Considering that three — four, including almond blossoms — paintings had been stolen from the exhibit, it was a wonder that the exhibit hadn’t been shut down. However, when Cedar walked into the museum after the paintings of almond blossoms had been stolen, Joel had taken the daily croissant from them and disappointedly told them, “The exhibit’s shutting down next week, about a month early. The museum is kind of tired of dealing with all the stealings, and the police are too busy with other cases to pay any attention to this case, so everybody just agreed it’d just be easier to shut it down.”
Cedar knew that their first thought shouldn’t have been Everybody? But what about me? but they couldn’t help but feel betrayed that they should have been consulted about the decision because they were the only person who ever came to visit the exhibit regularly. On top of that, the exhibit was the only way Cedar could communicate with L, and they felt like losing the exhibit meant they would have to lose L too.
Instead of sharing their thoughts, Cedar simply nodded. “That makes sense.”
They waited until the police left to pick up the almond blossoms that were patiently waiting for them under the bench facing the painting titled “Vase with Gladioli and Lilac”. Somehow, finding the flowers didn’t give the spark of joy they had always felt whenever finding notes or flowers left by L. Maybe it was because Cedar was too occupied with worries about the end of the exhibit to fantasize about how L grinned like when wrapping the ribbon around the stems of the flowers or how L smiled while writing the notes in neat cursive.
Considering how often L visited the exhibit to leave Cedar notes and steal paintings, the exhibit was almost just as much Cedar’s as it was L’s, so they figured that they owed it to L to let them know.
For some reason, Cedar found it difficult to break the news. They wrote the note several different times before settling on simply writing, The exhibit is ending soon. What will we do?
L simply wrote back, I’ll find a way.
Cedar had no idea what L meant, but they trusted L enough to know that as they were drawing the lilac and gladioli, L was busy plotting.
Well, busy plotting was one phrase for it. Busy getting ready to run away was perhaps more accurate for what Lorena was doing. As Lorena threw her clothes into her luggage, she called her sponsor with her phone wedged between her ear and shoulder so she could talk while she worked. When the person picked up, Lorena stated, “I quit. I’m not stealing things for other people anymore.”
“What? No. You can’t just do that!” Lorena’s sponsor exclaimed indignantly.
Lorena rolled her eyes as she zipped up her makeup bag. “Well, I just did. I quit.”
“Do you know what this means? All the people who’ve hired you to steal for them will be after you now. They’ll all think that quitting means you’re going to snitch. Your life is going to be in more danger than you could possibly imagine.”
Despite the urgent tone of Lorena’s sponsor, Lorena shrugged and firmly maintained, “I don’t care. I’m quitting. I want to start living my own life and doing my own shit instead of being a puppet for rich people. Thanks for being my sponsor, though. I hope you find somebody as good as me.”
“Wait-” Lorena hung up on her sponsor and blocked their number. They stared at their phone for a second in disbelief, half-relieved that they weren’t caught in the system of stealing for others anymore and half-shocked that they had the guts to drop everything without much of a second thought.
Then, Lorena’s lips curled into a smile as Lorena thought to herself, Well, they say love makes you do crazy things.
Meanwhile, Cedar was out at a bar with their friends, because they were a college student and Friday nights were for partying. As they took a sip of beer from the bottle clenched tightly in their right hand, Cedar tried to tune out the talk of their friends, who were engrossed in a conversation about cute boys. Frankly, Cedar didn’t see what the fuss about all the boys on campus was about. Even though Cedar didn’t know L all that well, college boys all seemed so bland compared to L, whose eloquent words and vivid encouragement breathed a new life into Cedar.
I bet he’s never stolen semi-valuable paintings for you, Cedar amusedly thought to themselves as they listened to Amelie talk about a handsome boy she’d met at a frat party a week ago.
Amelie must’ve noticed Cedar staring because she pointedly asked, “So, Cedar, have you been talking to anybody?”
Setting the beer bottle down on the table, Cedar paused for a moment, slightly caught off-guard. They didn’t have much time to weigh what answer would best satisfy their friends, so they just went with what their gut instinct told them to say.
“Um, kind of.”
Amelie crossed her arms and leaned forward. “What do you mean kind of?”
“Well, there’s a person I’m talking to. They go to the same art museum as me, but we communicate with notes. We’ve never spoken to each other before. It’s kind of a weird arrangement but it’s pretty cool and I actually like them a lot.” Cedar took out one of L’s notes they carried around with them everywhere, unwrinkled it, and handed it to their friends, who all gathered around the note to read it. “This is one of their notes. I mostly keep it with me because it’s really encouraging. I also really like their handwriting.”
“Aw, this is so sweet! What does L stand for?” Frieda, one of Cedar’s friends, asked as she pointed to the letter at the bottom of the note.
“No clue. I’m pretty sure that’s just their first initial.”
“Wow, that’s so cool and mysterious,” Amelie mused, handing Cedar the note back. Cedar grinned, feeling oddly proud that, for once, they had something interesting to contribute to the conversation. But that moment passed, as another one of Cedar’s friends piped up about a cute librarian she saw and everybody quickly became invested in that story instead.
Cedar was able to zone out for most of the conversation, save for when their friends suddenly started talking excitedly about graduating and getting real jobs. That was the moment they decided that they hated endings because graduation, the ending of Cedar’s time in college, meant they’d have to face their future… and the ending of the art exhibit meant they’d have to face the fact that maybe the forever they imagined with L wasn’t going to happen.
