It had been a few weeks since the disastrous club incident and their date nights had been postponed a few times or replaced with practice sessions. Irene had found it easier to not plan anything special and to use their practice sessions as an excuse to not have proper date nights as practicing for Mrs. Montfort’s birthday performance technically could count as a date. Eve had dutifully showed up each time and seemed to be trying to be on her best behavior after Irene had been sulking for some time. They were starting to feel like they were back to their usual selves and the tension between them had started to melt away gradually as nothing dramatic happened for some time. 

Irene had started to notice a change in Eve’s appearance as well, it was small things, like clean hair and better fitting clothes. She had started to question herself, had she been too harsh on Eve? Maybe Eve was just in a bit of a slump before and she had taken it too seriously? By all accounts it seemed like Eve was back to being herself. 

They were taking a break from practicing at Irene’s parents house and eating some snacks on the couch. Mr. and Mrs. Ellison had both gotten to meet Eve during the past few practice sessions and so they weren’t home this time. “Are you wearing a new perfume?”, Irene asked as the scent wafted over to her from Eve, it smelled nice, but was applied quite heavily. 

“Ah, yeah, I thought it smelled nice, I don’t know.”, Eve shrugged, flashed a quick smile and continued eating her snacks as she scrolled on her phone. On her phone again?, Irene thought, but stopped herself from obsessing over it and instead moved on to other things. 

“By the way, I thought it would be nice with a proper date next week? Maybe we could paint or do something artsy?”, Irene suggested, hopeful that they were getting closer again after having felt a bit disconnected lately. 

“Sounds like fun, we can do it at my place, I think I have some canvases and paint in storage and those easels we used last time? When was it that we last painted…last year?”, Eve tried to remember, but time moved so quickly, she often couldn’t recall if something had happened months or years ago as it all blended together. 

“It hasn’t been a year, silly, has it? No, I remember it was around like five months ago or something.”, Irene reminded Eve with a chuckle and then continued to recall when and where and what they both had painted. Eve just smiled along, vaguely remembering it more and more as Irene told her about it. 

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It was time for their painting date, Irene was excited as she walked up to the driveway. In the doorway she was met with Eve’s new strong perfume as Eve came to meet her at the door. At first glance dread hit Irene as she looked into her girlfriend’s eyes and saw that they looked bloodshot, was she high again? “What’s with your eyes-”, Irene blurted before she could stop herself, bracing herself for disappointment. 

“What? Oh, I stayed up waaay too late last night, I was watching this really sad movie, come in -”, Eve motioned her in as she went on to describe the most heart wrenching plot Irene had ever heard. Eve had a habit of spoiling any and every movie she watched if you didn’t stop her before she started telling you about it and she was really good at retelling it so by the time she was finished it often felt like you had actually watched the movie with her. Irene could feel her own eyes watering a bit as she listened to Eve and she could understand why Eve had been bawling her eyes out to it. “Oh, no! I didn’t mean to make you cry, baby.”, Eve enveloped her arms around Irene with a small chuckle as she noticed that Irene had gotten emotional as she talked. She kissed her cheek and tried to steer them onto more cheerful topics, which worked and soon they were helping each other tie their protective aprons in place and getting ready to paint. 

Eve had decided that she would paint Irene’s favorite flower, the glacier lily, so she poured a generous amount of yellow paint on her palette and some other colors she needed for the mountain background, but her hands were shaky and in truth her eyes weren’t red from crying, so it was quite challenging, but she tried her best to not let it show. Fortunately, Irene was pretty focused on her own painting. Eve had looked up some information about addiction and soon her phone’s algorithm had started showing her short informational videos about the topic when she scrolled on her preferred social media platforms. It had made her realize even more that she might need to change her behavior. In her mind she wasn’t quite ready to give up her preferred substances all together, but she did know that she needed to start to think about ways to slowly at least cut down on them - not just for Irene, but for herself too. She had made up some smaller goals or aims for herself, like not using during their dates (which she had failed, once again), putting more effort into personal hygiene (which she had somewhat succeeded with even if she was using a lot of perfume to cover up the smell of her failing her first goal) and practicing harder for her mother’s birthday celebration (which she had been able to keep up with, even if she sometimes showed up a bit late). It was exhausting and Eve often managed to convince herself that she was doing fine and didn’t really need to keep up with these goals - then immediately regretting it when she caved and then justifying it by thinking that she could keep to the goals if she had to, but she wasn’t really trying for real, they were just aims, not rules. So, really it wasn’t that big of a deal. 

Eve tried to paint the glacier lily as accurately as she could, but her hands were not cooperating and so she only managed to make some shaky lines and blob-like shapes. The tremor in her hands was annoying and a bit concerning, it made her drop her paintbrush a couple of times and she even managed to spill the cup of water she was using to clean her brushes in. By the time that happened, she could sense that Irene was getting suspicious, which sucked as she had gotten away with her movie explanation and now it could be ruined if she didn’t get her shit together. Eve tried really hard to seem like nothing was wrong, she kept joking around and even managed to turn her awful painting into something more abstract as a cover for her not being able to paint a straight line. “You know, I’m experimenting with this one and I think I might be the next Rothko, if I say so myself.”, Eve joked as she showed Irene the yellow and green canvas. “But unlike him, I won’t name it something boring like ‘Yellow and Green’, instead I’m calling it ‘Glacier lily hues’, after my beloved’s favorite flower, romantic right?”, Eve smiled, seeming proud of herself, but in a joking manner. Irene couldn’t help but smile back even when she rolled her eyes at Eve. It was sweet that she had thought of her favorite flower when she painted. “I really wanna see glacier lilies in real life sometime.”, Irene said wistfully. “And we will. Someday.”, Eve promised. Irene then showed her masterpiece, a beautiful scenic mountain landscape that was far from abstract. Irene was good at drawing as she had lots of experience from sketching designs for the clothes she made, and the talent transferred over to other types of drawings as well. 

For the next few weeks, Eve and Irene got together for dates and practice sessions, for some of them Eve was late, but she managed to show up eventually to all of them. She smelled of perfume and seemed to be doing well, even if she often claimed her eyes were red from watching sad tv-shows or sleeping poorly. Irene suspected it wasn’t always true, but had no proof, so she thought it best not to say anything as Eve’s mood swings were getting a bit hard to keep up with - one day she would be almost hyperactive and the next she would be feeling really down. Irene mostly chalked it up to just being Eve’s personality, she had been quite dramatic the whole time she had known her after all. As teenagers it had seemed more normal, though. Irene didn’t have much time to dwell on it though as she spent most of her free time in the atelier, working on the dress she was making for Eve. Her hands were covered in small scrapes and burns from sewing and ironing, and from pricking her fingers as she really gave her all to make the dress of her dreams. Irene’s hands were tired and aching as she used them too much, for both the piano and sewing, but she tried to work even harder through the pain. Everything was going to turn out perfect, if she had any say in it.