Anna blinked, and all the sharp words she had spent days preparing vanished at once. “Your sister?” she repeated, surprise slipping into her voice despite herself. “She was in town for three days,” he said, stepping a little closer. “Family business. Train station pickups. Elderly aunts. The whole thing.”
“I barely touched my phone. And when I realized I hadn’t written you in days, apologizing by text felt weak, so I brought coffee instead.” Anna slowly lowered her arms. The anger she had aimed at an unknown woman drained away, leaving only emptiness behind.
She looked at the cups in the bag, then at the boxes she had packed. “It doesn’t really matter now, Mike. You didn’t do anything wrong. But because of that kiss onstage, I lost my job today.” Mike went still. His eyes dropped to the brush case, then to her bag.
“Wait—what do you mean, you lost your job?” he asked, frowning as if trying to grasp the scale of the absurdity. He paced once across the studio with his hands in his pockets, then stopped by the window. “You know,” he said after a long pause, “I was at the old print shop at our plant this morning. We’d reopened it because we were thinking of using it for storage.”
“But it has these huge windows, Anna. I stood there thinking, this is way too much light for boxes.” He turned back to her abruptly. “Forget storage. Let’s open your studio there. A real one.”
Anna froze, brushes still in her hands. “What are you talking about?” she asked. “You need a place where kids can paint the sun blue if they want to.” He looked at her with practical excitement. “I’ll talk to the city. I think they’ll go for it.”
“And if you run classes for my employees and their kids, we can probably work out a token rent. It has its own entrance too—no wandering through the plant.” Anna stared at him for a long moment, searching his face for some catch, but all she saw was steady resolve.
The brush case remained on the table between them. “You’re serious?” she asked quietly. “Completely. Consider it my personal protest against moral panic,” he said, finally handing her a cup of coffee.
“Drink this, Anna. We’ve got floor plans, permits, and, I suspect, a lot of blue paint ahead of us.” The very next day they spent hours in his office meeting with city staff and plant engineers, and that evening they walked through the old print shop together. Dust floated in the late sunlight pouring through the tall windows, and their footsteps echoed under the high ceiling.
Mike moved around with a tape measure, marking out possible sections, and Anna caught herself thinking that for the first time in years she was not just an art teacher attached to an institution—she was something more. The fear that had been choking her all morning dissolved in the energy of practical plans and the company of a man who meant what he said. When Lisa heard the news, she talked a mile a minute with relief and then promptly started a new group chat…
