“Just draw what you see.”
“I see a naked man and my brain is screaming.”
She laughs. Actually laughs. That full, genuine Alex laugh that makes other people smile even when they don’t know what’s funny.
The serious art student glances over. Annoyed. We’re disrupting his process.
I try to focus. Really focus. Stop thinking about all the nakedness. Just draw lines and shapes and?—
Margot appears behind me.
“Interesting,” she says, studying my disaster of a canvas.
I want to sink into the floor.
“Very... interpretive.”
That’s art-speak for this is terrible but I’m being polite.
“I was going for realistic,” I admit.
“Hmm.” She tilts her head. “Perhaps try embracing a more abstract approach? Sometimes our inhibitions create barriers to traditional representation. Let the emotion flow through you instead.”
She moves on to the next person.
“Did she just tell me I’m too uptight to draw a dick?” I whisper to Alex.
“She told you to go abstract.”
“Because the realistic version looks like a potato with limbs.”
“A very enthusiastic potato.”
I laugh despite myself. Nearly snort wine. That would be great—choking on rosé Moscato in front of a naked man and ten strangers.
“Okay. Fine. Abstract it is.”
I give up on the pencils and grab the acrylics.
I dip my brush in paint. Stop trying to make it look like an actual human. Just start putting color on canvas. Shapes. Movement. Whatever the hell Margot was talking about with essence.
It’s actually kind of freeing.
Maybe this is what my life is now. Not controlled. Not planned. Not carefully managed like case files and evidence. Just chaos that I move through. Colors that don’t make sense but feel right. Shapes that don’t represent anything but somehow represent everything.
I can’t control Dom. Can’t control Marcus. Can’t control whether we’ll find justice for Dahlia or whether my intuition will save me or whether any of this will end well.
But I can put paint on canvas and call it art. I can embrace the mess. I can stop trying to make everything look the way it’s supposed to look.
Maybe survival isn’t about control. Maybe it’s about learning to paint in the chaos.
I’m painting something that might be a person or might be a feeling or might be my own existential crisis manifested in acrylic.
Alex leans over. Studies it. “I love it.”
“You’re lying.”
“I’m not.” She’s genuine. That soft smile. “It’s interpretive. It’s emotional. It’s very you.”
