one brushstroke at a time.
She didn’t reply, but I heard the gentle rustle of a bag being placed on the floor and her footsteps walking away.
I didn’t open the door. I stared at the canvas again. My fingers twitched, aching to fix it, to fix everything. But my mind wandered instead — to her.
Ira.
She’d been a blur in my mind these past few days, like a memory trying too hard to be forgotten. The truth was, I didn’t even know her. Not really. Just a stranger I met in the waiting room, the one who didn’t flinch when I confessed that sometimes I felt like I was burning from the inside out.
The day I bumped into her… she’d looked thinner. Sadder. Her smile had been polite but tired. I hadn’t stopped to look longer.
I shook the thought away. No more distractions. I had a deadline coming up. The gallery needed three complete pieces by next week, and so far, I had half of one and a mountain of crumpled drafts.
I picked up the brush again. The red was still too angry. Or maybe I was. I thought of Dad’s voice echoing in my head: “You have to be practical, Rhea. Art won’t pay your rent forever.”
He hadn’t come around much since my diagnosis. Bipolar. Like it was some scary word to tiptoe around. Like I’d suddenly become fragile glass.
But I wasn’t glass. I was a storm.
By late afternoon, I finally emerged from my cave. My hands were stained and stiff. The breakfast mom left had gone cold. I ate it anyway, sitting cross-legged on the floor, staring out the window.
Down on the street, people moved like pieces of a broken music box — some dancing, some trudging, all unaware of the chaos inside my apartment… or my mind.
I checked my phone. Two new messages from Ava.
Ava: “We’re still on for group tomorrow? Dr. Chandra said you should show up more.” Ava (again): “Also, I found something you might like — poetry slam next Friday. Open mic. Wanna go?”
I didn’t reply right away. Ava had been the one person from the hospital who stuck around after discharge. She was sunshine with anxiety issues, the kind of person who laughed even when she was crying. I admired her for that.
I texted back finally:
Me: “Yeah. Group, fine. Open mic… maybe.”
My fingers hovered over the keyboard. I almost typed, “Have you seen Ira?” but deleted it before hitting send.
The next day, group therapy was more crowded than usual. A few new faces. One girl looked barely older than sixteen, hair dyed blue and tears barely hidden beneath eyeliner. Another guy had a service dog and didn’t say a word the whole session.
I sat quietly at the corner of the circle. Ava sat next to me, nudging me now and then with whispered commentary that made me smile despite myself.
Then Ira walked in.
I didn’t expect it. My body stiffened the moment I saw her. She looked… different. Her long black hair was tied up messily, dark circles under her eyes. But she was still beautiful in that soft, broken way. Like a stained-glass window with pieces missing but still catching the light.
She didn’t see me at first. She took a seat directly across the circle, not even glancing up. I tried to focus on the group leader’s voice, something about “coping mechanisms” and “honoring your feelings,” but my brain was buzzing.
Was it rude to ignore her? Did she even remember me?
Suddenly, she looked up. Our eyes met.
My heart thudded.
She didn’t smile. But she didn’t look away either.
Something passed between us — not recognition, but maybe… understanding?
When the group ended, people slowly started leaving. I lingered behind, stuffing my sketchpad into my tote bag. Ira was standing near the coffee station, holding a paper cup with trembling fingers.
I didn’t plan on walking up to her. But my feet moved on their own.
“Hey.”
She looked up. Her expression didn’t change much, but I noticed her eyes soften slightly.
“Rhea, right?”
I nodded.
“You remembered,” I said, more surprised than I should have been.
“Of course,” she said simply. “You talk like a poet. Hard to forget.”
My breath caught. I wasn’t sure what to say next.
“Are you… okay?” I asked.
She gave a tired smile. “Getting divorced,” she said, like she was saying she’d lost a shoe. “He cheated. My mom found out. Now everything’s chaos.”
I stared at her, unsure if I was supposed to say something comforting or just listen.
“I’m sorry,” I said eventually.
She shrugged. “I’m not. Not anymore. Just feels weird. Like… everything I built was a lie.”
I nodded. “Yeah. I get that.”
For a second, we stood there in silence. Two strangers clinging to pieces of truth. And maybe something else.
“Well,” she said finally, “see you around.”
I watched her walk away, her coffee still untouched.
That night, I painted again. But this time, I wasn’t trying to fix anything. I let the colors bleed where they wanted. I let the reds scream and the blacks swallow. And somewhere in the middle of that storm, I painted her — Ira. The curve of her neck, the sadness in her eyes, the quiet way she held her grief.
And for the first time in days, I felt okay.
Not good. Not healed.
Just… okay.
And sometimes, okay was enough.
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Updated 11 Episodes
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