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I add blue low on one side, then push orange through it without letting the colors become brown. I scrape away a place that feels too heavy. Put red back where the blank canvas peeks through.

I do not know how long it lasts. Eventually I reach for the orange and find the tube pushed far beyond the edge of the canvas. When I lift my head, Laura is still at the other end of the table. Her computer is closed. She is sitting back in her chair with her hands resting loosely in her lap, watching me. I do not know how long she has been that way.

She is not watching the painting. She is watching me.

“How long?” I ask.

Laura shifts in her chair. “How long what?”

“You’ve been watching.”

“Not long.”

I wait. She exhales through her nose. “Maybe fifteen minutes.” Her computer is closed, and there is no work in front of her now.

“You finished?”

“A while ago.”

Something about that pleases me. Yesterday her attention kept returning to me in the store, then again when I wore the leather jacket home. Now her computer is closed, and she is still looking at me when the painting is right in front of her.

Laura narrows her eyes. “Don’t make that face.”

“You watch me.”

“I was watching you paint.”

“You watched me yesterday too.”

“Kell.”

That is answer enough. She gets up and comes around the table to stand beside me and look at the canvas. “You’re very sure of yourself for someone who discovered leather jackets yesterday.”

“I was right about the jacket.”

That gets a laugh out of her. Then her gaze drops to my hands.

“You’re also covered in paint.”

I look down. Blue and orange fill the narrow spaces between the willow strands, with red smeared across two fingers.

“Sink,” she says.

I wash until the water runs clear, rubbing my fingers together to work the last traces from the finer crossings. When I come back, Laura is still beside the canvas.

Neither of us speaks.

I like what is on the canvas, but I can already see what I want to change. A red shape near the center stops too cleanly. I want another color I do not have.

Laura studies the painting for another moment. “You did all of this while I was sitting ten feet away.”

“Yes.”

“I said your name.”

I turn toward her. “You did?”

“Twice.”