“We’re friends,” Ophelia says. “That’s what friends are for.”
A flush of heat blooms in my chest. Maybe I should be humiliated that I’m so easy to please. But ever since what happened with Chaya and me, I’ve felt like…well, like the person who’s always lurking at the fringes of social groups,therebut not really there. Just an annoying leech hanging on by its teeth.
But Ophelia called me her friend. And that’s pretty much enough to make me ride or die for her.
I smile, the first real smile of the night. “Thanks. You’re…a very kind person, you know that?”
“It’s basic human decency,” Ophelia says, “but I appreciate the sentiment all the same.”
I look out past the confines of the microworld that is our fire escape, at the yellow window light of the apartments across the street. One apartment has a plant on a windowsill. Next door, a man passes into an adjoining room, and the lamp switches off, casting the scene into darkness. That’s one thing I missed about New York. All these people—all theselives,each with its own story, its own history and hopes and fears. Millions of people in this city living in their own social webs, silver threads connecting them to friends, lovers, sisters. The tenuous, fragile thread that connects them to me, in this moment where our stories intersect before we depart in our own separate directions.
Makes you feel small. A tiny plankton in a massive ocean teeming with life. Your own problems become small, too.
“How much longer did you say you have on the revised deadline for your illustrations again?” I ask, looking back at Ophelia, who is now sitting cross-legged and barefoot, her pink kitten heels discarded by the window next to my camera bag. “Like…two weeks?”
“I wish.” Ophelia makes a face. “Try six days. I’m starting to think I’m not cut out for this career. Maybe the stereotype about artists ethereally floating around waiting to be kissed by a muse is valid. Maybe I’m not supposed to work under deadlines.”
“I’m pretty sure that’s something artists made up so no one will blame us for procrastinating.”
“Ugh, shut up. Only say things I want to hear.”
I laugh and she laughs back, but it sounds fake.
I might not understand the design industry, but I can understand this: The drive for perfection. The inability to ever let anything bedone. “This isn’t the final product,” I say after a moment, as gently as I can. “You still get to work on the actual label. And you’ll have plenty of time to do revisions on that.”
“I know,” she says with a heavy sigh. “I’ve just put so much time and effort into this project now. And if they don’t like it, then I’m back to square one. I’ve wasted my own time.”
“You haven’t. You’ve learned so much from this process already. Think about it—think about all the revisions you’ve made, the way your eye has gotten keener, how much your vision and technique have developed while you’ve been working on these samples. You’re a good artist. What you’ve shown me so far is incredible. You just have to get out of your own head and finish the project, no matter what your inner critic has to say about it.”
“Yeah,” she says. “Maybe.”
She doesn’t believe me, of course. I don’t know why she would; I’ve been pretty up-front about knowing precisely zero about design work. But Ophelia’s a good illustrator. As little as I might know about this kind of art, I can tell that much.
“Art’s subjective, anyway,” I say. “When you go to most gallery shows, there’s a ton of work on display that you’re like,Why would anyone pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for this?But they do. And there’s plenty of art that never got past the gatekeepers that’s incredible, and those artists are still out there waiting for the right person to notice them.”Hello, meet yours truly.“In art you’re constantly fighting to convince people your voice is worth listening to in the first place. But you’ve already done that. You alreadywon. You got the gig; the gin people want you. You’re so close.”
I wonder if it’s stupid to even be telling her this, like Ophelia doesn’t freaking know. But she finally gives me the first tiny, real smile I’ve seen since we left the apartment. And—fuck it—I reach over and grab her hand, squeezing tight.
“Yeah,” she says. “You’re right. And maybe that’s what’s so scary about it. I have that much further to fall.”
She’s not wrong. Even so, I wonder if she realizes how lucky she is. So many people would kill to be in her position. Yeah, she has a lot to lose, but at least she isn’t starting from zero. At least she has some kind of legitimacy in the field. I might have gotten my work into a few shows in LA, but I’m still very definitely an amateur. I’m constantly, unforgettably aware that I’m just two steps up from being back on the Venice Beach boardwalk trying to sell my work to tourists who veer away from me as if I’m visibly diseased.
Maybe some of that shows on my face, because Ophelia twists hers up and says, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be talking like this. Like, please, I literally won, so why am I over here bitching about how hard it is to be in the spotlight? And you’re already going through some shit tonight. Jesus. I didn’t mean to make this all about me.”
I roll my eyes. “You’re allowed to feel what you feel. It’s not like you stop being human or having emotions just because you’re successful.” After a beat, I go on. “Anyway, it’s going to be amazing. They’re lucky to have you.”
“You better be right,” Ophelia says, “because if you give me false hope, I’m coming for you.”
I grin. And somehow, sitting out here on this humid night with Ophelia’s hand still wrapped around mine, I feel like I’ve put down something heavy that I didn’t even realize I was carrying.
I feel like maybe I’m not so alone, after all.
13
WYATT
I wake up Saturday morning to a text from Ely.
It takes me a second to recover from the shock. Obviously, she’s texted me before. She texted me literally last night. And yet I still manage to be surprised that she reached out again—and in the middle of the night, according to the time stamp on the text.
