That’s the real fucking art.
2
AMELIA
Istep back from the canvas, squinting at the constellation of red dots I’ve scattered across the midnight blue background. Something’s off. The pattern needs to breathe more in the lower left quadrant.
“Come on, Stone. Focus.” I whisper to myself, dipping my smallest brush into titanium white. Three more stars—tiny, barely-there pinpricks of light—and the balance shifts. Perfect.
My studio smells of linseed oil and coffee grounds. Morning light streams through the skylight, casting geometric shadows across my workspace. Six finished canvases lean against the wall, each part of my “Urban Cosmos” series for next month’s showing at the Ellington Gallery.
I check the time: 10:47 AM. Just over an hour until Maya calls. Her voice has been my lifeline these past months—the only consistent thing in a life measured in coffee cups and paint-stained fingers.
I move to the largest piece, a sprawling cityscapewhere I’ve hidden celestial patterns in the arrangement of windows and streetlights. My fingertips trace the textured surface, feeling for imperfections. The Pleiades cluster mimicked perfectly in the windows of that apartment building. Orion’s belt is disguised as three street lamps.
“Patterns within patterns,” I murmur, grabbing my detailing knife to scrape away a barely visible smudge near the edge.
My phone pings with a text from the gallery owner.
Final headcount for opening night?
I haven’t sent the invitations yet. Another task for the growing list. Between finishing these pieces and teaching my community art class, I’ve barely slept.
The seventh canvas—my problem child—sits on the easel, stubbornly refusing completion. It’s meant to be the centerpiece, a visual riddle where urban grit meets cosmic order. But something’s holding me back from the final brushstrokes.
I mix a custom shade of indigo and test it on my palette. Not quite right. More ultramarine. A touch more.
“There you are,” I whisper when the color finally emerges—that exact shade of twilight when the first stars appear.
The phone rings just as I’m mixing the perfect shade of nebula pink. I reach for it without looking, knocking over a jar of brushes. They clatter onto the floor like tiny fallen soldiers.
“Maya! I was thinking about you. Well, not literally this second, but earlier when I was getting coffee and saw that weird latte art that looked like a duck but also kind of like a moose depending on how you?—”
“Amelia,” Maya interrupts, her voice tight in that way that immediately makes me pay attention. “I need to tell you about something weird.”
I set down my brush, already forgetting the perfect shade I’d just mixed. “Weird-weird or Maya-weird?” I ask because there’s a difference. Maya’s synesthesia means her version of weird often involves tastes that make no sense to my brain.
“I met this chocolatier,” she says. “Really intense guy. He gave me these chocolates from his Valentine’s collection to review.”
“Free chocolate? Score!” I say, then notice I’ve been unconsciously reorganizing my paintbrushes by size. I force myself to stop.
“No, not score. They tasted...wrong. Like, really wrong.” Her voice drops lower. “I can taste...things in them. Emotions that shouldn’t be there.”
I plop down onto my paint-splattered stool. “Your synesthesia picking up bad vibes?”
“More than vibes. It’s like he’s putting something in them that shouldn’t be there. Not chemicals—something else. Something...” she pauses. “Personal.”
A shiver runs up my spine despite the warmth of my studio. Maya’s instincts are rarely wrong, especially when it comes to food.
“Have you written the review yet?” I ask, already mentally calculating how to clear my schedule if she needs me.
“No, not yet.” Maya sighs through the phone. “I’m going to write it tomorrow. I’ve been putting it off because... I don’t know how to explain what I experienced without sounding a bit unhinged.”
I twirl a paint-stained lock of hair around myfinger. “Since when do you care about sounding unhinged? Your whole career is based on tasting emotions.”
“This is different.” Her voice drops to almost a whisper. “It’s like tasting... dark intention.”
“That’s...” I search for the right word. “Unsettling.”
