When Stars Collide

Chapter 10 — A Room of Her Own

The sun crawled up the brick wall outside Emma’s studio window, bleeding pale gold through the dusty glass. She stood barefoot on the drop cloth, arms streaked with wet paint, her hair twisted up in a haphazard knot she’d forgotten she made hours ago. Her entire body buzzed with exhaustion and something else — something like triumph.

She hadn’t slept. She didn’t want to. Her easel was crowded with three new canvases now — wild, urgent pieces that barely made sense to her but felt true. One was just a mess of thick black strokes and a smear of gold that looked like it might be a doorway if you tilted your head. Another was a self-portrait she’d done with her non-dominant hand — her face warped, eyes huge and unblinking, mouth half-open like she was about to say something that might ruin her life.

The third was still Noah — or maybe it was the idea of Noah — all storm blue and restless shadows. She’d left his mouth unfinished. She liked it that way. Like an unanswered question.

She stepped back and caught her reflection in the window — smeared in oil paint, dress discarded somewhere on the floor, wearing only an old T-shirt she’d stolen from her father’s garage years ago. She didn’t look polite or pretty or engaged to a man with clean hands and a steady plan. She looked real.

A knock rattled her door. Not sharp, but insistent. She froze — brush still dripping, heart skittering like a startled bird. For a heartbeat, she wondered if it was Daniel — if he’d come to drag her back with soft apologies and steel underneath.

But when she cracked the door open, it was Marissa.

Her best friend stood there in a baggy hoodie and leggings, eyes wide behind her cat-eye glasses. She took in Emma’s wild hair, the chaos on the walls, the circles under her eyes — and then she stepped inside without asking.

“Jesus, Em.” Marissa pressed a hand to her chest like she’d stumbled into a crime scene. “What happened here?”

Emma’s laugh broke free before she could swallow it. It came out ragged, but it was real. “Everything.”

Marissa dropped her backpack on the couch, stepping carefully over paint tubes and a pizza box from three days ago. She turned a slow circle, taking it all in. A riot of color. The fresh canvases were pinned up with thumbtacks. The streaks of paint on the floor looked like footprints.

“Is this… him?” She pointed at the half-finished Noah — the storm-blue one.

Emma didn’t lie. She didn’t flinch. “Yes.”

Marissa whistled low under her breath. “Does Daniel know?”

Emma’s throat tightened. “Not yet.”

Marissa turned to her — really turned, her gaze sharper than Emma remembered. “Are you going to tell him?”

Emma sank onto the arm of the couch, paint drying in the creases of her knuckles. “I don’t know how.”

Silence stretched between them. Outside, a car horn blared, the city wide awake now.

Marissa sat down beside her, close enough that their knees touched. She didn’t reach for Emma’s hand — she knew better. Instead, she asked the one question no one else had bothered to ask her in months.

“Do you love him?”

Emma looked at the canvas — Noah’s unfinished mouth, her own reflection shimmering in the studio window behind it. She thought about the kiss in the rain. The park bench. The way he’d said," You’re enough.

“I don’t know if it’s love,” she said, her voice soft but steady. But it’s real. And that’s more than I can say for anything else right now.”

Marissa didn’t smile. She didn’t judge. She just nodded, like she was filing this new version of Emma into the memory she’d keep safe for her.

“Then burn it down, Em,” she said. Whatever you need to. Burn it down and don’t look back.”

Later, when Marissa left — promising coffee and clean clothes and a ride anywhere she needed to run — Emma sat in front of the unfinished Noah and dipped her brush in fresh paint. She could hear her parents’ voices in her head. Daniel’s careful questions. Her own old doubts whispered that she wasn’t strong enough to do it alone.

She painted anyway. Mouth first this time — Noah’s mouth, finished. Just the hint of a smile breaking into something wider, freer.

A mouth that could say anything.

A mouth that could ask her to jump — or remind her she didn’t need permission to fly.