1 CHAPTER ONE

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I could have tended to the off putting sounds emerging from the kitchen or the continues profanity blaring after every sound, but that will be quite annoying since I will surely appreciate or tolerate what was recently occurring in the kitchen, so I decided to skip it even though the sound of China glasses smashing to the ground was so tempting that it was to hard to ignore. But regardless, I did ignored it and my mind was 100% on the project I was walking that.

And why was that? You ask me.

This project wasn't some kind of crucial project that my career life could probably end because of it but rather, it was the key to my life. I might be a bit dramatic about that but it certainly the truth. What I was painting right now was the most essential, important and luminous part of my life. I was drawing the guy I was infatuated with. Yeah! call me hopeless romantic but falling in love is not a sin beside, it's part of the things that makes our life to be complete, without love, life will be like a half bitten doughnut with the bitten part gone and without him, the guy I was currently painting, my life was like a bitten doughnut.

I sucked at comparison.

I scanned through the final art work practically squinting my eyes, probing for any wrong line or colour misplaced, I assessed the shades, the contour and application of paint to be sure nothing went wrong, the last thing I ever wanted is to produce an art work gone bad. Believe me I have had more than enough experience of that to the extend I'm now a freaking perfectionist when it come to painting, not any painting to be precised, but the painting of the guy that held my one and only irreplaceable vulnerable heart captive in his lair. I don't mind though.

I grinned with satisfaction as I figured everything was in perfect shape and my guy was now standing in front of me smiling at me and looking directly at me. Immediately, I got drown by his charm, his cerulean eyes captured me that instant, they where so dreamy as they were filled with passion and love. I couldn't help but blush as I reckoned this particular stare was directed at me. How dreamy!

I looked up, checking his tousle chestnut hair that was always in a permanent mess, a purposeful cute mess I admired. I don't know why, but his disheveled locks are one of the features I love about him. Might be because it always gave me the temptation to ruffle his beautiful locks.

I smiled and traced my smudged hands over his disheveled hair, even though he was a carbon copy of my first love stocked in a drawing board but he looked explicitly as real as him. At least I have something to rely on since I don't have the full courage to approach the real figure. As I said,  I'm a goddamn hopeless romantic who has no bit of clue how to express her love to someone she loves, maybe because she's scared of rejection.

That's why I confined myself into this, draw lots and lots of him everyday and night, every leisure seconds of my life. That wasbecause, if I can't get him at list I'll be able to have him allover my room.

And my best friend thought I was dump for thinking that. She just doesn't really understand the intensity of love.

"Oh! Another Noah,What a surprise. Wouldn't be really surprising though." My best friend chirped as she walked into the room breaking me out of my trance.

I looked to her direction diverting myself from my 5 feet 9 drawing of Noah Berlin, The 65th drawing of him to be exact.

"You are completely whipped you know, And it's really pissing me. I just can't believe my life is attached to a demented love freak like you." She rambled placing pair of blazing liquids in a mug on the stool standing close to the door.

She jumped into the bean bag and took one of the mug. I starred at my negro friend as she took the first sip of the hot content in her mug, cold probably be a chocolate drink or coffee, believe me the girl is addicted to both. Her black wavy hair fall allover her face and against her two shoulders and bounce every time she motioned her body. The locks made her looked like a mad psychic but she loved them just like that.

I wasn't exactly looking at her but her two hands that were covered in Band-Aids. No one have to tell me how she get those cuts, must have been related to the ruffling, cursing and glass shredding sounds I heard and ignored. I shocked my head in disdained. Sometimes I used to wonder what components her brain is made from. In this entire world and my twenty years of living in it, she is the clumsiest I have ever met. And right now, she must have broken something in the kitchen, hopefully not an entire set of China cups, believe me she's capable of doing worse than that.

"What did you broke this time?" I asked her.

She took no heed of my question and continued to sip on her drink, clearly giving me the cold shoulder. I would have revolted to that or even get infuriated but it just Zoe, my special friend. She was really special in her own way, a bit eccentric and not perfectly fine upstairs but I don't have anyone like her. She has always been with me since the first day I stepped into middle school feeling miserable as hell. She befriended me the moment she saw me and it didn't took me much to return back the gestures.

I turned back to my masterpiece of artwork and began to move it across the room and cleared everything. I carefully placed it together with the several ones I have made and started house keeping the place, placing back the colours in their respective containers and took away the palette and brushes. I would have washed them but I'm feeling tad sluggish and wanted some sleep.

I slumped onto the other bean bag at the other side of the door and grab the other mug Zoe brought in. It was my usual homemade cappuccino coffee. I took the first sip and it felt like heaven fell in my mouth. Zoe could be clumsy, negligent and a bit sick on the head atimes but she knows how to make the best coffee in the world that's why I'd recommended for her many times to open a café of her own instead of sauntering with no job and a futureless university studies that she has not the slightest keenest for.

"I take it you are just gonna sit her and say nothing to me." I inquired. Finally breaking up the silence.

