The polished floor of the gallery gave way to cracked pavement in a dizzying, seamless blur. Leaf didn’t remember deciding to run, only the sudden, desperate need for air and the feeling of his lungs burning with each ragged gasp. He stumbled from the brightly lit street into a narrow alley, a dark wound between two brick buildings. The festive sounds of the mixer, the polite laughter and clinking glasses, were swallowed instantly by the low hum of an industrial air conditioner and the distant, lonely wail of a siren.
He pressed his back against the cold, rough brick, the texture biting into the thin fabric of his shirt. The wall was damp and unforgiving, a solid anchor in a world that had just dissolved beneath his feet. He slid down its length until he was crouched on the wet ground, the smell of old rain and wet garbage filling his senses. Shame was a physical weight, a sickening, acidic churn in his stomach that threatened to climb up his throat. He pulled his knees to his chest, wrapping his arms around them tightly, trying to make himself small enough to disappear into the oppressive shadows.
Heavy, deliberate footsteps echoed from the mouth of the alley, each one a hammer blow against his frayed nerves. Leaf flinched, squeezing his eyes shut as if darkness could make him invisible. He braced himself for the inevitable follow-up: Victor’s triumphant, sneering voice, or the frantic, worried questioning of Felix and Jude. He deserved their anger, their disappointment, all of it. But the footsteps that stopped a few feet away were unmistakable, their weight and rhythm etched into his memory.
They belonged to Rowen.
Leaf dared to peek through the gaps in his fingers, his heart seizing in his chest. Rowen stood there, a tall silhouette against the orange glow of the distant streetlights, his form casting a long, distorted shadow that nearly reached Leaf’s huddled figure. His posture wasn’t angry or aggressive in the way Leaf had anticipated. It was something far worse: an unnatural stillness, a rigid control that radiated a tension more terrifying than any overt rage could ever be.
Rowen didn’t speak for a long moment, letting the silence stretch between them. The air grew thick and suffocating, each second a new layer of dread pressing down on Leaf. The ambient hum of the city seemed to fade into nothing, leaving only the sound of Leaf’s own frantic pulse drumming in his ears. When Rowen finally broke the silence, his voice was low and gravelly, stripped of all its usual warmth and patience. It was a sound like stones grinding together, rough and final.
He asked the same question he had in the gallery, but here, in the echoing confines of the grimy alley, it carried the undeniable weight of a final judgment.
“You lied to me.”
It wasn’t an accusation demanding a defense; it was a simple statement of fact, a truth that had settled between them like a block of ice. Rowen took a single, measured step closer, and the murky light caught the planes of his face. It wasn’t twisted in anger as Leaf had feared. It was worse, so much worse; his features were etched with a profound, hollowed-out hurt that made Leaf feel like he was drowning.
That quiet devastation in Rowen’s voice, the raw pain in his eyes, broke something deep inside Leaf. The carefully constructed dam of his composure shattered, and the words spilled out of him in a desperate, pathetic torrent. It was a rambling, incoherent confession, a mess of shame and half-truths that tumbled from his lips without order or grace. He talked about the creative block that felt like a physical paralysis, the gnawing anxiety of overdue rent notices piling up on his counter. He tried to explain the crushing desperation to feel inspired again, to feel like an artist instead of a fraud.
He confessed the stupid, impulsive lie about the art contest, how it had been a flimsy excuse born from a moment of panic. Leaf explained how seeing Rowen, how watching him work with such focus and passion, had been the first genuine spark of inspiration he’d felt in months. He admitted that he had clung to that feeling, twisting it into a project to justify his presence, to give himself a reason to keep coming back to the one place where the world felt a little less gray. It was a confession of his professional and artistic failure, a desperate, fumbling plea for an understanding he knew he didn’t deserve.
Yet, as the pathetic story poured out of him, Leaf could not bring himself to say the one thing that mattered most. He described the inspiration, the spark, but he couldn’t speak of the frantic fluttering in his chest whenever Rowen looked his way. He couldn’t explain the way his internal monologue spun entire daydreams from a shared glance or a simple, kind word. He could not, under any circumstances, admit to the deep, aching affection he felt, an emotion so potent it had colored his entire world for weeks.
