“Wait, what color did you say?” Marco shouted over the loud music on the rooftop terrace.
His hands moved quickly, trying to fix the mistake he made on his new painting.
The wedding guests were laughing nearby, but Marco’s mind was stuck on one problem: he had accidentally painted over the wrong spot.
The purple lavender and white jasmine he loved had disappeared under a thick layer of cotton-colored paint.
It felt like a muscle twitch he couldn’t control, a strange pain inside his chest.
His friend Lena leaned closer, pointing at the messy joint where the spine of the canvas met the edge.
“That’s the problem with your style.
You always paint over your own work each night, but today, your portfolio is ruined.”
Marco sighed, wiping sweat from his forehead.
The smell of jasmine and carnation from the wedding tables mixed oddly with the paint’s strong smell.
He thought about his retirement plan, which depended on selling beautiful pieces like this.
“I wanted to recharge tonight, but instead I got stuck with this.”
As the sun set, Marco watched the bride slip on a stapler left near the whiteboard by mistake.
The crowd gasped.
A sudden silence followed, broken by laughter when she stood up quickly, clutching her rib in pain but smiling.
Marco realized then that life, like his art, sometimes had mistakes you could not undo.
You could only accept them, like a bone set wrong or a carrot in a spinach salad.
He stepped back from the canvas and decided to call it a night.
Tomorrow, he would paint again, first come, first served.
After all, even a chrysanthemum or a peony can bloom strangely but beautifully, if you let it.