Four is lucky. Four has always been lucky.

That’s what occurred to me as his smooth painter’s hand brushed my rough sculptor’s hand. Left on right. Once. Twice. Three times as we crossed the threshold of a building we weren’t supposed to be entering. The fourth touch never came, so I met his hand with mine. He took it as a sign to hold it, and I saw the familiar, heart-stopping smirk return to his face. Yes, four is most definitely a lucky number, I thought, hoping the thunderstorm caused by my beating heart wasn’t something he could hear over the gentle rush of warm summer air whistling through the trees. Hoping the crickets were too loud for him to notice how every fiber of my being was shrieking in joy.
I loved him. I think he knew, too, which is why he took me to this old warehouse in the middle of nowhere. He wanted to use the spray paint I’d gotten him for his birthday, but since he was absolutely secretive about it when inviting me to accompany him, I jumped to conclusions and assumed he was either going to kiss me or murder me and dump my body in a creek. Not now, rationality hissed to my imagination as the possibilities crossed my mind again, this is a friend thing, not a love thing or a serial killer thing. It became increasingly harder to think as I realized his hand was still on mine. Over and over, I tried to tell myself that this was a friend thing, but it soon lost its power to the concept of me and him, together in a building forgotten by the rest of the world, completely alone. It gave me goosebumps.
Asher was always affectionate, always ready to give a hug or hold a hand (or, on one occasion, lend a shirt, which I don’t think I gave back). We met at Redbank Academy of the Arts as freshmen when I’d stupidly gotten myself lost. His older sister knew her way around, and she passed that knowledge on to him, who, in turn, passed it on to me. Red-faced, I’d followed him around like a duckling would follow its mother as he led me from classroom to classroom, showing me what each teacher taught.
“We’re late anyway,” I remember him saying, “might as well get the full tour.” That was also the first time I saw him crack that tantalizing smirk, which made my heart leap a little. I didn’t know why it did at first, but as years went on with us being friends and being late to class, I realized it was because I had a crush on him. A big one. A crush the size of the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling (which, as Asher taught me, covers about 12,000 square feet).
It made sense to me. Asher, however, was a whole different story. Asher made as much sense as a fish going for a jog in the sky. I suppose that’s why he became a painter and I became a sculptor; he preferred the idealism and liquid possibility in paint, whereas I liked things to be set in stone. Literally. When you make a mistake in carving stone, you either cross your fingers and hope it looks good that way or trash the whole thing. When you make a mistake in painting, you have more opportunity to turn it into something else. Something even more exciting. I guess that’s why I liked Asher so much, too-- there was never a dull moment with him. Never. If there ever was, he’d decide to do something equally frustrating and endearing like try to wrestle me to the ground. I’m positive he’d always let me win on purpose, just so he could see my expression when, all of a sudden, I was on him, and he’d be smiling back up at me from the floor, eyes twinkling like christmas lights.
In comparison, I was dull. Boring. Lackluster, even. I was too normal for him, too normal for art school, too normal for anything, really. It came as a shock to me when I was accepted into Redbank, and an even greater shock when I’d actually made a friend on the first day. It was a shock to me that I could sculpt under such immense pressure, as a teacher breathed down my neck, waiting for me to slip up. It was especially shocking to learn that they were impressed by me. Everything was shocking to me, but most shocking was the fact that I was gay, which I realized when I watched Asher paint something for me, and it finally clicked as to why I was so flustered by his very existence.
He told me he was bisexual a week after sophomore year ended. That shock wasn’t a bad one, in my case. We were eating ice cream in his parents’ basement, the ceiling fan exerting itself as it struggled against its old age to keep spinning. He admitted to liking a guy in his class, some pimple-dotted, gangly stranger named Justin who probably couldn’t tell you what Asher’s favorite color was. Burnt sienna, by the way. He always managed to sneak the rich color into all of his paintings in one form or another. He blushed pink as he told me all about this miraculous Justin, how his paintings were so symbolic and creative, how he’d always be so deep in concentration when working, how his favorite band was some underground indie folk band, how his smile was “as radiant as a thousand suns in one sky”, which I’m sure is really dangerous and could kill this planet’s entire population of creatures in a millisecond. I tried desperately not to sigh, considering this was something really personal and, after all, we were friends. Just friends. I had no right to be jealous of something that I could never have with him. I was fine with the way things were. Just...just fine.
His chances with Justin lasted about a week. Julia, his sister, did some social media snooping and discovered how incredibly dickheaded he was. Plus, he had a girlfriend. Asher’s infatuation with him didn’t end so easily; it took him another week to stop his mourning. I promised to be a shoulder he could cry on, which quickly turned into actual crying on my shoulder, which resulted in him admitting that I was something closer than a sibling to him, which resulted in my face turning a shade of scarlet that, in any other context, would be really pretty. If we’re closer than siblings, rationality scolded my imagination, us being anything romantic would be incest, right? In other words, snap out of it. Imagination snarled in response.
