Red dripped down my fingers and wrists in thick rivers, falling to the tarp beneath my feet in persistent drops like a leaky faucet. Splatters I could never fully clean up covered the wall in front of me. My artist friends gave me a lot of flak for being such a messy painter, but I had to feel the paint. Brushes could get you only so far before you needed the precision of a pinky nail to cut a line between the edge of the water and the grassy bank, and nothing worked better for blending the vibrant rays of a sunset than my fist. It helped me feel the work in a way I couldn’t with a brush. By the end of a painting session, I was usually covered in as much paint as my canvas, but I liked it that way.

I was ninety-nine percent convinced that the mess I made when I really got into a painting was the reason my mom never supported the hobby. She and my dad were aggressively practical. He worked at a bank, she was a nurse. They were a stereotypical American family with two children, a sensible Sudan and an SUV that they never ever drove off of a paved road, and a dog who I believe was born potty-trained and didn’t even bark at the mailman. They were the picture of normalcy. And then there was me.

My brother wore the pastel sweaters and khakis my mom laid out for him, but I refused to be seen outside of my paint-stained overalls and high-top sneakers. I overheard my parents saying that it was only a phase, that when the time came I would choose a good school and a degree that would lead to a well-paying job. And then I announced that I wanted to go to art school. It was as if I told my family I wanted to murder kittens for a living. My mom cried, my dad shook his head, and immediately after high school graduation, I moved out. I had enough saved from my waitressing job for first and last month rent on an apartment in Chicago, and I took a job at Sabella Security Solutions.

Five years later I was still only painting on evenings and weekends, while my days were spent as Richard Sabella’s assistant and receptionist, organizing his calendar and cold-calling potential clients, but it could have been worse. I could have gone to a four-year university and received a business degree like my brother. I could have moved in three blocks away from my childhood home and taken a job working for my dad. I could be going to bi-weekly family dinners with my perfectly coiffed girlfriend who wore pearls and matching pant suits even though she wasn’t even twenty-five yet.

The paintbrush in my hand creaked from the force with which I was clutching it, I loosened my grip and took a deep breath. My life was good. It was my own, even if it hadn’t turned out exactly like I expected. Even if my parents didn’t approve of it the way they did my brother’s. I dropped the brush into the cup of water next to me and pressed my forefinger to the canvas, carrying the Blood Red—a violent name for a violent splash of color—into the Sea Blue.

Then, the building collapsed.

Or, at least, that’s what it sounded like. I jumped, making a nasty smear through what would have been a beautiful blending job, and ran to the hallway. I left a smudge of paint on my front door as I threw it open.

The hallway was littered with pieces of shattered dishware and shiny flecks of cutlery. It looked like a mosaic without the mortar. Then, I noticed the long shadow of a man scooping everything into a cardboard box, his mouth moving with words I couldn’t hear, but were no doubt curses of the most violent kind.

“Moving in or moving out?” I asked, wiping my paint-covered hands across my overalls to clean them. After years of doing that same thing when I finished painting for the day, the overalls were more paint than denim.

“In,” the man barked back. Then, he looked up at me, and my fingers itched to paint him. I had always been more interested in landscapes, but this man made me want to be a portrait artist. Tattoos twisted down his arms in a collage of color and artistry. I wanted to run my fingers along his skin and study each illustration. His face was sharp edges and angles, but he had a rugged sturdiness to him that I would portray in earthy browns with green-flecked shadows along his cheekbones and under his eyes, which were the soft blue of the sky meeting the ocean. Almost white, but not quite. His shoulders were broad, and even hunched down on the floor, I could see how tall he was. Like a piece of clay stretched long.

His head tilted to the side, and I realized how long I’d been staring. I tore my eyes away, but his face was burned into my vision every time I blinked, like after you stare at the sun too long. I bent down to help clean up the mess.

“You don’t have to help,” he said, waving me away. “I can get it.”

I ignored him and threw a plastic protein shaker bottle into the box in his arms. “It wouldn’t be very neighborly of me to leave you to clean this mess all alone.”

He looked at me out of the corner of his eye but said nothing.

“Are you going to use these broken dishes for anything?” I asked, inspecting a few of the ceramic shards.

“Is that a joke?” he asked. When I met his question with a confused stare, he realized I was serious. “No, I’m going to throw them away.”

“I’ll take them,” I said, already shoving some of the bigger shards into the pocket on the front of my overalls. “I can use them for a mosaic.”

“Are you an artist or something?” he asked, a thick finger swirling through the air to include everything from my paint-smeared sneakers to the splatters of paint on my collarbone.

“I suppose that depends on your definition of art, but I like to think so,” I said. “Are you new to just this building or the city?”

“Both.” He grabbed the last of the silverware from the floor and dropped it into his box with a loud clatter.

“Well, welcome to Chi town!” I said, throwing my arms into the air. “What brings you to the city?”

“Work,” he said. His words came out like punches, fast and hard. There was no softness to his voice. No roundness or friendliness. Yet, somehow, it only made me want to try harder.

“You’ll love the city,” I said, wrapping some of the bowls that survived the crash in newspaper and stacking them in a corner of the box. “If you ever want anyone to show you around, I’d be happy to.”

“I’m from New York. I think I can find my way around Chicago.” He waved me off when I started to wrap up a bowl with a small crack in the lip. “Keep that one. For your art.”

When he stood up, the box held against his chest, I could finally appreciate the full measure of him. He stood several inches taller than me, which made him at least six-four if not taller. In fifth grade, I was the same height as my mom, and then I shot up another six inches until I stood as tall as my dad. I towered over other girls and looked eye-to-eye with most men, but my new neighbor had to duck as he walked through his front door, which was directly across the hall from mine.

“I’m Lindsay,” I said, leaning forward on one foot to shout through his open door.

He reappeared without the box and crossed his long arms over his chest. “Gabriel.”

“Lovely to meet you, Gabriel.” I gave him a dazzling smile, which he returned with a head nod. “I’ll see you around, I’m sure.”

“I’m sure,” he said with noticeably less enthusiasm than I had as his door slammed closed.

When I got back to my canvas, the feeling was gone. I’d been working on a waterscape. A river weaving through trees, midnight blue shadows creeping up the mossy banks, the silver trunks of birch trees stretching vertically across the canvas. But now it all felt wrong. I replaced the canvas with a new one I’d just stretched that morning and squirted a smear of yellow paint into the center. Foregoing a brush, I swirled my fingers through the paint, adding in red and brown and forest green in sharp strokes until I realized a jawline was taking shape.