This was the one portrait Joey had ever begun that she’d liked. She loved the idea of a portrait, the turning of a person inside out. And she was good at certain frames: the backs of a mother and child walking away. A woman on a paddleboard with just her right cheek in the frame. But Joey wasn’t so good at portraits so exposed. Head-on. Her faces came out flat, her eyes uniformly vacant. No movement, Demetris had once agreed. No life. For some reason, this facial portrait was the sole interesting one that she’d ever produced.

Correction. That she’d begun.

Because in the midst of birthing it, she’d traded art for law. And when she’d returned to her old friend a year and a half back, it wasn’t with verve but with care. Like her art was something that could be shattered again.

She would do evil eyes, she’d contracted with herself, but without faces attached. Evil eye walls. Those safe, distant portraits, yes. But now she’d violated the contract. The past couple of hours, she’d sat in front of this strange, unfinished, distorted Leo face. She’d sketched and remembered and considered. Her cheeks blazed.

The same thought returned to plague her: I should change this to Grant. She flipped open her sketchbook and hashed out some ideas. She slashed a line at the jaw for him. Grant’s jaw was what people called chiseled.

Joey’s pencil hovered over the page. Quickly, she flipped it so the point aimed up. She busied the eraser over the jawline, hating her relief as it reverted to Leo.

Joey slammed her sketchbook shut. She eyed a pile of candy boxes. She could work on wedding stuff—the few items her mother had delegated. What she needed to do was dole Hot Tamales (Groom’s Favorite!) and Sour Patch Kids (Bride’s Favorite!) into welcome bags and affix the tags with calligraphy that had consumed hours in emails with an Etsy proprietress. Joey turned a Sour Patch box around in her hands, already tasting the salty sweet of a little bear on her tongue. Knowing how one bear would turn to one box, would turn to two, would turn to ten.

No. No no no no.

Joey knew she should feel her feelings—that was what she’d learned to do to defuse a binge. She bit her lip, reminded of that first binge, in the dark all alone after she was back at Penn and Leo and her grandfather were gone. But Joey didn’t want to feel her feelings now. What was she supposed to do, she wondered, when her feelings felt like they were killing her?