Annya's Enchanted Realities

It had been six months since Lucy walked out of Jackson’s apartment — six months since the shouting, the silence, the heartbreak.

She still remembered his voice cracking when he said,

“So you’re just going to leave?”

And how hers had risen, sharp and trembling,

“You didn’t leave me a choice.”

She told herself she’d done the right thing. It was better to end it than be the reason he lost everything — his family, his inheritance, his world. But the truth was, she hadn’t stopped thinking about him. Not even for a day.

Now, sitting in the quiet of her new apartment — smaller, colder, but hers — she stared at the email she almost didn’t open.

Subject: I’ll be in town.
Just five words, signed — J.

Her fingers hovered over the keyboard. She hadn’t replied. She wasn’t sure she could.

Lucy didn’t reply to Jackson’s email.

She read it once. Twice. A third time. Then she archived it.

Some ghosts didn’t deserve resurrection.

That morning, she pulled on a blazer she didn’t love, poured cold coffee into a travel mug, and left her apartment to go job hunting.

Her old job — the one she’d kept partly because it made her feel closer to Jackson — was long gone.

Fresh start. New city. No looking back.

She walked into the first café she could find to reset her nerves — and ran headfirst into chaos.

“Shit—watch it!”

A paper cup hit the floor with a loud splotch of iced coffee and oat milk.

She looked up into wild hazel eyes, a mop of too-long hair, and a crooked grin that shouldn’t have been attractive — but absolutely was.

He was holding a sketchbook in one hand, a broken pen in the other, and coffee down the front of his thrift-store band tee.

“Wow,” he said, half-laughing. “I think this is what they call a meet-cute. Or a caffeine disaster.”

Lucy blinked. “I’m so sorry. I wasn’t—”

“No, no. My fault. I was sketching while walking. Again.” He held up the ruined notebook. “Rafe. Artist-slash-bad-decision-maker. You?”

“Lucy.” She couldn’t help smiling. He was ridiculous.

“Lucy,” he repeated, like he was tasting the name. “Cool. You look like someone important. Like… taxes don’t scare you.”

She raised an eyebrow. “I’m actually job hunting.”

“Even better. Come with me.”

“What?”

“I owe you coffee now. Let’s make it up to each other. You didn’t ruin my morning, by the way. I was already running from a very awkward situationship.”

Lucy laughed, despite herself.

Rafe handed her the drink he insisted on paying for — some overly sweet caramel thing he called “liquid therapy.”

They sat outside the café. The sun was annoyingly perfect. Rafe was talking — fast, animated, completely unfiltered.

“I mean, who actually knows what they’re doing with their life? I’ve been fired from three jobs this year. One was for turning the office printer into a sculpture.”

Lucy laughed. Really laughed. The kind she hadn’t in months.

She caught herself smiling. The kind of smile that hurts a little.

Suddenly, she remembered Jackson’s email sitting in her inbox. The fight. The months of loneliness that followed. The feeling of moving through life like it was grayscale.

This moment was too colorful.

Too easy.

Too soon.

“I should go,” she said, abruptly standing.

Rafe blinked. “Did I say something?”

“No. You were… you’re great. I just— I remembered something.”

She didn’t look at him when she walked away.

Rafe watched her go, one brow raised, the corners of his mouth twitching.

Interesting.

A few weeks later, Lucy landed a job at a boutique art gallery in a boho part of the city. It was quiet, curated, and felt like a place she could slowly rebuild herself.

She worked behind the front desk, organized showings, and started connecting with local artists.

The city hummed around her again. Life felt… manageable.

Jackson didn’t write again.

Rafe didn’t show up.

She told herself that was good.

It was a Monday morning.

The sun hadn’t fully risen yet, and the street was still half-asleep when Lucy turned the corner and stopped dead in her tracks.

The front window of the gallery was covered.

Electric colors twisted and looped across the glass in bold, unapologetic shapes. Neon oranges bled into indigo swirls, outlined in black like a heartbeat gone wild.

Fragments of words. Half-quotes. Symbols she didn’t recognize.

And in the corner, barely legible:

“Make it mean something.” — R

She stared at it for a long time.

It wasn’t just graffiti — it was good. Annoyingly good.

But it didn’t belong here.

She pulled out her phone and took a photo — not because she wanted to keep it, but because she’d need it for the police… or the gallery owner… or whoever handled graffiti that’s technically art but also technically a crime.

Lucy showed the picture to her coworker, Jamie — a part-time sculptor with purple bangs and a chain wallet.

“Looks like Ghost R,” Jamie said, chewing her pen cap. “He hits galleries sometimes. Murals, rooftops, weird places. No one really knows who he is.”

Lucy frowned. “Ghost R?”

“Yeah. Or just R. Tags like that show up in alleys, tunnels, art events. Sometimes they’re painted over in a day. Sometimes they stay forever.”

