Portrait of a Friend

“No, it’s mine now! You can’t have it!” 

“Carlos!” Katie swiped at the piece of paper that he held just out of her reach. “Give me that! It’s horrible; I’m throwing it away.”

“What are you talking about?” He lowered the drawing and peered at it, twisting away as she made another grab for it. “Every single line is a study in perfection. I shall treasure it always.”

“Shut up. Look, the eyes aren’t even the same size.”

Carlos held the portrait up next to his face and screwed up one eye, letting the other bulge. “As I said, a perfect likeness.”

Katie crossed her arms. “It’s the other eye.”

He hastily rearranged his features and she laughed in spite of herself. “Okay, fine. You can have that one. May it always keep you humble. But I’m not done sketching you yet. Settle down.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He sat down and leaned back on his elbows, legs crossed in front of him on the grass of the college commons. Katie pulled a fresh sheet of paper out of the folder in her bag and clamped it to a clipboard.

“Don’t most artists work in sketchbooks?” he asked, tilting his head to one side.

“Yeah, I guess,” she said absently, roughing in the shape of his head and shoulders. “I just hate being reminded of my past failures, you know? And you can’t escape them when they’re all captured in a book. I prefer to just pull out a completely fresh sheet whenever I want one, without any influence from what came before.”

He squinted at her. “Sounds like a metaphor.”

“Nice.” She glanced at him. “Is that Psych One-oh-one talking, or Creative Writing?”

“Why not my own naturally brilliant insight?”

Katie ignored the question, her gaze sharpening. “Huh. That’s actually a really good pose you’re in. Don’t move. I might use all of it. Or at least…”

Her words tapered off as she extended her sketch, tracing the long lines of his body with her eyes. “Maybe just the torso.”

Carlos made a face. “This feels weirdly clinical.”

“Mhm.” Katie wasn’t listening. She was completely absorbed in her work, making a variety of small thumbnail sketches to try out different compositions until she found one that she liked. Then she unclipped that piece of paper and set it on the ground beside her. As she prepared a fresh sheet, Carlos sat up to flex his arms and roll his shoulders. 

“So you’re planning on using this painting for the graduation show, right?”

“Yeah. I mean, hopefully. If it turns out good enough. And it might not be a painting. I haven’t decided what medium to use yet.”

“Whatever. Portrait. I’m honored to be your muse for such an important occasion, anyway. How come you’ve never drawn me before?”

“Good question.” Katie set down her pencil and stared at him. “You’re always around. It would have made a lot of assignments easier. I guess we’ve just been friends for so long it didn’t occur to me to use you as a model. Now get back in your pose. I want to get some detailed sketches to work from.”

He frowned as he leaned back again. “I’m not sure whether I should take that as a compliment or not.”

“I know you too well to ever give you a compliment. It would go straight to your head.”

“Yeah, well, just so you know I’m only keeping your first sketch so I can use it to blackmail you once you get rich and famous and everybody thinks you’re a genius.”

“That won’t work. I’ll just tell everybody I was in my Picasso phase.”

They sat in silence for a while longer, until Katie took a deep breath and put her tools away. “Good enough, I think. Don’t move yet though. I want to take some reference photos for color.”

“Reference photos?” Carlos said indignantly. “Couldn’t you have just taken photos in the first place, instead of making me sit here?”

“Certainly not!” Katie huffed. “Working only from photos flattens everything out a bit. You don’t really get the solidity of the forms that way. Or I don’t, at least. Some people work from photos just fine, but I always have to have a real subject in front of me at first.”

“Wait, does that mean you’re going to need me to do this again?” He struck a mock-seductive pose. “Paint me like one of your French dudes.”

“No,” Katie laughed. “No, I definitely do not need you to do that. I’ll be fine now that I have my sketches. Now I just need to do the darn thing. Go, be free.”

“Okay. See you, Katie. Do me justice.”

Katie started work on the portrait that weekend. She decided, after doing some color studies in various mediums, to work in oil pastels. The rich, heavy pigments suited her friend well. She propped her phone beside her on her work table and studied the reference photos she had taken. The lighting that day had been intriguing, she remembered; the trees they sat under creating a dappled light with lilac shadows across his bright blue t-shirt.

Zooming in on Carlos’s face, she noticed his expression; a teasing glint in his eyes, but with something softer behind it, an almost shy fondness in his smile. Her heart leaped slightly when she saw it, and her fingers stuttered on the screen. As the image sprang back to its original size, she shook her head. It would be a real challenge to capture that expression. But if she could manage it, what a triumph! It must have been the excitement that caused her to react in such a strange way.

