Hazel’s POV
“You cannot seriously be nervous about paint colors,” Adrian said, laughing so hard he nearly knocked over the sample cans lined up along the studio’s unfinished windowsill.
“They’re not just paint colors,” I said, though I was laughing too, unable to hold onto my defensiveness for long. “They’re the first impression every disabled kid who walks through that door is going to have of a space that’s supposed to feel like it was made for them.”
Adrian shook his head, still grinning, but he picked up the swatch I’d been agonizing over anyway. “This one,” he said. “The warm gray. It doesn’t scream institution the way the others do.”
We’d fallen into an easy rhythm over the past few months, the three of us, Julian and Adrian and I, working through the final details of the foundat