"Uhm." Was the only respond I get from her and I quickly realised she wasn't in the same world as me, probably zone out in her too dreamy dream land. I stared at her and saw her eyes where placed at the direction of my works. She was wearing a very serious expression on her face, bitting her lips and her two thick brows squeezed and met involuntary at the middle.

"Don't you think you are going a bit over board?" She asked, her eyes still attached to my works.

"What?" I inquired. I can't really tell what she was referring to. The fact that I asked her about her cuts or something?

"I mean it not less than a month you saw Noah and fall madly in love with him and now our apartment is stacked up with lot and lot of him." She said and took a quick sip of her drink.

I probed at her trying to connect what she was talking about, but being that Zoe always like to talk in tongues made it hard for me to figure it out.

"What are you trying to imply?"

"I'm just wondering if what you are doing is legal, I mean you are technically painting a person without his concern and I'm thinking is in another way sort of stealing his looks and using him as a model without his permission and this is equivalent to stealing someone's property and you could be sued for that." She rambled.

I chuckled, couldn't really help it. I swear sometimes, when Zoe blurted something it was like her head is orienting in an entire different universe. I don't see anyway painting someone without his concern will be an act of stealing or piracy or whatever the term for that is. I paint The portrait of Noah for one reason to have something to look at, I never intended to publicise it in any means so I don't see where anything illegal come out here.

"What you are saying is completely ludicrous, how could mere drawing of someone result to me getting sued, you brain is really living in a different world from ours."

I would have been angry if someone else said that to me, but it was Zoe and I know how her mind likes to drift to the negative sides of things and how she was a certified pessimist. Or probably she was teasing me right now.

"I wouldn't refer to that as ludicrous, you know being ludicrous is falling in love with a guy that doesn't even notice you and going crazy on and on about him. Sky I'm just worried that you'll loose your head one day if you keep on doing this_" she gestured to all the drawings in the room.

"_I know falling in love is something spontaneous and we can't help it once we get trapped in it, but there is limitations to things we do for love, but it seems to me that you are pushing things off the edge or clearly acting in the wrong direction. Who on earth paint thousands pictures of the person they love and adored them like a spiritual being?"

I placed the mug back on the stool and stared at Zoe. Normally, she wouldn't speak to me like that, she always made fun of my paintings and declared how crazy I was but never for once get bordered with them, but today, she seemed to be pissed. I should have defended myself and explained to her how those paintings are important to me, but I didn't. A part of what she said made sense to me, maybe I'm going over board repeatedly painting and adore every piece of the works I paint, maybe it was illegal for me to draw him or maybe I'm suffering from OCD or maybe I'm mentally in love.

"You know what I suggest, instead of acting like a maniac why don't you go for it and make the right move, just tell the damn guy how you feel and I'm sure Noah will not turn you down. Not because you are my friend. You know you are beautiful enough that no guy will ever reject you." She said.

Her affirmation gave me a tiny piece of hope and I almost believe she could be telling the truth. But wasn't naive, I have experienced many things in life as it is, knew what was impossible and possible and I  I'm aware that what she said could only be possible in a corny romance novel or fairytale movie.

This was real life we were talking about. The real deal and guys wouldn't fall for someone because that someone is beautiful. Would they? If that fact was true I wouldn't be single.

I can't deny that the saucer emerald eyes attached my face aren't catchy and that my long blonde hair doesn't make the guys flutter back then in highschool. And I couldn't either deny that my perfectly fit bronze skin is not something that will tempt the guys. Yeah I have got it whole package but rather than exhibiting my body to the world and gain love by acting like a temptress, I chose the easy way. Be decent and your life will stay on track. So that means Zoe suggestion is drawn to inutility.

"You know I'm not the type that will give up her decency to win a guy." I confirmed to her.

For some reason I got fed up with this conversation and I don't think I'll be interested with how it will end, probably Zoe will blurt something about lust and crazy stuffs of hers. Zoe is one of those people that have a firm persuasion that love doesn't exist, she doesn't believe in love and reckoned it to be absurd when ever I opened up to her how intense I was in love with Noah. She just believed in one thing, lust. And that's why she crashed with as many guy as she could just to quench her taste. I know if we continued with this conversation She'll surely brought something relevant to this up and the last thing I want to talk about is that.

"Suit yourself, I was just trying to help you anyway. Since you don't like my idea I think you should stick to drawing Noah until the deity notice you and produce a cure to your folie."

She stood up and left the room slamming the door. I huffed after she left. Zoe will never understand the feeling of having someone stuck in your heart and no matter how hard you try to eliminate the feeling it stays, relentless, strong and elevate. I know it was stupid of me to fall in love with someone I barely know and that at first sight but some things are meant to happened, they are designated and we have to experience them. Who knows one day, may be one faithful and fortunate day, Noah will notice me and we might end up dating, get married and stay old till the end.

This was how deeply in love I was with Noah Berlin.

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