A Piece of Your Heart

When I was ten years old, my parents gave me a thick sketchbook for my birthday.

I asked them why, and they answered me with a smile.

“Because we noticed that you love to draw.”

It wasn’t such a big deal. All the other kids liked to draw as well. We did so many drawing and coloring activities in preschool. Coloring books were the norm as well.

But I liked to draw a different way from my other classmates.

Instead of shapes, fruits, animals, houses, and landscapes, I liked to study different things. I would stare at my mother’s hand and try to replicate it on paper. I would try to get the lines right, to capture the perfect width of each finger, and even the little details like the fingernails, the knuckles, and the wrists.

I would practice drawing faces, legs, hair, and arms. I was interested in the human anatomy and how it worked in various movements. Sometimes I would try painting still-life using watercolor, but I was more interested in humans.

Where my peers liked to draw stick figures, I liked to draw realistically.

When my parents noticed my talent, they immediately encouraged it.

“Maybe in time, you’ll become the next Picasso!” my father used to joke.

I didn’t consider myself talented by any means. As the years passed, I grew more and more critical of myself. I noticed that I only felt this way with my drawings. I would draw something, find multiple flaws in it, and then try to improve them next time. I was always learning, always practicing, and always improving myself.

I simply did it for fun, and I was surprisingly enjoying it, even as a kid.

So when my parents gifted me the thick sketchbook that I had been eyeing for months at the store, I was ecstatic.

But at the same time, I was also very hesitant.

The sketchbook was very pretty. The cover was black and felt sleek to the touch. It had silver swirl designs all over, making it look incredibly elegant. The papers were also neatly bound and felt so smooth when I ran my fingers over the surface.

I loved it.This belongs © NôvelDra/ma.Org.

But I also knew that I had to treasure it.

So I decided that every time I had a precious memory in my heart, I would draw it on that sketchbook.

For the first page, I drew my entire family. My father, my mother, my little sister, my little brother, and me. I wasn’t good at drawing people yet, but I made sure to put each of their distinctive facial details, like moles, the shape and size of their eyes, and the way they usually did their hair.

When I was eleven years old, I met a kind lady who gave me ice cream when I was hungry. I remembered that I craved it so much but couldn’t buy it because I had no money.

But the kind lady bought it for me. I couldn’t remember her face, so I drew a woman’s hand holding an ice cream on the next page of the sketchbook.

When I was fourteen years old, I had the biggest crush on a senior in our high school. I remembered that he would always read a book during his free period, so I drew a guy from a side-view perspective reading a book with no title.

Things like that.

In the recent pages over the years, I felt that my drawings had improved immensely. I studied human anatomy, several hand angles, and even put as many details as possible. I liked to be detailed whenever I drew. It gave off a kind of semi-realistic style or even just a plain realistic appearance.

I also drew landscapes there, various places that I went to, and also detailed sketches of people from my own imagination. I put every bit of my passion into that sketchbook.

There were also a few drawings there that I considered personal. Precious memories that seemed small and insignificant, but were good parts of my life that I liked to look back into.

I had desperately searched for that sketchbook at home. Even though I couldn’t find it anywhere, I still had a sliver of hope inside of me. I thought that maybe there was some area that I missed, that it was just there somehow, and that I would definitely find it one day.

I never would’ve thought that I had actually left it outside. I must’ve been so exhausted from working too hard that I completely forgot that I had brought it with me and thus unintentionally left it on the bench.

“By the way, I… looked at it. I’m sorry,” Nathaniel suddenly said, bowing his head in apology. “It was open, so I got a look at your drawings, and I couldn’t stop staring at them.”

He… what?

I didn’t know what to say. I felt embarrassed that he had seen what I considered personal, but I also felt grateful that he was straight to the point about it. I could feel his honesty even from the look in his eyes to the tone of his voice.

To be honest, when he said that he couldn’t stop staring at my drawings, it made me feel happy inside. Hearing people praise my artworks always made me shy and delighted at the same time.

“It’s okay,” I said softly, and I meant it. “I’m glad you kept it with you.”

Suddenly, a thought crossed my mind, and everything started to click.

“Is that why you’ve been coming to the bar only when I’m performing?”

Nathaniel looked surprised at my question. Then, he lowered his head, looking like he was embarrassed.

“How did you know?” he asked.

I was also caught off-guard. I only said it on a whim to try to see his reaction, but the response he gave confirmed my suspicions just now. I even thought that he might deny it.

But after he told me that he had my sketchbook with him, I figured that it might be the reason why I kept seeing him during the weekends.

At that moment, I remembered Madison’s words to me earlier.

–

“You’re right. Feels odd, though. It’s like he’s coming here for something in particular. Or someone.”

–

“So… it’s true?” I asked hesitantly.

Nathaniel lifted his head to look at me, and I could see that his ears and cheeks were a little red. The color stood out slightly since his skin was pale. It seemed that he was the type of person who normally didn’t go out of the house.

“…It’s true,” he finally said after a moment of silence. “I come to that place only to see you.”