My breath catches in my throat. “Yes,” I say. “Yes…exactly. Exactly.”
It’s like he knows. The way he describes it is too familiar, as if he reached inside my head and tore out the words. I wonder if he’s lost anyone. I’d ask, but…after that conversation about his own insecurities about art and how quickly he shut it down, I suspect he’d consider it inappropriate for me to ask about his family.
And fucking me isn’t inappropriate?
I shunt that voice aside. It’s not like he knew I was a student back then. Or when he told me about being an addict. Or when he slid his hands down over my ass and rolled our hips together as we danced, his breath hot on my neck and the taste of his sweat on my lips as I dragged my mouth along his stubbled jaw.
Stooooop.
“Maybe this is a good place to start, then,” Wyatt says. “What is it about that story you want to share the most? Find out, and you’ve found your capstone project.” He downs the rest of his coffee and tosses the empty cup into the trash bin next to our bench. “That’s what art’s all about—vulnerability. Peel your skin off, and let the wolves feast.”
He quirks a grin at me and offers me a hand to help me up from the bench as he stands. For a second I’m dizzy in a way that has nothing to do with moving from sitting to standing. My mind just short-circuits, and the whole world reduces down to him, to his hand in mine. I know he feels it too, because in that moment we are—briefly—too close, his eyes widening and my heart beating in my ears. But then his hand slips out of mine, and he clears his throat as he turns away, covering his mouth with his hand. I could keep staring at him forever, but I force myself to look at the ground instead, examining the grimy sidewalk below my feet.
We head back to campus together in silence, but the entire time I’m turning his words over in my head, feeling out the smooth edges of them.
Vulnerability.
Peel your skin off.
Let the wolves feast.
10
Despite picking my capstone focus, I’ve yet to make progress.
I need to get out of the apartment. I need to do something productive, something that isn’t staring at a screen.
Ophelia’s the one who ends up saving me. Apparently her ex-girlfriend’s new girlfriend (oof) is featuring some of her work at a gallery in Chelsea on Friday night, and it’s the grand opening, and “I don’t know anything about gallery art, Ely. Please, it’s going to be so embarrassing.”
I’d texted Wyatt to ask if he knew anything about this place, and to my surprise, he wrote back almost immediately and said he’d gotten an invitation and would be there.
Maybe we’ll run into each other, he said, and I keep playing those words in my mind on a loop.
Maybe we’ll run into each other. As if he hopes that we will.
It’s an obnoxious commute because everything is an obnoxious commute from Queens. Ophelia, next to me, seems anxious somehow—she keeps tilting her head toward her window reflection like she’s unhappy with what she finds there.
But when she finally speaks, it’s not at all what I expect.
“Do you still write?” she says, turning to look at me instead of the window.
“What?”
She shrugs. “You wrote X-Men fan fiction back in the day. Do you still write?”
“Not really,” I say. The answer is actually not at all. “I feel like I could only write in someone else’s universe with characters that were already plotted out for me. I could never come up with a whole book on my own. Too much pressure. What about you?”
Ophelia catches one of her thin lilac braids in her hand, loops the hair around her fingers and tugs it taut. “I was never a writer. I’m more of an illustrator.”
Both my brows go up. “Really? How have we not talked about this? Do you make fan art? What fandom?”
“Not anymore,” she says. “I’m kind of…doing my own thing now. I’ve been selling prints on Etsy and doing freelance graphic design work. I actually got this gig to design the new bottle labels for a major liquor company. I’ve been working on my samples, but you know….”
“Holy shit. That’s so cool. Can I see?”
Ophelia laughs and covers her eyes with one hand. “Oh god. I mean. I guess, if you want. I should probably get some second opinions before yeeting this out into the universe anyway. Especially from a fellow artist.”
“I don’t know the first thing about graphic design,” I warn her.
“You still have an artist’s eye, though. You know what looks good and what doesn’t.”
I beckon with both hands for her phone, and after another brief moment’s hesitation, she musters the courage to pass it over.
The design is clearly half-finished, the line work all done but the coloring and shading still incomplete. The name of the gin brand is in block letters, surrounded by weaving vines and a burst of wildflowers. My first thought is Wow, that’s a major fucking break. My second thought is This is really, really good.
“I love it,” I say, pinching the screen to zoom in closer on one of the flowers, a vibrant pink dahlia. “This is incredible. How did you even land something like this? You must be a really big deal.”
She’s got her hands all twisted together in her lap, spinning one of her rings—a big opal spider—around her middle finger over and over again. “Not really. It’s my first deal. If they like it…I mean, if this actually ends up on the special edition labels, it could launch my whole career. But they might take one look and decide they hate it, and then I’m back to square one.”
“They aren’t gonna hate it.”
“You think so?” She finally stops spinning the ring in favor of pressing both hands flat against her thighs, her smile quavering and tremulous. “I’ve been at it for ages. It was actually due last week, but I just…I had to get an extension on the deadline. Which is never a great look.”
“I’m sure they understand. Sometimes life happens.”
Ophelia doesn’t look so convinced. “I’m not so sure about that. I want to make a good first impression. But I couldn’t turn in something that I wasn’t proud of. You know?”
Of course I know. Just as I know exactly why Ophelia missed that deadline. She wants this so bad it’s devouring her from the inside. And so she wants it to be perfect.
As long as she doesn’t turn in the work, she never has to find out if her art is good enough.
Analysis paralysis—or at least that’s what Shannon called it. When you spend so much time worrying whether something is good enough that you never actually finish it in the first place.