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really
was
a thoughtful gift, and I don’t want to waste it lamenting my life as artist—crowded out by my new life as a real estate tycoon—even if I do blow at the job. My bosses/parents have been stressing me out with all the running around to appointments. This time in this art class is
supposed
to help me get to my happy place, right?”
    Rory put her hand on my shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “Well, we’re here now, your portable happy place. Feel the love?”
    I smiled at that. “Yeah, thanks,” I said. I leaned over and grabbed my thick plastic art tube—complete with straps—sitting on the floor next to me and popped off one end of it. “Let me just pack up my stuff so I can get the hell out of here.” I rolled up the sketch from my easel, first placing a thin sheet of vellum over it to keep it from smudging, then slid it intothe tube, capping it. When I looked back up at my friends, Marshall looked a bit like he might pass out.
    “Marshall…?” I asked, worried.
    “Can I have a minute here before we leave?” he asked. I followed his eyes across the room to the two blond ladies-who-lunch who had been talking about me.
    “Oh, no, sweetie,” Rory said, like she was his mom and not his roommate. “You don’t want to crash and burn on something like that.”
    He nodded, not taking his eyes off of them. “Yeah, I do. Older women might just be my thing. I mean, women my age certainly don’t seem to be my thing.”
    “Maybe Marshall just likes fine leather,” I said, half-catty and half-joking.
    “Shush,” he said, his breathing rapid now as he worked up his courage.
    “Trust me. Nothing good will come of talking to them. Give up while you’re ahead, Marsh.”
    “They might be nice,” he countered, sounding like he was trying to convince himself more than either of us.
    “What are you talking about?” I said. “Bravo TV dedicates ninety percent of their whole network to programs about women who look like them. Nice doesn’t even enter their vocabulary.”
    “We shall see,” he said, and started off across the room before I could talk him out of it.
    “It’s so cute when he tries so hard,” Rory said. “Bless his little heart!”
    I hopped down off my stool, starting after him.
    “Don’t,” Rory said, grabbing me by the arm. “Let him go.”
    “Why?”
    “He can’t help himself,” she said. “That man needs to learn some of life’s harsh lessons. He’s too nice. He’s got the strictest moral compass of anyone I’ve ever known. You should have seen him handing out fliers for Roll for Initiative over near the Manhattan Conservatory—”
    I winced at the mention of the school, unable to stop my knee-jerk reaction.
“Alexandra,”
Rory said, scolding.
    “I can’t help it,” I said, hating how whiny I sounded to myself. “I’m jealous, okay? You get to hang out with the graduate school crowd. Look at me. I’m dressed up in a fancy pantsuit and talk square footage and utilities with people all day.”
    Rory rolled her eyes. “Poor you,” she said. “Heiress apparent to the Belarus family real estate holdings…”
    “All because of a building collapse that
killed
Devon,” I reminded her. “As wonderful as you think
heiress
sounds, the price paid for it was too high, if you ask me. God rest Devon’s soul. This is not the life I planned on. These classes are the first time in
months
that I’ve remotely felt alive. So screw your whole ‘Lexi’s princess of the real estate kingdom’ thing, okay? Everything has its own special way of sucking, believe me.”
    “Anyway,”
Rory said, ignoring me and jerking a thumb across the room toward Marshall before turning back to me by my now-empty easel. “His funeral.”
    She looked at the plastic art tube in my hands. “About that picture,” she said. “Totally hideous. But in a good way.”
    “Thanks,” I said. “I think. I remembered these sketches that my great-great-grandfather did. There’s a whole volume of