For As Long As You Stay

“Art is the most beautiful of all lies.” — Henri Matisse



Some mornings feel like fog wrapped in coffee steam and forgotten alarm bells.

This was one of them.

The world outside my dorm window was the color of cold milk—muted, heavy, distant. My roommate, Nessa, was already gone. She left early for her neuroscience classes, always with a protein bar between her teeth and a fire in her spine. I, on the other hand, moved slower. I made my tea like it was an apology to the morning.

Literature majors have their own rhythm. A kind of secret clock that ticks between annotated margins, overdue novels, and the soft ache in your wrist from writing too many thoughts you don’t say out loud.

I dressed like usual. Oversized sweater. Tattered jeans. Boots that made no sound on linoleum. The walk to class was short but just long enough to read a few stanzas from my pocket poetry book. Today: Anne Carson.

“If prose is a house, poetry is a man on fire running through it,” she once wrote.

I held onto that.

After lectures, we spilled out of the old campus halls like ink on worn paper. My friends—Dana, Jules, and Lila—were already deep in conversation about something unimportant and entirely necessary.

“I swear,” Jules said, twirling her iced coffee like it was a wine glass, “if Professor Elden assigns one more Victorian metaphor essay, I’m staging a mutiny.”

“You wouldn’t survive a mutiny,” Lila deadpanned. “You’d write a think piece on it and get stabbed by page two.”

Dana rolled her eyes. “Can we go somewhere tonight? Please. I need something that’s not words.”

“There’s an art convention downtown,” I offered, quiet but certain. “The gallery’s open till midnight. Local artists. Some installations too.”

They all turned to look at me.

“Emily,” Jules said, mock serious. “You mean to tell me... you’ve been hiding a night of aesthetic escapism from us?”

I shrugged. “I saw the poster near the library. Looked... peaceful.”

Dana clapped her hands once. “Done. We’re going.”

---

We took the train just after sunset.

The city always felt different at night. Like it took a deep breath and let itself be soft for once. Streetlights pooled on the sidewalk like spilled butter. The chatter of the crowd blurred into a kind of symphony.

The art convention was already buzzing. Stalls lined the entrance—fried dumplings, sweet chili fries, cheap wine in plastic cups. I bought a paper tray of something spicy and sweet and watched the steam curl into the cold night.

Inside, the gallery opened like a secret.

The first room was strung with fairy lights and soft jazz. Walls were cluttered with canvas and color and longing. Paintings bled into each other. Some wild and jagged. Some soft as confession.

“Look at that,” Dana whispered, standing before a piece made entirely of red threads tangled around nails.

“It’s called ‘Inheritance’,” I said, reading the tiny plaque.

“Feels like a metaphor and a therapy session had a baby,” Lila muttered.

We laughed quietly, the way people do when they don’t want to break the moment.

Room after room. Brushstroke after brushstroke. Time softened.

And then—

I saw it.

Tucked into the corner of a dim hallway, far from the glitter and noise.

A painting.

I stepped closer. The frame was black. The kind of black that made every other color on the canvas beg for mercy.

The girl in the painting wasn’t beautiful in the usual sense.

She was... arresting.

Nude, but not erotic.

Painted in soft strokes, muted shadows, and aching light.

Her back arched slightly. Her spine a question mark. Her hands stained with red. Not blood. Not paint. Something in between.

Her face was turned just enough that you felt she was looking past you.

Or through you.

Or into you.

I didn’t realize I was holding my breath until Dana touched my arm.

“You okay?”

I nodded slowly. “Yeah. Just... this one.”

The artist’s name wasn’t listed.

Only a title, painted delicately at the bottom corner:

For As Long As You Stay

I kept seeing her.

The girl in the painting.

The tilt of her neck.

The sadness in her posture.

The promise in the shadows.

I thought about the red on her hands.

What she might have touched.

What she might have become.

My fingers ached for my notebook.

And I looked too long.

Somewhere in the city, the artist who painted her was probably asleep.

Or maybe wide awake.

Or maybe watching the world with the same hush in his chest that I now felt in mine.

Please hang on, I see a potential in this one. Thank you for reading chapter one of For As Long As You Stay!!