Outside the Lines Read Online Free PDF Page B

car toward his street. Toward Lydia and Eden. The sex with Angel had been bad, awkward and unfulfilling, but things improved after she had her coffee, put on some clothes, and left. David sat with Rick for several hours, finishing off joint after joint, shooting the shit. Not having to do anything. Not having to be anyone. The pot turned down the volume on what seemed to be a thousand radios blaring in his head. David hated his brain. How it forced him to seek relief from himself. Lydia didn’t understand why he wouldn’t stay on his meds if they helped calm the storms that raged inside his mind. He didn’t know how else to explain it to her. The meds not only erased his spinning thoughts, they erased an essential part of his soul. The very center of his being became fuzzy and disconnected. Would Lydia like that? Would she enjoy her life if she had to live it trapped inside a vat of wet cement?
    It hadn’t always been this way between them. They had met and married young—both only eighteen—but blinded by physical passion and youthful optimism, their adoration for each other knew no end. Even with a baby on the way, even with Lydia’s conservative family screaming that she was making a mistake marrying David, they couldn’t imagine their relationship failing. As a result of her strict upbringing, Lydia was a little reserved, so she was instantly attracted to David’s more daring, flamboyant personality. His openness thrilled her. It drew her out of what she called her “tiny soap bubble of a life.” Marrying him was her first blatant act of rebellion.
    From the moment they began dating, David lived for entertaining Lydia. He loved to make her smile. He thrived on the dramatic, taking his behavior to whatever extreme was necessary in order to hear her laugh—frolicking around their tiny apartment wearing only his underwear, or singing the Beatles’ “All You Need Is Love” to her as they shopped for groceries. But he soon learned it was the little things that pleased his wife most. A bunch of wildflowers swiped for her from an open field, or a quick sketch of the parts of her body David worshipped—her hands, her lips, the curve of her back. He would ask her to lie naked on the bed in the late afternoon sun, gently coaxing her limbs into the image he wanted to capture. He untangled her blond braid so her hair fell wild and loose over her shoulders. “Lie still,” he’d whisper against the thin skin of her neck.
    “How am I supposed to lie still when you do that ?” she’d groan, exhaling a low, husky breath, looking up at him with her exceptionally clear blue eyes.
    “Art is suffering,” he’d tease. And then he sat back and drank her in, pulling her beauty out of the real world into the one he could only see in his mind. The world he traced onto the page.
    Even with the birth of Eden when they were only nineteen, David and Lydia’s early years had a glowing, easy lightness about them. Lydia worked at various office jobs while David stayed home to paint and take care of their daughter. This had been Lydia’s idea—she was dizzied in the best way possible by David’s creative energies and talents; she wanted nothing more than to support him in his dreams of being a respected artist. While they were in their early twenties, she helped him find galleries that might show his work; she set up the interview that found him his first job teaching a watercolors workshop. Their love appeared unique, impenetrable. And until Eden turned four, it was. That was when the impulses began, at first just a faint, broken echo in the distant corners of his mind. You’re trapped, they said. Run. He could ignore them, then. Gradually, they became louder, irrepressible—a faster and faster beating drum. Live, they said. Escape. Spin. Love. Fuck. He felt stifled by his simple existence. The drugs Lydia and his doctors wanted him to take muffled the inspired rhythms that danced in his head, snuffed them out until he lost