Chapter 16
Winter in London arrived both suddenly and fiercely.
Avery breathed softly against the glass window, creating a small patch of foggy mist. She gently moved her finger across it, drawing mindless patterns.
The table beside her was piled with various drafts. As the mist gradually disappeared, she turned to stare at the incomplete butterfly on her design sketch. She twirled the charcoal pencil between her fingers, eventually drawing a long, thin crack across it with heavy pressure.
“Avery, your ‘Broken Wings‘ collection has been pre–ordered by Chanel–every single sample!”
Avery’s mentor burst into the studio carrying champagne, her hair disheveled by the cold wind. She paused, however, upon seeing the crumpled drafts strewn across the floor.
“Darling, this is something to celebrate. You should be standing in the spotlight or attending a lively party, not shutting yourself away like a snail.”
Sophia put down the champagne, carefully stepping over the paper balls on the floor.
Avery seemed not to hear. She bent down to pick up a sketch stained with coffee, watching as the gold dust decorating the butterfly wings fell away.
“Not painful enough,” she murmured softly, unconsciously digging her nails into her palm, where
faint brownish marks from old wounds were barely visible.
“A butterfly that truly emerges from its cocoon should be marked with blood.”
Avery wore long sleeves and pants, exposing only her neck in the warm room.
The glass wall reflected the butterfly tattoo newly inked behind her ear, its broken wing perfectly concealing the scar left by the chandelier incident years ago.
“Oh! Alex, you’re here! Thank goodness–I simply cannot get Avery to focus on anything I say. She only listens to me during class time.”
“I understand, Ms. Sophia.”
After this dramatic woman clutched her chest and delivered her theatrical declaration, she happily
17:07
She Moved On. He Crashed and Burned
71.49
Chapter of
handed over responsibility for her student.
“Eat something. A designer fainting at her own worktable isn’t exactly ideal”
Avery finally tore her gaze away from the sketches before her.
Alex leaned against the doorframe, holding two paper cups in one hand and a thermal bag in the other. Traces of glue from architectural models still clung to his cuffs.
But Avery could smell the aroma of food.
He pulled out several thermal containers from the bag–shrimp with eggs, cola chicken wings–all
her favorites.
Watching him seriously arranging the dishes, Avery recalled the first time she met Alex.
When she first arrived in London and Alex appeared at her apartment door, Avery had instinctively tensed up.
“Miss Williams, I’m Alex Hayes, or you can call me Alex. Your brother asked me to look after you. I
brought some things for our first meeting.”
The man stood in the snow, his black coat accentuating his tall figure. He held a brown paper bag, with corners of books just visible inside.
She didn’t take it, responding coldly instead: “Thank you, but I don’t need anything.”
She needed neither books nor care.
Avery understood her brother’s concern, but she simply lacked the energy for new social
interactions.
“I can take care of myself. Don’t worry about me–I won’t tell my brother anything.”
Alex wasn’t offended by Avery’s rejection. Instead, he smiled: “Your brother mentioned you like F. Scott Fitzgerald. This is a rare first edition of The Great Gatsby‘ I found at an antiquarian bookshop.”
Avery’s fingers curled slightly.
She certainly remembered how much she had once loved that book, even copying passages into her diary.
17:07
She Moved On. He Crashed and Burned
72.69
Chapter 16
[They had never been close in that hour before dawn when wandering home to bed; they had never been more intimately aware of the secret self that comes with the night.]
Back then, she had naively believed her story with Jake would somehow be different from the tragic
romance of Gatsby and Daisy.
But the world rarely grants such fairy–tale exceptions.
“No… I don’t read anymore,” she heard herself say, her voice so low it was nearly drowned out by
the wind and snow. “I don’t deserve such nice things now.”
Alex didn’t move, just quietly observing her.
His eyes were dark, but unlike Jake’s scrutinizing gaze from above, they resembled a calm, deep
ocean capable of containing all turbulent waves.
“Books aren’t about deserving–only about wanting to read,” he said softly, then leaned forward slightly to place the paper bag on the shoe cabinet by the door before stepping back.
“If you change your mind, I live in the next building.”
His figure disappeared down the hallway. After a while, Avery closed the door, leaning weakly against it as she took deep breaths.
She had thought she would cry, but when she touched her cheek, it was dry. She wanted to weep, but
her eyes felt only painfully dry.
Later, Alex didn’t deliberately approach her again. Avery thought the matter had ended there.
But then she began occasionally “running into” him at the library, or “coincidentally” receiving a cup
of her usual black coffee.
One night, while working until dawn in her studio, Avery nearly fainted from low blood sugar. A cup of fragrant hot milk appeared before her.
‘Eat something,” Alex’s voice came from above.
Avery looked up in surprise. “How did you…?”
‘I heard someone needed free labor? So here I am.”
He handed her the milk: “Don’t worry, my model building hands are very steady.”
17:07
She Moved On » Crashed and Burned
73.89
Chapter 16
As she sipped the milk, she heard pages turning and looked up to see him holding her design sketches, studying them with the intensity one might reserve for examining a magnificent building.
“Here,” he pointed to the pleated lines on a skirt. “If you changed it to an asymmetrical curved cut, wouldn’t it better capture the moment a butterfly’s wings flutter?”
Avery was stunned.
This was the first time someone had seen through the metaphor hidden in her “Broken Wings”
collection.
Those fractured lines, those deliberately imperfect elements–they were all expressions of her inexpressible pain.
17-07
