Love Like You Never Loved Before

To be honest, it was near impossible to complete such a huge oil painting within a week. Fortunately, we had already done it once before, so we did not need much creativity with it. All we needed to do was repeat what we did the last time.

After burning the midnight oil for several nights in a row, we finally finished it. The three of us felt a huge weight lift off our shoulders. We lay on the couch and refused to move an inch. Eventually, it was Remington who got up to cover the painting with a cloth.

“From now on, I will never let anyone else take the paintings out of my drawing-room. I would just be digging my own grave,” Remington said tiredly.

“I feel completely drained,” Spencer remarked with his face plastered on the couch.

I did not even have any strength to respond to their comments.

After resting for a couple of days, we finally managed to recover. We marked our seals onto the painting and took one final look at it. The more we looked, the more satisfied we were with our work. Creativity was something that came at the most unexpected times. While we were redoing the painting, we made a few changes here and there. Now, it was even more beautiful than the previous one.

“Yvonne, where’s your painting? When are you going to hand it over?” Remington asked with a mouthful of instant noodles. Even while eating, he did not forget to remind me to bring my painting.

The feeling of joy from painting together soon died down. How was I supposed to hand over my painting? Isabelle refused to even give me a reason for making me give my painting to Crystal. Because of Isabelle’s earlier illness, our relationship was stagnant for a while. She was very polite when she spoke to me. However, that courtesy did not at all cover up her refusal to budge on the matter.

“Unfortunately, I don’t think I will be able to give you my painting in support of your art exhibition,” I said sadly.

“Don’t tell me you destroyed that too?” Both Remington and Spencer widened their eyes in disbelief.

“Yvonne, your fellow artists haven’t recognized you as a new school artist yet. That was just a nickname that the media gave you. Now, you think you’re all that? Do you even want to continue doing art? I can’t deal with you.”

Remington was close to coming over and strangling me to death.

“You really are something, Yvonne. Picasso has nothing on you, you know that?” Spencer was speaking with a sarcastic tone. “I admire no artist except you.”

“I admire myself too.” It took me half a month just to conceptualize that painting. Within one afternoon, it became someone else’s possession. “I’m incredibly generous. That small painting is nothing to me.”

As I spoke, I suddenly covered my mouth and burst out into laughter. I laughed so hard that I actually started to cry. All the sadness in my heart was starting to bubble over.

“You…” Remington and Spencer could feel that something was wrong with me. They thought they had misspoken, so they quickly apologized.

“Come on. We only said those things because we’re good friends. You can take a joke, right?” Spencer was very direct.

“We’ll apologize to you, okay?” Remington rubbed the back of his head.

“Don’t worry about it. I’m fine.” I dabbed away my tears. After pondering for a moment, I said to Remington, “Actually, I have a painting that was meant to enter in the National Youth Art Exhibition and Contest. However, due to certain reasons, it was taken down before anyone could get a look at it. Do you want me to display it in your art exhibition?”

“Sure. I promise to put it in the most eye-catching corner. I remember that painting being the most distinctive painting that I’ve seen for a while.”

It had been several days since I returned to the Goldstein residence. I had several text messages from Mark, as well as missed calls that I forgot to answer while painting. However, none of them belonged to Isabelle. Oddly enough, I felt like I was starting to understand my own mother less and less.

After entering, I saw Mark and Isabelle standing under a tree. I could not hear what they were saying, but it was clear that they were in disagreement over something. Isabelle had a frustrated expression on, and Mark was not looking too good either.

“How many times have I told you that you should stay out of Eve’s business with the Goldstein family? Why must you stop her? Why did you get Tobey to come to mess things up? Do you even listen to a thing I say?”

“As I’ve mentioned before, I can accept anyone except Julia’s son. I’ve said so many times that she was the one who killed my elder brother. How can I let my daughter marry her son? I will never allow this. Over my dead body.”