( just a silhouette )
There it was. The guilt struck her quick and struck her hot. She felt his weight on her shoulders, but shook her head quickly in hopes of getting rid of it. “I know…six months is a long time…which is why you don’t have to tell me what’s going on”, she mumbled, biting down on her bottom lip. Her eyes slipped away from the paper and to his fingers on the inside of her wrist. “You never have to tell me if you won’t ever feel like it, I’ll just be the silent partner. I’ll sit here and be the friend who is just there”, she admitted, letting her eyes finally fall away from his fingers and back to her blank page that only had a few strokes of her pencil.
Autumn finally looked up to Julian with a smile that seemed to be mixed with a soft smirk. “I don’t think there is such thing as too many pictures of Julian Lauritzen”, she admitted leaning over and tilting his chin a certain way. She hummed quietly as her fingers lightly touched his skin, fixing him into a more natural position. “Don’t be rigid, just keep looking out…tell me about the things you made today”, she smiled, picking her pencil back up as she sat back into her place. As she looked over at him, instead of the ocean, gently stroking the pencil again the page. “You’ll always be my model, nothing can change that.”
Autumn's words were quiet, barely audible with the wind and the surf, but even with six months and a continent between where they used to be, Jules was attuned to Autumn's voice; he would always be able to pick it out of a crowd. That much had not changed; that much was certain. His gaze settled somewhere just to the side of Autumn's knee as she spoke, and even in that moment, even as he knew that if this was when he was going to tell her something - he couldn't come up with a single word. But he didn't want Autumn to feel like that, like she was just there. He turned his head, resting his forehead against the railing, blinking down at his hands in his lap, searched for words that he knew he couldn't find. And as he did, it seemed that his hands grew further and further away, and Jules closed his eyes, inhaled deeply, held it, and let it out as slowly as possible, exhaling with the ocean, trying hard to quell the panic rising in sharp waves through his chest, into his shoulders, to his fingertips and stomach. He focused on the scratching of Autumn's pencil, on the memory of her arms around him and the scent of her soap, on the sensation of having her here, with him. She was never just there.
The press of her fingers on his chin brought his gaze back to her, wide brown eyes that had been described in a variety of ways, among them warm, soft, and doe-like, snapping up to her face, as he drew his bottom lip between his teeth, shrinking slightly away from her ------ but he still smiled at her, small and sad, apologetic for his instinctual behavior, and let her gently steer his gaze back to the water. He alighted on a sailboat, working her way back to shore, and he focused on the white triangles of her sails as Jules finally released his lip from between his teeth. "I - um. Tried - I. A raspberry lemon coffee cake, but I - I think the icing was too sweet. And cake pops? Which is - they're - they're always - I like making them, and people - people always like them! So - r-red - red velvet and - red velvet and birthday cake, um - we had - we had a birthday order! Not of the cake pops, but for a pie. Peach." This last word came out clipped, quick, as he became suddenly aware of how long he'd been talking, and that Autumn was trying to focus on her drawing. He breathed out an apology, a soft, "Sorry, I'm sorry," and he dropped his eyes again, though stopped short of letting himself fall out of the position Autumn had put him in.
