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Noah played with the neckline once more before giving up. “I’ve been told I don’t know how to take the right kind of chances.”
“Now you want to?”
“Apparently it’s healthy.” She fumbled with the wrapping on her burger. “What about you?”
“I don’t think I follow.”
“Kissing me.” Noah looked back up at me. “When a few months ago, you couldn’t stand to look at me.”
“I could stand looking at you. You’ve never been hard on the eyes, Pastel.”
“You sure? Or do you think?” She smiled, and the teasing glint in her eyes made me relax.
“I’m sure,” I promised. “And yeah, I’m trying something new.”
Noah's gaze dipped for a second before she looked out at the ocean again. The dim lights at the top of the garage painted us blue like water, waves large and loud. The garage was a good distance away from the busier tourist strips, so we could enjoy the melodic sounds of the water meeting the shore.
“When you said you got burned out earlier,” Noah started. She wasn’t smiling anymore, and I wasn’t either.
“How did you know to take a break? How did you know it’d work?” Her questions came out slowly, as if she was still deciding whether or not to ask.
I picked at my toasted bun. “Asking for a friend or…?”
“I’m curious. You never struck me as someone who got burned out.”
“That’s because you don’t see artists who are better than you as human,” I said without thinking.
She huffed out a laugh but didn't add anything.
“Sorry,” I whispered. “It’s hard to turn the hostility off sometimes.”
“I get it. Trust me, I get it.” She leaned forward a little, whispering the next part like we weren’t all alone up here. “But I’ve always seen you as a human. No matter how good you are at what you do. You know why?”
I shook my head, mesmerized by how her lips moved when she insulted me with, “You’re an asshole. Assholes are the most human of us all.”
I laughed, both impressed and turned on. “Fair enough.”
“I never thought you’d burn out because you’re always so sure of what line to draw next. You’re a never-ending pit of ideas.”
“I am,” I agreed. “But not all those lines I draw are the right ones.”
“How can you tell the right ones from the wrong ones?”
“When you put them down and don’t feel anything,” I said without hesitation.
She blinked, surprised and intrigued by the statement.
“I got into an eight-year rhythm with Harpy. During that time, I never tried to leave. I wanted to be a head artist, and when I got that, I wanted to have an original, bestselling comic there. I drew and drew whatever they wanted me to. Every line was committed to memory. I could draw every character in every comic without looking at a reference sheet. All my ideas I’d come up with over the years, I gave the best to them, thinking I’d always have more.”
I swallowed, voice heavy with embarrassment about the next part. “I was wrong. In hindsight, anyone could see that coming from a mile away. I gave some of the writers of Captain Silver an idea I thought was simple, maybe even a little cliché. They ran with it. Developed it. That storyline became the best in the past decade.”
Noah shifted, eyes sympathetic. “You didn’t get any credit for it, did you?”
“No.” I clicked my tongue on the roof of my mouth. “I wasn’t upset over it, not at first, because that’s how things go in this field. You’ve seen our meetings. It’s a group effort. But, when I tried to use that success to pitch something, the editors weren’t hearing it. They said I wasn’t ready to helm my own comic. Which, I guess, could be fair. Taking a chance on a new IP is risky, but I couldn’t take it. The days started seeming the same, and so did the stories. We started recycling old characters, arcs, and designs. I was on a loop, and I couldn’t break out of it. Comics didn’t feel worth it anymore. If that wasn’t worth it…was anything?”
She nodded, eyes unfocused. “When the art becomes everything, there's nothing else to fill up that space.”
I felt some of the tense muscles in my back relax. Noah hadn't tried to comfort me with the ‘there’s more to life’ bullshit sentiment everyone spewed in my direction when I felt myself sinking. She understood how all-consuming our work could become.
