Spare
Each day that Taylor sat at home alone, with nothing at all to occupy his time but his thoughts, was a day that he felt closer to going completely insane. He found himself walking by the windows often just to get a glimpse of the outside world. It wasn’t as informative or entertaining as watching television for an even wider view of world, but it allowed him to flex his brain in ways that didn’t hurt as much as constantly thinking about Zac and Charlotte.
His living room had big picture windows that allowed him to sit on his couch with a cup of coffee and still have a nearly 360 degree view of his street. Every day, he spent hours there watching as cars drove up and down the street and the neighbors he didn’t even know lived their lives just yards away. He invented elaborate histories for each of them just to amuse himself.
The one neighbor he didn’t have to invent a history for was Shiloh.
It took him less than a week to memorize her schedule – when she left for the record store and when she returned in the evenings. She didn’t seem to do anything else at all. The few times she did leave her house in the evening, she returned a short time later with bags full of groceries. As far as Taylor could tell, she had no social life at all. At least she left her house, he thought to himself. That put her one step ahead of him.
As he watched her come and go, his mind kept drifting back to the nearly empty nursery room that he knew sat just inside her apartment. While Taylor was sure she was stocking it with the essentials – he knew he had spotted her carrying in a giant case of diapers one evening – he feared the room would stay bare and void of any sort of life. The thought of his baby living that way, even if Shiloh didn’t seem to want his help at all, made him sick.
He knew, though, that Shiloh was far too stubborn to accept his help decorating. It seemed there was nothing he could do. One day, though, when she came home from work, an idea dropped itself right into his lap.
Taylor stood by the window with his coffee, watching as Shiloh fumbled with her keys, growing more and more dismayed by the second. She heaved a sigh that was visible even from where he stood, but he still didn’t understand the problem. Then, she reached into the small flower bed next to her steps and picked up a rock. It still took Taylor a moment to realize it was a fake rock housing a spare key.
A spare key, he thought. It didn’t really matter how wrong and technically illegal it was, that spare key was his way into the apartment.
The next day, Taylor woke up early with determination and a plan. After a shower and a cup of coffee, he drove himself to the nearest Home Depot. As soon as he arrived and began walking up and down the aisles, he realized that he truly didn’t have that of a plan. Who was he kidding, anyway? He was a musician, not an interior decorator.
He knew what he needed. He needed Zac. Zac had painted murals in all of their younger siblings’ bedrooms, and while Taylor had helped, he knew he wasn’t the real artist of the two. He barely trusted himself to paint the nursery one solid color without fucking it up. It felt like he would fuck everything up without Zac.
Taylor knew he couldn’t keep thinking like that, though. It wouldn’t bring Zac back any faster and it wouldn’t soothe his mind. All he could do was just keep living, one tiny baby step at a time. After staring down the aisle of paint chips for what felt like hours, he finally felt inspiration strike.
Several gallons of paint and a few dozen items from Bed, Bath and Beyond later, Taylor felt like he was ready.
Taylor knew he still had plenty of time until Shiloh got home for the evening – time to make enough headway on the mural that she would have to either let him finish or paint over it. He only hoped that it would turn it nice enough for her to want to keep it. He tried to stay positive, though, as he drove back home. Once he finally arrived, he parked in his own driveway, even though it meant carrying the supplies across the yard, so that she wouldn’t suspect anything until she was inside the apartment.
The actually act of breaking and entering – because he knew that was really what he was doing – was a lot easier, mentally and literally, than he assumed it would be. Taylor found that he didn’t feel a bit guilty as he searched for the fake rock and slipped the key into Shiloh’s door. After a few trips back and forth to get all his supplies inside, he locked the door and put the key back where he had found it. If all went as planned, Shiloh would be none the wiser until she saw his painting.
Taylor wished he’d had time to paint over the bare white walls, too, but he didn’t want to push his luck. He wanted to be finished before Shiloh freaked out and threw him out of her home. As he surveyed the room, he decided that the white would have to do. At least it was a nice blank canvas to start from.
He started by piling up the crib and what few other pieces of furniture and boxes of supplies Shiloh had in the middle of the floor. That way, he figured he would be at least a little less likely to splatter it all with paint. A few drop cloths spread around the floor near the wall he planned to put his mural on provided further Taylor-proofing. With that done, he supposed there was nothing left to do but just dive right into the painting itself.
Taylor plucked a pencil from his hair and began to sketch his design on the wall. It wouldn’t be anything as impressive as Zac could have done, but as he hastily drew the outlines, he could see it coming together in his mind. Unlike everything else in his life, this might not be a total disaster.
The outlining seemed to take hours, only because he was so determined to get it right, even if his light pencil lines would soon be covered in paint. Finally, Taylor stepped back and admired his handiwork – a thin, barely visible tree stretching across the wall, with leaves strewn all around. It wouldn’t be a masterpiece, but he thought he could manage to color in between the lines well enough to make it look good.
He dove right into the painting itself with little hesitation. There was no point in delaying it further, Taylor thought. He opened up his cans of brown and pink paint – because why couldn’t he paint his baby girl’s tree pink if he wanted to? – and he set to work.
Usually Taylor enjoyed painting, at least when it turned out how he wanted. He could get frustrated easily, though, especially if he compared anything he created to Zac’s, because it rarely measured up. That day, he found it to be extremely cathartic. Things were still far from perfect, and not likely to improve any time soon, but with each brushstroke, he felt that he was really doing something right. It made him feel far better than he could have anticipated.
For the first time since returning to Tulsa, he felt somewhat at ease. Not quite happy, but perhaps a tiny bit closer. He wasn’t sure happy was something he would ever truly feel again.
Taylor didn’t take a single break; he worked all afternoon, coloring in the tree trunk and then painting the leaves various shades of pink at random. He was surprised how quickly it all seemed to go. Before starting on the palest shade of pink, he paused to check the time on his phone. 5:45. By his estimation, Shiloh would be home any moment. It was only then that he began to feel a little nervous again, but nevertheless he picked up his paintbrush to add the last color.
He had only painted a handful of the pastel pink leaves when a sound caught his ear. Pausing and standing as still as possible, he strained to listen to it. Definitely a key in a lock, Taylor decided. Seconds later, he heard the unmistakable creak of the front door being pushed open.
Here goes nothing, Taylor thought to himself.
He lifted his paintbrush back to the wall and resumed painting in between the lines of a small leaf. He tried desperately not to listen to the sound of footsteps down the hall, and nearly succeeded. He almost didn’t notice when the footsteps ceased right outside the nursery door. What he couldn’t ignore, though, was Shiloh’s voice.
“What the fuck?”