Page 95 of With a Little Luck

My head has been spinning all day.

I don’t know what to do. I don’t know if I should do anything. I mean, there’s no rule that says I have to act on these emotions now that I know about them. I can just go on as normal. Pretend nothing has changed.

Can’t I?

Why are you looking at me like that?

Seriously though. For a while there, I was the luckiest guy in Fortuna Beach. I could have had anything I wanted. I could have asked out Ari, and the universe would have bent itself to my will. I could have244entered some sweepstakes and won a trip for two to a tropical location and whisked Ari off on a romantic getaway where of course she would have fallen in love with me.

But I didn’t. And I can’t possibly ask her out now.

Obviously.

I mean … can I ask her out?

No. Of course not. If she says no, if she doesn’t feel the same way … we are screwed. Our friendship, ruined. It will never not be weird. And then Pru would be mad because I made things all awkward and she would be stuck in the middle, and I don’t want to do that to her, either.

Unless … unless it’s possible that Ari might feel something for me, too?

I’m almost afraid to hope, but there could be a precedent here. I mean, we’ve always been close. The sorts of friends who tease each other and touch each other … almost like flirting. Like, four years of flirting that I somehow completely missed.

But without knowing for sure, I feel trapped by indecision. If I go on like nothing’s changed, then I’ll never know if I stood a chance.

If I risk telling her the truth, then I not only risk rejection … I risk our friendship, too.

Ugh.

I could really use a distraction.

I pull the art director’s note back out of the envelope.

I’ve been putting this off for too long, trapped by indecision and the certainty that my first acceptance was a complete fluke, boosted by a lucky power I no longer have.

So if it’s pointless, and anything I try is going to fail now … I might as well get this over with.

I turn through the pages of my notebook, looking for anything I might deem remotely submission-worthy.

I pause when I get to the first chapter of the comic. I read through the pages. Araceli the Bard singing about the adventures she and the wizard245have been on as they arrive at the lost temple. Fighting off a horde of goblins. Teasing each other. Trusting each other.

It’s like my subconscious has been sending signals for months, trying to get me to see the very obvious truth. This comic isn’t about a wizard who tries to rescue a maiden-turned-statue, a girl literally stuck up on a pedestal. It isn’t some epic tale of star-crossed love and broken curses and defying impossible odds.

This is about two friends who share inside jokes and have witnessed each other at their best, and at their worst. This is about the sort of love where two people can sit in silence for hours at a time and never feel weird about it, perfectly content just to be together.

Still a love story, but a different one than I’d imagined.

I massage my brow and skip through the rest of the sketch book, until I stumble onto the page I was working on at the festival. The stage and the trees and the audience with their lawn chairs and paper boats of carnival vendor snacks. I never finished it. I never added the star performer.

This is it, I realize. My next art submission.

I don’t even care if it’s any good. I don’t care if it’s what theDungeonwants or not.

I pull up a picture of Ari on my phone, one of us at Encanto—me and Ari and Pru and Quint and Ezra all squeezed into our favorite booth on karaoke night. Trish Roxby, host of karaoke night, took the photo. In it, I have my arm around Ari, like it’s nothing.

I set the phone up against a stack of textbooks and start to draw Araceli the Magnificent on the Albatross Stage, strumming her lute while literal magic swirls and sparkles in eddies around her.

When it’s done, I add a caption:The Minstrel and the Music Festival.

Then I email it to the art director before I can question myself. Again.

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