Page 224 of The Girlfriend Clause
“Steps have tooccur.”
I kicked an empty can across the stone pavers, and it bounced off a bench. A couple looked at me like I was a football hooligan, and I smiled apologetically and scuttled after it to put it in the bin.
What he’d done with the cuts, the detached way he’d slashed a third of our workforce—I couldn’t accept that, no matter how much I wanted to, no matter how much I understood why. It was just too real now that it had happened, and the human fallout was clear.
But he didn’t deservethis.
After the bridge, I cut inland without thinking about it. It took a minute for me to notice where I was.
Chelsea Harbour.
Cranley House sat back from the road, the pale brick already beginning to glow against the early evening. The banners were still up.FinalWeek.
Was it still open? Inside, the entryway was dark, no one at the front desk, even though the doors were ajar.
“We’re closing in fifteen minutes,” a voice called from the back.
A cleaner shuffled past me pushing a metal bucket on wheels. I hadn’t been here since the launch party for the auction.
Beyond the reception, a few lights were still on. All the exhibits remained on display like they had at the launch, except some of them now hadSOLDstickers under them.
Was my piece still here? Maybe Liam had already taken it home.
I walked through the cool halls. Landscapes, abstracts. The occasional portrait. How shit would it feel to see your art there without the redSOLDsticker?
Confirmation nobody wanted it. You weren’t good enough.
Without the guests, the ceilings seemed higher. Had Eliza and I really broken in? It felt like decades ago. There was the side door we’d sneaked in through—the one I’d smashed into the wall.
Eliza hadn’t hesitated when Mum had suggested it. She knew it was crazy, but she’d done it with me anyway.
She’d always had my back.
I walked toward the back of the gallery, my footsteps echoing on the polished floor.
There it was. Lot thirty-eight.
The SOLD sticker sat there under it, next to my name.
Alexandrea L. Jones
Untitled (Held Breath)
Oil and mixed media oncanvas
150 × 120cm
Montclair PrizeWinner
Faces of NowTouringExhibition
This work captures a figure held in motion, alive with contained force. Jones renders presence through tension rather than expression, allowing the subject’s energy to emerge in what is withheld as much as what is shown. The result is a portrait that feels watchful, defiant, and charged—poised on the edge of action, its stillness suggesting not absence, but a pause held deliberately, by both subject andhand.
Courtesy of theartist
Privatecollection
? SOLD
