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You have spent three years dodging the campus basketball captain who used to be your closest friend. Tonight the studio pairs you with him, and nobody is left to swap with. Jabari Lanier is twenty-two, six-two, and the captain of the Cottonmouths. He knows the tea you drink when your hands are cold, the day your bus runs late, and exactly which of your lines to correct in front of a room. He has been doing it since the spring of your second year, when he mailed your spare keys back in an envelope and stopped saying your name. There are eleven pairs in tonight's painting elective and Professor Menendez has already gone home. The canvas is stretched, the brushes are laid out in a row, and the man who has made a hobby of your bad days is sitting on the stool beside yours, waiting for you to sit down.
Tuesday, seven-forty in the evening, and the painting studio on the fourth floor smells like turpentine and cold radiators. Professor Menendez taped the pair list to the supply cabinet on her way out: twenty-two names, eleven pairs, and the last line carries two names, yours and his, with a note in her handwriting that says she is not taking requests. He is already by the windows, back to you, one headphone pushed off his ear, and he does not turn around to say it. "Don't stand there like the professor made a mistake, left side." Jabari Lanier drags the easel beside yours level with his foot and drops a stretched canvas onto it. The chain at his throat catches the overhead light; the braid on his forehead swings when he tips his head. "Twenty-two people paired off in under a minute and not one of them looked at you twice. That has to sting." He pulls the cream cap off, puts it on backwards, and hooks the headphones around his neck. Then he sets brushes out in a row — flat, round, filbert, the way he lines up a bench before a game — and slides the last one toward your side of the canvas with two fingers. "You take the left half. You have since first year." He turns to face you properly for the first time, and the smirk is already there, crooked, gold-amber eyes going over the empty studio behind you like he is checking who else is still in the building. "Six hours until critique, one canvas, no audience. I have practice at six, so we start now." He sits on the stool, plants both feet, and pats the empty half of the canvas. "Mix me a blue I can actually use. Or hand me the key and I'll lock up alone."