She worked hard all weekend, doing sketch after sketch to capture the expression, and mapping out which color blends would best represent the shades of his smooth, warm skin; which techniques could make the viewer want to reach out and run their hands through his wavy mop of hair. 

Finally, she was ready to begin work on the final product. She roughly marked out all the big shapes with a pencil, and then started laying down broad fields of color, slowly building up more nuanced color mixes and refining details as she went. She blended the colors with her fingers, smoothing together the pigments to create the contours of his cheeks and the thin shadow where his neck plunged beneath the collar of his shirt. 

Her hand slowed as she moved down across the planes of his chest and the curve of his torso. She had seen him nearly every day since their junior year of high school, and yet somehow she had never taken in the lean strength of his body. 

She sat back abruptly and rubbed her forehead with the back of her hand. “Keep it together,” she muttered, sucking in a deep breath and holding it as she got back to work, moving her hand more briskly this time.

Finally, the day of the show dawned. Katie woke up feeling sick. As the hours crept by, she felt worse and worse, until finally, just before the opening, she was in a desperate panic, and wondered just how ruinous to her future as a professional artist it would be to grab the portrait off the wall and run.

Carlos didn’t arrive until later in the day. When he strolled up with his usual cheery grin, Katie wanted to sink into the floor. 

“Is this Katharine Wendell, the famous artist?” he asked her. “Can I get your autograph?”

All Katie could manage in reply was a feeble laugh.

Then Carlos looked at the portrait, and his face changed. Katie couldn’t bear to look at his expression, so she stood beside him and studied the portrait as if she too was seeing it for the first time. 

His body filled the frame in a diagonal swoop from where his head tilted onto a power point in the top right corner to where he was cut off at the wast by the matte. His shoulders created a contrasting diagonal that pulled the eye of the viewer across the image plane. The background was little more than a simple wash of green, which pulled even more attention to the careful modeling of the subject himself. It was remarkably well done; even Katie could see that. It almost seemed as though if you reached out a hand you would feel a solid form beneath your fingers. 

But beyond all that, the truly arresting thing about the portrait was the love. It blazed out from every tender stroke her hand had made, and, what was more, she had somehow unconsciously put that love into his face as well. That was the unbearable part. For all Carlos’s offhand, teasing attitude, she knew there was little his keen eyes ever missed.

“Katie, this is…” Carlos held up his hands, sketching a vague frame in the air. “This is amazing. I’m… It almost doesn’t feel right, you know? Seeing myself the way you… The way you’ve captured everything.”

His voice sounded strange. Constricted. Like his throat was trying to choke off the words even as he spoke them. Then he looked around the room, shoving his hands into his pockets. “Hey, there aren’t too many people left in here. Want to come around and look at the rest of it with me?”

They wandered from one student’s display to the next. Neither of them said much, only offering the occasional comment on a particularly good piece of art, or pointing out things that made them laugh. When they reached the other end of the room, they both went out through the glass doors and stood looking down over the campus. 

Carlos sighed and scuffed the ground with his sneaker, and then burst out, “Listen, Katie, about that picture—”

“I know,” Katie interrupted. “I know what you’re going to say, and I’m sorry, I’m really, really, honestly so so sorry. It’s so weird. I almost didn’t put it in the show, but it… It’s the best thing I’ve ever done, and I just…”

Carlos was staring at her now, a strange, unreadable expression on his face. She looked away. “I didn’t know what I was putting into it until it was finished. I truly didn’t.”

“Katie.” He stepped toward her, his hands hovering between them for a moment before he folded one arm across himself and held on to the opposite elbow. “I’ve liked you ever since we first met back in high school. I figure there’s no point in not telling you now.”

“Wait, what?” She stared at him, a cacophony of emotions rising up in her chest, along with a semi-hysterical giggle, which she promptly squelched. “You like me? As in, like like?” 

Even in the midst of her confusion, a small part of her was standing off to the sides, rolling its metaphorical eyes over the teenage phrasing, but Carlos just grinned at her wryly.

“Well, yeah. Why do you think I settled on this school when the Ivy Leagues were practically beating my door down with full-rides? I just wanted to stay close to you.”

Relief washed over Katie. Now he sounded like himself again. “Oh, give me a break.”

“What? They would have been lucky to have me.” Carlos, too, seemed relieved to be back on familiar ground. 

They simply stood there for a while, grinning at one another wordlessly. Then Katie started to laugh. “This is so weird.”

“You’re telling me.” Carlos shook his head, and then his expression grew shy. “But maybe it would be a little less weird if we talked about it? Maybe over dinner? You know, to celebrate your first successful art show? Desserts on me.”

Katie nodded, hoping the fading light would hide her sudden blush. “Well, I guess that would be okay. If you’re paying for dessert.”