Luck Lines by Quinn Tollens

Author:Quinn Tollens
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: LGBTQIA+, Romance, fantasy, family-drama, magical realism, lesbian, luck, visual/performing arts, painter, musician
Publisher: NineStar Press, LLC
Published: 2021-12-21T00:00:00+00:00

HELENA’S MIND FELT numb. She’d been trying to paint a blue sky for nearly an hour now. At first, she thought she’d used too much white for the clouds, but when she tried to correct with gray, the scene took on a stormy appearance. She lightened up the blue around the clouds for contrast, but that made the scene look fake. Every correction she made worsened the situation.

She blamed her lack of focus on Nadia. Her girlfriend had spent the night after they’d gone to a Halloween party together. But instead of taking the bus home after breakfast like usual, she’d washed up in Helena’s shower and parked herself on the couch. She was currently in jeans and a black turtleneck, playing some puzzle game on her phone. Both their witch costumes sat in a pile under the craft table by Helena’s feet.

Helena had been planning to paint today, and Nadia had claimed to be fine with waiting, but she could sense Nadia looking her way every commercial break. She felt as if she were back in college doing a timed exam. An exam she was apparently failing.

“You’re still working on the clouds?”

“They’re giving me some trouble, yes.”

“Why don’t you paint the rest of it and come back to them?”

“I have to know what the sky will look like before I decide what the subject of my painting is.” She’d planned to paint a family enjoying a picnic, but since the clouds were turning out to be such a hot mess, she would need to paint something smaller, less ambitious.

“You haven’t even picked what to paint yet?”

Helena slapped a brushful of blue onto the horizon. “I’m having artist’s block, okay?”

“Well, maybe you need some inspiration.” Nadia’s phone began to play impressively loud piano music. Helena realized it was “This Is Not a Real Love Song,” one of the first pieces Nadia ever shared with her.

Back on their first date, Helena had been entranced by the ever-shifting rhythms of the song. Now the cascading notes only riled her up. She tried to ignore the music, but the song snatched away her attention every time it switched keys. The clouds on her canvas stopped looking like clouds and more like a mess of brushstrokes.

How did such an irritating song get 150,000 likes? It had no direction, no pattern. It was simply a jumble of nice chords. Anyone could do that. How did Nadia make hundreds of dollars on her casual experiments while Helena—classically trained, practices-every-week Helena—had nothing?

After the hissing outro, Nadia asked, “Do you want me to play this one again or move to another track?”

“Neither.” Helena’s brush slipped. Great, now one of her clouds was blue.

Nadia paused the next song mid-chord. “Okaaay…what’s wrong?”

Helena erased the cloud entirely by smothering it in blue. “What’s wrong is I need to focus. I’m having a hard enough time without you rubbing your successes in my face. Leave me alone and go back to whatever game you were playing.”

“I was just trying to help,” Nadia murmured.

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