“One thousand percent,” I tell her, peeking over the railing into the darkened audience seating below. “Do you?”
“Sometimes,” she says, faintly. “I think it’s fate that I met you, since we desperately needed a set painter. But then, other things…”
“Like meetin’ my brother?” I quip, and I can feel the heat of her embarrassment. I stay quiet though, letting her sift through the feeling.
“Well, we didn’tjustmeet,” she starts to say.
“But somehow the stars have aligned, and the timin’ is just right?” I grin through the dimness, knowing she can hear it.
“That’s just the thing. I don’t really know if the timing’s right. It sort of feels like it’s never been on my side.” There’s a quiet defeat in her voice, so at odds with the way she was moving just minutes before.
“It’s not just fate, though,” I tell her as we hop off the platform, confronted with one too many corridors to choose from. I follow her to the right, immediately at home when I see a feral looking woman in a tattered, paint smeared smock, her mass of mahogany hair piled high on her head. She gives us a small smile, briefly nodding as she hurries past us. “There’s fate, and then there’s waitin’ around for something to happen to you. Sometimes, the universe needs a little nudge.”
Gen wrenches open a pine door and it gives way to a beautifully bright studio. Canvas and massive wooden cutouts lean against the walls, a shelf of color coordinated paints separated by medium on the wall nearest the door. The light, I realize when I gaze up, comes from the multiple skylights above, like the sky is bleeding its way into the room.
“So I think these have shades…” Gen fumbles with some buttons and the room plummets into darkness as electric shades shield the daylight from entering. She flicks on the softest, haziest lights I’ve ever seen in my life. “Obviously, you can mess with the lighting.”
“I’m obsessed,” I laugh, turning toward her. “Thank you. You have no idea how much I needed something like this.”
“Glad to be the nudge in your universe,” she grins, offering me her hand, but I take it and yank her into me. She’s quiet strength wrapped in a strawberry and vanilla scented package of beauty, and I know it’s premature, but I love her already.
“Gen,” a voice calls from the hallway, and suddenly our little cavern is being invaded by the smell of expensive soap and sage. “What the fuck are you doing in here with the lights off?”
The shades above zip away, and the heavens shine down on a dark-haired angel, the tattoos that pepper his forearms only a slight distraction from his angular face, his pouty mouth, the creamy skin that is the most perfect canvas I’ve seen in my life.
“Oh,” he says, blinking at me. “Jean.” He offers me his hand and I grasp it, shocked by its roughness.
“Sloane,” I grin, finding something kindred in his smokey, gray blue eyes.
“She’s painting sets for us. She’s, uh, Grant’s sister.” Out of the corner of my eye, I see Gen shifting her weight.
“I knew you looked familiar. You’re like, glamazon him,” he says, cocking his head as he whips it toward Gen, his eyes flying wide as his lips curl into a gleeful smile.
“Yeah, well, we’re twins,” I chuckle. “Oh my god, wait.Jean, as in, Gen’s friend Jean at the bonfire…” I squint, looking between the two as my new friend hides her beautiful face in her hands, but Jean just steps forward.
“So you’re familiar with my work?” he quips, looking at me through his inky black lashes with a furious little flutter that pulls an obnoxious laugh out of me.
Grant filled me in on the night he saw Jeanand Gen giggling by a tree just moments before he called my brother over. Before that bonfire, she and my brother pretty much steered clear of each other. One thing led to another, including me inviting her to the bar, and now we’re here, watching Gen blush at his mention.
Jean stands a few feet back, arms crossed as he leans against a wall, openly perceiving me in his baggy black cargo pants and intentionally tattered, olive sweater with a mischievous glint in his stare.
“Okay…” she laughs, turning to leave. “If you’re riding with me, I gotta go,” she says pointedly at Jean. “I’ll see you later?”
I nod, grinning as she disappears.
“I see you, new girl,” he says, lifting his chin. “Little match maker, are we?”
“I preferthe Lord’s work.”
“Religious?” His brows furrow.
I shrug. “Spiritual. And southern.”
His eyes shine with mirth, and a throaty rumble filters out of him as he pushes off the wall.
“Jean!” Gen yells, and he winces.
“Get my number from Gen,” he throws back, following Gen’s trail, and I make my way back into the main atrium to keep picking away at the unfinished piece, heart burning with the prospect of new friendship.
