The move had been a huge change in the life of Emilia Saint-Clair. Well, now she supposed she was a Gantz but that was something she didn’t want to think about often, for it made her sick to her stomach. The notion that she would marry someone had never once crossed her mind in the past couple of years, nor did it change when Jeremiah Gantz came into her life. He’d been there before, a close friend of her cousin Melinda, but for some reason he always seemed to keep an eye upon her. Perhaps he thought her anger amusing at first and that’s why he asked. Maybe even he’d been kind to offer her shelter when she knew she didn’t have long before she had to choose someone to wed.
Regardless of what he had done, both regretted it now almost two years after the fact.
If she had been asked back then if she were happy, Emilia might have answered “Happy enough, I guess.” though now she knew her answer would be a resounding no. She hated the man who slept downstairs and whose very presence seemed to send her off the charts when it came to her own anger. He was constantly doing something to annoy her and nothing about him was endearing to her. Well, all except one thing: he gave her space.
After the car had left in the morning, Emilia was free to roam about the house. She made coffee (since his pot had already grown cold when she ventured downstairs), read the morning paper, and, finally, when she got that spark, she left it all to go straight back up the stairs, into what she’d started as a small studio. It wasn’t big by any means, with two spaces to paint upon canvas and a pottery wheel, but it was enough to make her happy.
It was up here that she found the most joy, placing brush to canvas, painting what she felt, what she saw, what she remembered, and what she thought of. If nothing else, it offered a wonderful creative outlet for her to get rid of anything she felt before Jeremiah came home. All he asked was one meal with her and that she usually had to mentally prepare herself for. She knew there would be heated discussion, though none of it was friendly or nice. Thankfully, she could take back whatever she dished out, her skin thick enough to endure any sort of comments that came her way since she was more than likely to throw them right back into his face anyways.
A sigh escaped her lips. She missed home, the place that felt nicer than this. But there was no going back to it, was there? This was her home now, like it or not, and it was something she had to get used to eventually.
So she’d endure. And that was all anyone could ask of her.