To admit he had projected a whole silent romance onto Rowen’s simple kindness felt like a violation far worse than the lie about the art project. That was a deception about his work; this was a deception of the heart. The necessary words caught in his throat, choked by a shame so absolute and suffocating that it felt like it might actually kill him. So he left the most important part of the truth unspoken, a gaping, silent hole in his already pathetic confession. The real reason he’d lied was too humiliating to voice.
Rowen listened to the entire rambling explanation without a single interruption. His expression remained a mask of pained stillness, but a muscle in his jaw tightened, a small, telling twitch that betrayed the storm raging beneath the surface. When Leaf finally fell silent, gasping for breath and shivering in the damp air, Rowen shook his head slowly, a gesture of profound weariness. His gaze was fixed on a point just over Leaf’s shoulder, as if looking at him directly was too much to bear.
“I don’t care about the contest, Leaf,” he said, his voice rough with an emotion Leaf couldn’t quite name. “Or the project.” He finally met Leaf’s eyes, and the disappointment in them was a physical blow. “I thought we were friends. I liked having you around. I thought… I thought it was real.”
He paused, the silence hanging heavy with unspoken things. “All of it,” he finally added, his voice cracking on the last word. “You made me feel like a fool.” The word ‘friends’ was heavy, each letter weighted with the full gravity of his disappointment. It was suddenly, painfully clear that Rowen wasn’t mad about the public spectacle or the fabricated project. He was heartbroken by the private deception, by the realization that the connection he had valued was built on a foundation of lies.
In that moment, Leaf’s career, his art, his financial woes—all of it felt utterly meaningless. The constant, buzzing anxiety that had been the B-plot of his life for months was rendered completely insignificant. It was nothing compared to the complete and utter destruction of his A-plot: the quiet, hopeful connection he had cherished above all else. He finally understood the depth of his mistake. The friendship was real to Rowen, genuinely and truly, and he had treated it like a means to an end, a tool to fix his own broken creativity.
The weight of that realization was a crushing blow, far more painful than any imagined romantic rejection could ever be. He hadn’t just been turned down; he had betrayed something pure and good. He had taken Rowen’s trust, his openness, and his kindness, and he had tainted it all with his selfish, cowardly lies. The sick feeling in his stomach intensified, a bitter cocktail of regret and self-loathing.
Rowen looked away again, his gaze shifting towards the mouth of the alley and the indifferent city beyond, as if he could no longer stand the sight of Leaf’s crumpled form. He scrubbed a hand over his face, a gesture of complete exhaustion that seemed to pull at his entire frame. The rigid tension in his shoulders seemed to deflate, replaced by a profound and aching weariness.
“I can’t… I can’t do this,” he said, the words quiet but absolute. He let his hand fall to his side, his fingers curling into a loose fist. “Don’t come back to the shop. I need space.”
The command was delivered without anger, its quiet finality making it all the more brutal. It wasn’t a negotiation or a request for an apology; it was a severing. Leaf could almost see the wall going up between them, brick by invisible brick, a fortification built to protect what was left of Rowen’s trust. And Leaf was on the other side of it, locked out in the cold. There was no argument to be made, no plea that could possibly breach that divide.
Without another word, Rowen turned. He walked out of the alley, his broad shoulders slumping just slightly as he was reabsorbed into the indifferent glow of the city lights, leaving Leaf behind. The echo of his footsteps faded, replaced once more by the drone of the air conditioner and the distant scream of the siren. Leaf was left alone in the cold and the dark, the echo of Rowen’s final words ringing in his ears.
He looked down at his own hands, the hands that were supposed to be creating art, the hands that were supposed to build and shape beautiful things. They were pale and trembling in the gloom, and he realized with a stark, hollow clarity that they were completely empty. In a single, catastrophic night, he had lost his inspiration, his friend, and the one place in the world he had finally started to feel safe.
—
Experience the slow-burn, heart-wrenching story of Leaf, a digitally blocked artist, and his deeply complicated friendship with Rowen in The Art of Unrequited. This emotional contemporary romance and slice-of-life tale explores unrequited love, personal growth, and creative inspiration, perfect for fans of fiction, slow-burn romances, friends-to-lovers tension, and character-driven storytelling. Click here to read the whole story.
