“I don’t have good news for you,” Maxwell tells me. “I have really good news for you: There’s no such thing. We can make our own luck. In fact, anyone can. And if you can harness this mindset, you’ll find yourself getting a little luckier.”
As he says this, a dark blue dragonfly circles us, landing on my canvas.
Hazel gasps and sets her hand gently on my cast, giving my fingers a squeeze. “Dragonflies represent good fortune,” she whispers.
The irony isn’t lost on me that we’re here to get practical and grounded advice, yet are still reading into the symbols around us.
Maxwell gives us a few more minutes to finish up our paintingsand invites us to share what we’ve been working on. I don’t expect Hazel to let us see her art, but she does. Slowly, she turns her canvas around. I’m staring back at a person’s very colorful, very abstract face.
“It’s Logan,” she reveals. “Well, it was supposed to be.”
While I was over here painting a portrait of her, she was doing the same of me.
If you see anything you like, paint that.
“Hazel, I don’t like it,” Maxwell says. He claps his hands together. “I love it!”
I have an oversize square head with big eyes and spiky yellow hair. She’s given me pink lips and dressed me in a spiral-tie-dyed, long-sleeve shirt.
“The resemblance is uncanny. It’s very cubist,” I say of her piece. “Are you one of those annoying people who say they’re bad at something but are secretly really good?”
“I can’t explain this,” she says, tucking a windblown strand of hair behind her ear.
“Maybe it was the lucky combination of good morning light, quality supplies, and your muse?” Maxwell poses.Muse, really?“Or once you moved beyond ‘no,’ were you in the right mindset? You started off negative, saying you’d be bad at this, but you still did it. And look what happened!”
“Well, no. This is a fluke,” Hazel pushes back. “Art is not my strong suit. Seriously. You should see my stars. They look like a toddler drew them.”
“Maybe.” Maxwell tilts his head. “Maybe not.”
Hazel goes quiet as she processes this, so his message must have the desired effect.
Maxwell pats his chest, removing his phone from his overalls’ front pocket. “Excuse me for a moment. If this call is what I think it is, I need to take it.”
“In case I wasn’t clear, I love it,” I tell Hazel when Maxwell steps away to answer his phone. “Would it be okay if I kept it?”
“You want this?” She glides her pointer finger along the top of the canvas. “I’ve seen your apartment. This would not fit.”
“I think it’s exactly what my place is missing.”
“Uh-huh,” she says. “Let me see yours.”
“Unlike what you claim, I’m not actually all that terrible at drawing.” I cringe and turn my canvas around. “But this… I’m really sorry.”
The corners of Hazel’s mouth curl when she realizes she was my inspiration.
“You look scary,” I say. “I mean, notyouyou. But this version of you? It might haunt me.” Saying it’s a disaster would be an understatement. I got so caught up trying to capture the exact shade of her eyes the entire time that the rest of her ended up as straight lines.
“I love what you did with my hair,” she says, delighted at how I went overboard with brown paint. Her hair looks more like a hat that’s been puffed up by static electricity.
I take another look at my portrait of her and bust out laughing. “You know, I actually thought this was decent at first? Then I saw yours of me and damn.”
I didn’t anticipate any of this making her blush, but maybe it’s because I’ve embarrassed her?
Hazel rocks from one side to the other. “My eyes are following me.”
“We should probably never speak of this again,” I say, running my hand across the back of my neck. “At the very least, it needs to be burned and then divided up across garbage cans so it can’t somehow come back together.”
Hazel takes my canvas, smiling down at my poor attempt. “Can I be honest? There’s something about it I resonate with. I’m the mature, responsible one,” she explains. Her expression turnscontemplative. “And this stick figure version of me… Well, it feels like I don’t have to be totally put together. All this can get is better.”