Lucy narrowed her eyes at the screen again.

Ghost R. Great.

“How do I find him?” she asked.

Jamie grinned. “You don’t. He finds you.”

One week later, Lucy found herself in a dim warehouse on the edge of the city, standing in front of a wall covered in neon spray-painted signatures, stencil art, and chaotic sticker slaps. She hated how familiar it was starting to feel.

“Don’t touch anything unless you want to lose a hand,” the guy at the entrance warned her with a smirk. Paint stained his fingers, a Sharpie tucked behind his ear.

She wasn’t sure how she’d gotten here. One lead from a local zine editor turned into a name, which turned into a burner Instagram account, which turned into a cryptic DM from someone who said:

“You looking for Ghost R? Come to the Spot. Thursday night. Don’t dress like a cop.”

And here she was.

The “Spot” was less gallery, more underground art show — part social scene, part creative free-for-all. Industrial fans blew stale air through the converted warehouse. Music throbbed in the background. Spray cans clattered somewhere nearby.

Lucy walked past installations made of broken skateboards, tangled wires, and one full wall of found-object collages that smelled faintly of gasoline.

Then she saw it.

A canvas hanging near the back — untitled, unframed, but unmistakable.

“Make it mean something.”

Same signature. Same brush style. Same chaos in color.

Ghost R.

“Gotcha,” she whispered under her breath.

“You talk to yourself often, or is this a special occasion?”

The voice came from behind her — casual, amused, and painfully familiar.

She turned.

And froze.

Rafe.

Standing there with a lopsided grin, hoodie sleeves pushed up, a smear of blue paint across his wrist.

Her eyes scanned him, then the wall again.

“No,” she said slowly. “You’re not—”

“Surprise.” He raised a brow. “Miss me?”

She took a step back. Everything clicked at once — the “R,” the obsession with color, the reckless charm, the sudden disappearances.

Rafe was Ghost R.

And he’d tagged her gallery like it was a blank page in his sketchbook.

“You vandalized my workplace.”

“I prefer the term uncommissioned contribution.”

“You—” she almost laughed. “You’re insane.”

“You left without finishing your coffee. I had to do something dramatic.”

Lucy didn’t know what she felt. Shock. Intrigue. Anger. A little betrayal.

But also… a flicker of something she hadn’t felt in months:

Wonder.

He was more than a flirt with good cheekbones and bad decisions. He was everywhere in this room. His art was alive. Raw. Unpolished. The opposite of Jackson.

“Why didn’t you just say it was you?”

“You weren’t ready to see me again.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Sure I do.” His gaze softened. “But maybe you’re ready now.”

Lucy didn’t answer right away.

She looked at the canvas again, at the words she hadn’t been able to stop thinking about since the morning they appeared on the gallery window:

Make it mean something.

She turned back to Rafe. His grin had faded, replaced by something a little more serious.

A little more hopeful.

“Buy me a coffee,” she said finally.

“Only if you promise not to run this time.”

“No promises.”

But she was already walking with him.

A quiet rooftop. Rafe’s been painting a mural. It’s messy, abstract, lit only by string lights. They’ve been spending more time together — not every day, but often. Lucy’s more relaxed, more herself. But she’s still holding something back.

Rafe was sitting on an overturned crate, wiping paint off his hands with a rag that was already too far gone. The skyline stretched out behind him — glittering lights, buzzing windows, lives.

Lucy leaned on the railing, wind tugging at a loose strand of hair. She hadn’t spoken in a while. Just watched him work — the way color spilled from his brush like breath.

“You okay?” he asked, without looking.

She nodded. Then, quieter:

“Not really.”

He stopped wiping. The rag fell to the floor. No teasing, no jokes. Just presence.

“Want me to shut up and listen, or ask questions like a nosy therapist?”

She smiled faintly. “Just… listen.”

He nodded once.

She took a shaky breath, fingers tightening around the railing.

“There was someone before you. We were together for a long time. It was serious. He… his family didn’t approve of me. I wasn’t good enough. Too normal. Too poor. Too everything.”

She wasn’t crying, but her voice wavered.

“They gave him an ultimatum. Me or them. And instead of telling me, he let me find out on my own. I left, and we fought. It ended ugly. It left a mark.”

Rafe didn’t move. No sharp inhale. No attempt to fix it.

“And now I keep waiting for something to go wrong,” she said. “With you. With this. Because I don’t want to get hurt again.”

He reached out, brushing a stray hair from her face.

“I’m not him,” he said softly.

She looked up. The usual smirk was gone. Just the softness in his eyes — the kind that made her catch her breath.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

Lucy smiled, the slow cracking of something old thawing beneath years of winter.

“Okay,” she whispered.

“Okay.”