I simmered with unease as we fell asleep that night. I wanted desperately to interrogate him about her, but I worried that confessing the depths of my interest would jeopardize whatever was growing between us. I had spent too many years alone, or with the wrong people, trying to love them even when I knew that I didn’t, and that half-living-half-loving made me unprepared for the real thing.

And so I kept all my questions about Carey to myself.

*  *  *

I was perched on a ladder, tapping loose pigment from above onto a panel of Chastity coated in white paint and grease, when the rolling sound of tires on gravel came through the nearest open window. I glanced toward the locks; I’d flipped them.

“Hold on,” I yelled out. “Out in a minute.” Whoever it was, I’d squeeze through the door and talk to them outside.

But it didn’t matter what I wanted. Max skipped right on into the studio, unlocking the door with her very own key, from a bundle ringed on a silver leather fob. Though she wore baggy jeans and a plain white shirt, hair piled messily atop her head, she still managed to sparkle, bright like an opal, eclipsing me even in my own space.

“Nice key,” I said angrily, frozen to the ladder.

“I have keys to everything,” she said, laughing. “I know we’re not supposed to crash people’s studios, but I barely talked to you at the dinner. Uh—” She paused and gazed out at the room, seeing the twenty-eight panels and their 896 square feet. “Holy shit—what are you doing? What do you have, like, a hundred paintings going on?”

“Max—you are not supposed to come in here.”

“Oh my God,” she said, in a drawl that was half awe, half disbelief. “You’re remaking them,” she said, looking out at the paintings. “They did burn. Holy shit.” I wanted to grab her, shake her, throw her out. She was an endless poison, Max. “They’re beautiful,” she said in wonderment, walking the aisles of my work.

“You cannot tell anyone,” I insisted, paralyzed atop my ladder, gripping the metal so hard my knuckles were white, then colorless. “This—this is bad, Max. You cannot tell anyone at all.”

“Lockbox,” she said, crossing her heart with an X. She looked back at me to gauge my response. I didn’t bother to hide my anger, but kept working, tapping away with my jar of pigment. Ocher dust rained down into a spotted pattern that quickly dissolved, leaving a dense stain.

She lit one of her unfiltered Lucky Strikes. “This is gooooood, though,” she said after a drag, nodding and looking around. “These are good, honey. I mean, I didn’t see the first ones up close. But maybe it was meant to be.”

“I—I don’t know. I hope so. Thank you.”

“How you feeling?” she asked.