Color My Life with the Chaos of Trouble

“So,” Lucian asks Ash while he’s making Lucian’s soy latte something like a week later. “You’re a college student, right?”

Ash glances over at Lucian for a moment and says, “Yes,” he says. “I’m majoring in Creative Writing.”

Lucian hums contemplatively. “What do you plan on being?” he wonders, fiddling with one of the headphones dangling around his neck. “A writer, perhaps?”

Ash shrugs and slides the coffee across the counter to Lucian. “I don’t know,” he answers, very honest. “I’m still trying to figure that out, actually.”

Lucian hands Ash three-twenty-five. “Do you like writing?” he asks, picking up his coffee and taking a sip.

Ash considers this carefully for a moment before answering with a simple and succinct, “I guess so.”

“Then go for it,” Lucian encourages with a careless smile and a slight shrug. “I mean if you’re good at it – and I’m assuming you’re a pretty good writer; correct me if I’m wrong but you don’t exactly seem like the type to do something unless you’re at least decent. But anyways, if you enjoy writing and you’re good at it, give it a shot. You have nothing to lose.”

Ash nods, and this is something he’s heard a thousand times before, mostly from his parents and his older brother and his best friend Olivia, and he knows he should give it a try if it’s what he wants, but if he’s really honest with himself, part of the reason why he’s hesitant to is that he’s scared. What if no one likes his writing? What if he’s not good enough? His insecurities get to him sometimes and he hates it but he can’t help it.

“Anyways, I have to go,” Lucian says, looking genuinely put out by this, and Ash suddenly notices that Lucian doesn’t have his usual sketchpad tucked under his arm and he feels stupid for not noticing it earlier. “I’ve got a busy day today. But think about what I said, okay?”

Lucian puts on a mock serious face and shakes his finger at Ash for emphasis, and Ash rolls his eyes at Lucian’s behavior.

“Sure,” Ash says, just to humor Lucian a bit.

Lucian grins and waves goodbye to Ash before exiting the shop, whistling to himself. He disappears from view and Ash finds himself wondering what Lucian can be doing that’s making him so busy, but then he shakes his head to himself and forces the disappointment away before it has a chance to come. He’s being silly, he tells himself. He’s known this guy for all of one week. It can’t be healthy to be so fixated on him already.

-

“Just ask him out.”

Ash rolls his eyes at his roommate even though she’s in her bedroom and he’s in the living room. She may not be able to see him, but at least it helps him feel better.

“I can’t,” Ash says for the umpteenth time.

He hears Olivia sigh loudly before she runs over and flops down on the couch next to him, almost knocking him to the floor in the process. She lets her legs dangle over the armrest and rests her head in his lap, glaring up at him as if this will convince him to just take her advice and be done with it.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she says. “Of course you can. He’s cute. He’s funny. He sounds pretty great to me. Ask him out.”

Ash rolls his eyes at her again, this time in full view of Olivia. She makes a face at him and grabs a couch pillow that’s fallen to the floor and hits Ash over the head with it.

Olivia is the kind of girl who’s a little pushy, a little nosy, and very warm. She has a sweet smile and bright, amber eyes and enjoys wearing floral print dresses and cute scarves and mismatched socks. She majors in Psychology and enjoys telling Ash things about himself that he probably doesn’t care to know.

Ash pouts at Olivia and mutters, “Unnecessary.”

“So necessary,” Olivia protests, pushing herself up so that she’s sitting next to him. “Why won’t you just ask this guy out? It’s pretty obvious you like him.”

“No, I don’t,” Ash objects.

Olivia sighs, exasperated. “Oh right, you’re attracted to him in a strictly heterosexual way, I forgot, my bad,” she says, voice dripping with sarcasm. She makes a face at him as if he has the brain capacity of a plankton. “Don’t be dense, Ash.”

Ash shrugs and says, “Well, it’s just that we only talk for only, what, like five minutes every day? Ten? I don’t even know him that well. I don’t think I can exactly claim I ‘like’ him or anything like that.”

Olivia presses her lips together into a thin line and contemplates Ash. Her face takes on that expression she gets when Ash is being particularly stubborn about something trivial, when she is being particularly stubborn about something trivial.

“You are an extremely difficult person, you know that?” she says after a moment’s thought, but she doesn’t say anymore on the topic, probably because she’s gotten tired of it for now, most likely because she knows that she won’t be able to convince him. “What time is it? We should probably get dinner soon.”

Ash shrugs again. “I want tacos,” he says.

“Hm,” Olivia hums, getting up to go check the contents of their refrigerator.

As Olivia rummages through their refrigerator and various cabinets, Ash considers the conversation he’d had with Lucian about writing and makes a conscious decision to start writing again. He’d stopped writing for anything other than schoolwork, but now, reaching under the couch to pull out a notebook he knows he has stashed there, he’s seriously considering the possibility of starting again. He flips his notebook open to a blank page and finds a pen on the coffee table. He writes until Olivia calls out to him that they don’t have any taco shells or salsa or ground beef for that matter so having tacos for dinner might be a little bit of a problem, and she’s just going to order a pizza online, is that okay? Ash makes a face and says he didn’t even know that’s possible, but sure, go for it.

When Ash reads over what he’s written a few minutes later, he grimaces and tears out the page and crumples it up, frustrated with how much his standard of writing has fallen over the years. He huffs and keeps writing until the pizza arrives, and then he sets his notebook aside and doesn’t touch it for the rest of the night but that doesn’t stop him from thinking about inky words crawling across blank pages and bright blue eyes and slender artists’ fingers with letters tattooed across the knuckles.