The summer after junior year, Asher found the perfect spot to test out the spray cans I got him for his birthday. The thought that he’d invited me made my heart go crazy, but I brushed it off. Friends, rationality said, just a friends thing. But when he arrived outside my bedroom window the evening we planned to go, grinning from ear to ear, I couldn’t help but think of Romeo and Juliet. Romeo and Juliet both died and their relationship lasted three days, rationality snapped again. I’d crawled out the window, silent as death, tapping on the window sill four times for good luck. Four has always been lucky.
After an eternity and a half, we arrived at the locked gates of the warehouse. With a devilish snicker, Asher leaned down and lifted up a broken segment of the chain link fence, and we crawled through. Then the hand brushing incident occurred, which resulted in awkwardly holding hands, which resulted in me telling myself over and over again that this was just a friend thing. Which failed as I imagined his lips on mine, his hand still in mine, his heart mine. Mine, my imagination whispered possessively. Rationality tsked in annoyance.
As the heavy door swung open, we were greeted with a whoosh of stale, cooler air. Subconsciously, I shivered, squeezing Asher’s hand a little.
“Cold?” He asked almost immediately. I wanted to say yes and let him offer me his jacket like a true gentleman, but I shook my head instead like a big infant with no concept of spoken language. He laughed, pulling me inside the building as he strode in, acting as if it were a palace. To be fair, for someone who thought in color and poetry, the walls of the rusting fiasco must’ve been the ultimate canvas. Asher’s giddiness was already busy painting them before he even reached into his bag to pull out a can. I couldn’t help but smile as his excitement grew, hands going up to tangle in his raven hair. I always told him his hair swirled like a Van Gogh piece, but now his expression was the artwork. A Picasso painting, smile too grand to fit his face, eyes so wide they could pop right off his face. He was planning a real masterpiece this time, I could feel it.
He approached a wall cautiously, a yellow paint can in one hand. Reaching out, he traced a path in the rust, sighing as he did so. “Burnt sienna,” he said, turning to look at me, “the best color in the world.”
“I know,” I said, not quite knowing what else to say. Which, as I realized soon after, was kind of stupid, considering I could’ve said “and you’re the best person in the world”, a much more poetic and romantic response to his comment. He laughed as if he could read my mind. He was such a people-person (and I was such a loud thinker) that I figured it wouldn’t be impossible, so I blushed anyway, thankful for the dark concealing my face.
Asher flicked his flashlight on, lighting up the wall, then handed it to me. I watched dumbstruck as he sprayed a line of bright yellow across the metal sheet, laughing like a maniac as he did so. “God,” he said, “that’s a good color.”
“I know,” I repeated dumbly, face glowing redder than before. He continued the line, making swirls and zigzags extend from it like the branches of a golden tree. He picked up a vivid green, unleashing verdant snakes onto the wall to chase off the monotony of the rusted steel gray. Then, picking up red, he added splashes of energy across his makeshift canvas. Asher added color after color, until the entire section was covered in a kaleidoscope of brightness that gleamed in the light of the flashlight like a giant tropical bird. He stepped back, laughing and admiring the beautiful nonsense he spread across the wall.
“This whole thing makes no sense,” he said, gesturing towards the mess of spray paint, words echoing how I felt about him. About us.
“I know,” I said again, a little dreamier than I had anticipated. The hum of cicadas in the nearby forest filled the silence between us like an orchestra. He turned to me, squinting against the harsh brightness of the flashlight, but smiling. His freckles looked like a Jackson Pollock painting, even from here. I could compare him to artwork all day, I realized, this time not bothering to stop myself from thinking this way.
“There’s something you should know,” he admitted shyly, breaking the thick silence. I nodded, allowing him to go on. No use in ruining this tranquil moment with a misplaced word or an accidental slip of the tongue.
“Well,” he continued, “we’ve been friends for a while. A really long while.”
At that, my heart leapt. If he’s saying what I think he’s saying, I thought, I might pass out. I snapped to my senses, pushing the thought out of my head the moment it entered.
“And I’ve been thinking about that, and well,”
He’s getting nervous, I thought. A good sign for me. Or a bad one. It could’ve go in any direction at that point. My hands were sweating, and for a moment I was positive that the flashlight was about to fall right out of my grip.
Asher was walking closer to me. He put his hand over mine, turning the flashlight off. CRAP, I thought, RED ALERT. I wasn’t prepared. Whatever he was about to do, I wasn’t prepared for it. So, so not prepared. Even if he were about to tell me the stupidest thing possible, I wouldn't've been ready. Even if he asked me what day it was, I would’ve had no answer.
“I really like you. Like like you.”
And I lost it. Internally screaming, internally cheering, internally lighting fireworks, internally everything but smiling. That, I’m pretty sure, was plastered across my face. He wouldn’t have been able to see it through the dark anyway. But my lack of prepared responses did give me an idea.
“I know,” I said for the lucky fourth time, even though that was a lie. I had no clue how he felt until that moment. Even so, I saw his eyes crinkle into a smile, illuminated by the faint light from the moon, almost too romantic for me to tolerate. Then, finally, after years of questionable flirting and steadfast friendship, he kissed me. Four is a very lucky number, I thought. Four is the luckiest number in the world.