Months went by. They ticked by slowly like the second hand on a clock. She could feel time passing, creeping along. And she hadn’t seen Hawthorne. As much as Victoria pushed him away, she hadn’t expected him to leave. But still, she would never break. She wasn’t going to go groveling back to him. They had nothing anyway. They had no true friendship. They had no relationship. They had an almost night that had only made them more hostile toward one another.
Yet, Victoria missed him.
The feeling didn’t last long before she was boxing up her apartment. She’d been here too long already and it was time to get on her way. So after finding a new place on the other side of the country, Victoria settled down in an up and coming city. Nothing too big, but nothing small enough to where anyone could gossip about her.
She went back to her art, painting something new almost every day and eventually had enough to start sending out to dealers and gallery owners. It took a few months, but eventually, she had eight pieces in a local gallery and the gala was supposed to be very low key--only the wealthiest in the country were invited to attend.
She was never nervous at these things. Her paintings always sold--though she couldn’t imagine how anyone understood the points she was making in them. But still, she enjoyed a good party. And in her new dress and heels, she sipped her champagne and made polite chit-chat with a few people as they scanned her work. She didn’t, however, expect a familiar face to be there. Certainly not this face. The one that adorned the most important painting in the gallery. An abstract painting of Hawthorne hung on the wall in the very back of the gallery. It had attracted quite a crowd around it, but Victoria had chosen to stay on the opposite side of the room for the night. She told the dealer she didn’t even want to know how much it would sell for.
