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“And number twenty-four...fall in love forever.”
Vanessa’s fingers tightened on the pen until she was sure it would break. She tried to write the last goal, but the page was too blurry.
Then Adele’s fingers brushed against the back of her hand. She latched onto her friend’s cool touch and pressed Adele’s hand to her heated cheek. “That’s...that’s quite a list.”
“It’s not a list. It’s a life. Your life.” Adele’s voice became strong and clear, more than it has been in days. “It’s time for you to get back to it.”
“Adele—”
“You’ve been with me constantly over the last year. I’m surprised you’ve found time to get any painting done, not that I want you to jump back into your crazy work schedule.” She paused for another breath. “And I know it’s you I have to thank for being as comfortable with this outrageously expensive hospital room. My mom and I are so grateful—”
“Oh, shut up,” Vanessa admonished her friend gently, her gaze still on the blurred list. “You know I would pay anything—do anything—to have you well again.”
Adele jiggled on Vanessa’s hand, signaling she wanted her attention. Vanessa brushed away the tears before looking at her friend who’d tugged the plastic mask from her face.
“What’s that saying? We only have one shot at life, but if we do it right once is enough? You know better than most—especially now—how quickly life can be taken away,” Adele said, her voice low and strained. “Don’t get so lost in your art after I’m gone that you forget about all the wonderful things waiting out there for you.”
“I still have three pieces to finish,” Vanessa said, the familiar argument returning once again. One that had started years ago between them when she’d spent her thirteenth birthday working on a painting instead of attending a school dance. “You know how I get before a show. This is an important one, too. People are coming from Europe, the Far East—”
“You’ve been painting since you were a kid,” Adele cut her off. “You were a star in the art world at seventeen and we both know that’s because you buried yourself in your art after your mom died. Please don’t do that again. Thanks to your gift and your trust fund, you’re set for...life. It’s time to live it.”
“You make me sound like a nun or something.”
“You’re not too far off. What happened to that fun-loving girl you were a few years ago?”
Vanessa’s memory flashed back to her time in Paris. “That was college, Adele. Being foolish and wild was part of the curriculum back then. Now, it’s about my work.”
“There’s more to life...than work. Than art.”
Vanessa had heard all of this before. Adele had always been supportive of her career, especially during the darkest moment in her life after her mother died when Vanessa was only sixteen, but she also constantly reminded her there was more to the world than her beloved brushes and paints.
“Art is my life, Adele. It’s what got me through the pain and the heartache last time.” She pulled in a deep breath, but her eyes filled again. “I’m counting on it to help me again.... Oh, how am I going to...”
Adele tightened her hold. “Please, don’t be sad...for too long. We’ve talked about this. That’s why I insisted we finish our list. I want you to go out there and experience all the things we’ve dreamed about. I want you to put check marks by every single one of those items.”
The fact that her friend was spending her last days thinking of her made the constant ache inside Vanessa fracture a bit more, sending icy tentacles deeper and further, their frozen tips scraping at her heart. The feeling was a familiar one, felt for the first time since almost a decade ago.
The time from her mother’s diagnosis to her death had been less than eight months, barely any time for them—her or her parents—to come to terms with the illness that would take her life. While her father had thrown himself into his work after the funeral, Vanessa had done the same, her art allowing her a way to express her pain and grief.
Back then she’d poured all her fears onto the canvas in the back of her mind, she too worried that she might die young. Though genetic testing reassured her she was unlikely to develop the same disease, and her time in her studio produced magnificent pieces of abstract art that made her famous, for years, Vanessa had been unable to shake the feeling that something bad was about to happen to her.
She’d never dreamed it would be the loss of her best friend.
