When she draws, she always starts with the eyes. The graceful arch of the upper eyelid, the bow of the lower, the perfect circle of the iris, shaded with lines angling towards the darkness of the pupil. If she’d been drawing in colour, the eyes would be hazel. Maybe with little flecks of burnt sienna embedded in them for depth.

She tilts her pencil and shades the area between the eye and eyebrow, before moving onto the nose. Slightly lopsided, slightly large, and yet just right. She knows the shape of it without thinking.

The lips are drawn from memory as well, but a different one. Memories of a darkened room, a silk dress, the unbelieveable pull she felt when she touched them with her own. The softness, the tenderness. The need.

She pauses there, observing the page in front of her. Wondering how it is that she can stare at the model in class all day and not be able to create a perfect likeness … the lips are too close to the chin, her instructor would say. Or the eyes have no sparkle to them. So she would stare yet again at the model, trying to correct the mistakes, trying not to feel inadequate. She’d had enough of that feeling.

And yet here she is, once more sitting on the second-hand couch in the cramped living room in her pajamas, drawing a perfect rendition of the one who broke her in two.
Sometimes she only gets as far as the eyes before her own start to water, blurring the room and the drawing until she has to put everything away and stare vacantly at the wall. Sometimes she only gets as far as the lips before her own start to quiver and she puts everything away in its proper place before allowing herself to break down.

Today she thinks she may make it to his hands. They’re her favorite part to draw, maybe because she only gets that far on nights when she’s feeling happier. She makes it past the eyes and the lips and can go on.

She’s made it to the hands a lot more, recently. And she finds it easier to draw his face smiling.

She returns to the drawing and outlines his chin, his hair. The way it falls across his forehead. She wonders briefly if he’s cut it since he’s been away, but stops that train of thought before she can really let it get going. The hands. Make it to the hands.

His ears are next. A few weeks ago, the ears were another barrier for her; she’d make it past the eyes, the mouth, but the ears always caught her. Because she remembered the last thing she’d ever said to him, as he leaned in to brush his lips against hers again.

“Jim …”

She’d stopped him, put an end to him, to them, with that one word. She couldn’t even bring herself to verbally answer him when he’d asked that last question.

“You’re really going to marry him?”

A nod, and he pulled away, trailing his fingers against hers, letting her feel the ridges of his knuckles, the realness of him, giving her one last chance to pull him back.

She’d found it hard to make it past the ears for a long time. Until two weeks ago, when the last thing she’d said to him was “Bye, Jim.” But it had been different this time. It wasn’t the cutting goodbye she’d delivered that night in the office. It had been timidly hopeful that, after over an hour talking like they once had, about Sandra Bullock and multiple kitchens, things may have started to change. She’d glanced over at his desk when she’d left that evening, momentarily remembering the last time they’d spoken, and realising that things were different. New.

Returning to the drawing, she outlined his shoulders, deciding to draw him in his work clothes, with his dress shirt and tie. Once, she’d tried drawing him in the outfit he’d worn on the booze cruise, but it left her feeling empty and cold. She’d also tried drawing him in a sweater, like the one he’d worn at his barbeque, and on that last night she’d seen him. But it left her feeling angry with herself, with him, for not fighting for what they’d had. She tried drawing him shirtless once, but that had ended with her imagining what it would be like to run her fingernails down his torso in one of her increasingly common fantasies, and left her aching for something more satisfying than the loneliness of her big bed and her own hands.

She sketched the outline of his fingers once she’d drawn the cuffs of his sleeves. It was getting late, and she knew she should be going to bed soon if she wanted to be up early enough to take a shower and make it to work on time for the meeting with Michael and Jan. The light from a car pulling into the apartment complex swept across the room, painting it white through the curtains. She drew the lines in his palms, the ones she had memorised in the guise of reading his fortune. She began to feel the familiar ache of regret and want. She remembered those hands on her back, or clasping hers. Pictured them skipping over her skin.

She pulled back from the drawing. She hadn’t even realised it was done. Placing her pencils back in their tin case, she stood and stretched before moving to place the picture on top of a growing pile of pictures just like it. Drawing him to keep from forgetting him. Drawing him to remember, drawing him for hope.

Pausing, she decided she liked the eyes on this one. Liked the way they smiled, the way they stared back at her, almost like she could feel him there with her. She was drawn to it, and instead folded it once and placed it in her bag by the door. To keep him with her. Maybe she’d hide it in her desk at work, next to the yogurt lid gold medal and the yearbook picture of him. Next to the packet of hotsauce.

When he walked in a week later, a week after the meeting where Jan announced the merger, his eyes weren’t smiling. But as soon as they were drawn to hers, they were.