I grabbed my own slice and settled into the chair across from them, watching them like this was exactly where I was supposed to be. Maya was attaching rings to Saturn with hot glue, her tongue caught between her teeth in concentration. Zoe was adding craters to Mars with the end of a paintbrush.
"Hand me the yellow?" Maya asked without looking up.
Zoe passed it over. Their movements were synchronized, practiced. The easy rhythm of two people who'd been doing this alone together for a long time.
"What can I do?" I asked, already pulling my chair closer.
Maya looked up, surprised. "You don't have to help. This is our mess."
"I want to." I pulled my chair closer to the table. "Put me to work."
Zoe slid a Styrofoam ball across the table. "Earth. Blue and green. Don't mess it up."
"No pressure."
"It's only the planet we live on." She handed me a brush. "Try not to make it look like a bruise."
I dipped the brush in blue paint and got to work. It had been years since I'd done anything like this. Maybe not since my own school projects, when my dad would sit at the kitchen table withme, patiently helping me glue popsicle sticks together or paint volcanoes that never quite erupted the way the box promised.
"You're going outside the lines," Zoe observed.
"Earth doesn't have lines."
"It has continents. You're putting South America in the wrong ocean."
"Maybe it's a climate change statement."
Maya snorted. Zoe fought a smile and lost.
We worked in comfortable silence for a while. Maya hot-glued Saturn's rings. Zoe added craters to Mars. I tried not to drown Australia.
"More green on the top," Zoe said, leaning over to inspect my work. "That's where Canada goes."
"You're very bossy."
"I'm very accurate." She grabbed a smaller brush and touched up my mistakes."Now it doesn't look like Earth has some kind of skin condition."
"Thanks for the vote of confidence."
"You're better at making dinner than painting planets." She said it casually, but there was something underneath. Something that sounded almost like affection.
Maya caught my eye across the table and smiled.
I smiled back.
This. This was what I wanted. Not the galas or the calendar shoots or the women who wanted the headline. This. A kitchen table covered in glitter. A teenager who insulted my painting skills. A woman who looked at me as if I belonged here.
We finished the solar system around eight o’clock.
It wasn't perfect. Jupiter was slightly lopsided, and the sun had a fingerprint in the yellow paint. But Zoe seemed satisfied, which was what mattered.
She carried the whole thing to her room to dry, walking slowly, arms outstretched like she was carrying something that might explode if she moved too fast.
Maya collapsed back in her chair, surveying the glitter carnage on the table.
"I'm going to be finding glitter for weeks," she said.
"Small price for scientific accuracy."
