“You look beautiful,” he said, as he gave me a kiss on the cheek, one that was relatively chaste but still made me feel a little light-headed and giddy.
“Thanks,” I said shyly.
“Have a great time, kids,” Kendra sang out, as she continued twirling her hair around the curling iron.
Harrison waved at Kendra, and then we were off. Washington Square Park wasn’t far from my dorm, and Harrison had been sweet enough to put together a picnic basket full of goodies. We settled my blanket on a grassy bank of the park. The fountain that made the park so famous was turned off, and a giant white screen was set up for the film. We still had an hour to kill before the movie started, and other groups of people—mainly college students and couples in their thirties, it looked like—had clustered on picnic blankets with their own coolers full of drinks and baskets full of snacks.
My stomach grumbled. I hadn’t eaten since early in the day, as I’d spent several hours in the library, gathering books for a research project I was doing for a medieval-art class. As much as I loved illuminated books and the monks who’d made them, my workload seemed never-ending, which was why it was nice to settle down a bit. A cute guy, a good movie, and a warm October night in the city I loved—what more could a girl ask for?
“Don’t expect anything too fancy,” Harrison said, as I opened the basket.
“Why? Did you bring Kool-Aid and graham crackers or something?” I joked.
He laughed. “Close. My fraternity brothers haven’t been paying much attention to the domestic upkeep, and nobody’s been grocery shopping in a few days.”
It wasn’t terrible, but I had to admit I was a little disappointed he hadn’t brought a bottle of wine, maybe even some chocolate, to enjoy while we watched the romantic film. The pickings were fun but modest—Handi-Snacks, a couple bottles of juice, two cold beers, sliced bread, cheese, cold cuts, mustard and mayo, and a scattered assortment of cookies. It was, I presumed, whatever Harrison had managed to salvage from the Sigma Phi Kappa kitchen. I wasn’t that picky anyway. I opened one of the juice bottles and a packet of Handi-Snacks.
“Have you been busy lately?” I asked.
“We have a big crew race coming up, and I’m the coxswain, so yeah—it’s been kind of hectic,” he said, lying down on the blanket and propping himself up on his elbow.
“The cox what?” I didn’t pretend to have any facility for or knowledge of sports, and I honestly couldn’t have cared less, but maybe Harrison would be able to change my mind. I admired his long, strong arms, which I was quick to take note of.
“The coxswain is the dude who faces the bow and steers the boat. Basically, he manages everyone else on the team: their power, their rhythm, et cetera. It’s a little exhausting, because we have a lot of newcomers to the team this year—people who are incredible athletes but whose coordination skills are sadly lacking. And we’re trying to get up to speed as a group, because our next race is against Fordham—and they’ve consistently ranked number one in our region. So it’s time to edge out the competition,” he said as he bit into a giant chocolate-chip cookie.
He talked a little bit more about crew, as well as some event called the Donut Cup, which I didn’t completely understand. But I didn’t press with questions. For whatever reason, the chemistry I’d sensed the first night we met seemed to have been subdued a bit, like a giant wet blanket had been thrown over a cozy bonfire and just a few smoldering embers were left.
Stop putting the carriage before the horse, Annie! I told myself. Harrison was nice, and while I wasn’t sure if I was looking for a relationship right now, I also didn’t want to be like Kendra, who’d become so rigid in her list of desirable qualities for a guy that tonight was her first date since she’d broken up with Alex Figueroa, back in the eleventh grade.
Still, I was a bit rattled about the fact that I wasn’t feeling a whole lot as Harrison became more and more animated about the intricacies of coxswaining, or whatever you called it. I chalked it up to the fact that I was tired and cranky about everything that had happened with Claudia and the committee just yesterday. At the end of it, when I was on my way to the subway station, Elsie had caught up with me to deliver another murderously cold message.
“You know, it’s not too late to drop out,” she said, eyes boring into mine. “I’d be happy to pick up your project, considering I have way more doors open to me in this world.”
I rolled my eyes, though inwardly, my heart beat like a kick drum. “Elsie, I know you’re jealous, but I’ve got this. I’m sorry if that messes with your belief in my incompetency. And trust me, this is one situation where being born with a silver spoon in your mouth and a house full of Andy Warhol originals won’t work in your favor. We’re talking street art, not some fancy fund-raiser where pieces are auctioned off to wealthy people who don’t know the first thing about them.”
She gave me an indecipherable look and stormed off in the other direction. Looking at Harrison now, I couldn’t see the family resemblance—in either their looks or their personalities.
Harrison suddenly sat up and looked at me, like he was seeing me for the first time. “I’m so sorry—hearing me talk about crew must be boring as hell to you. It’s just that we’re neck and neck with Fordham this year, and I’m really counting on things to pull through for us. But maybe I’m obsessing about it.”
“Oh, no!” I exclaimed, feeling guilty that he was now the one apologizing. “I should be the one apologizing—I’m feeling a little distracted myself today.”
Harrison popped open the two beer bottles and handed me one. “Why, what’s up? Penny for your thoughts?”
“Well, I got the Quentin Pierce curatorship,” I started.
“Holy shit! Are you kidding? That’s fucking incredible, Annie. Weren’t you up against hundreds of students salivating for a piece of that guy?”
I blushed. Despite how much I’d obsessed over getting the curatorship, I hadn’t actually given much thought to the competition I’d beaten out.
“I’ve gotta hand it to you, Annie—he must’ve seen how special you are.”
I smiled. Harrison was sweet, but I couldn’t tell if he was flattering me or not. “You know your cousin Elsie got the curatorship, too, right?”
He looked uninterested. “I don’t really keep up on El’s drama. Most of the time, she takes for granted just how good she has it, so when I see her, she’s usually complaining about what’s not going right, rather than what is.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean,” I said. “I mean, Elsie definitely knows her New York art, but she doesn’t seem to recognize there can be more than one aspiring curator in our year.”
Harrison waved his hand, as if dismissing something minor. “Don’t mind El. She’s all talk. I mean, yeah, she’s intimidating, but it’s all just posturing. She’s primarily making up for the fact that her parents were too busy hobnobbing with artists like Jeff Koons to pay enough attention to her.”
I almost felt bad for Elsie, but a deficit of parental attention didn’t give someone carte blanche to be a bitch.
“It’s not Elsie I’m worried about,” I admitted. “It’s my part of the project. See, I was assigned to commission a street artist to create a piece that sums up the experience of New York life. But my primary interests are a little more . . . well, classical. I don’t know the first thing about street art, and I have no idea where I’m going to find the artist who’s going to take it to the next level.”
Harrison wrinkled his brow, like he was thinking. “Why don’t you just go to the places where people make murals and get the best guy there to do it?”
“Well, that’s the problem. I tried doing that, but it didn’t work out so well.”
My good mood instantly darkened when I thought of my earlier conversation with Chase. He hadn’t actually said no (after all, I’d never actually made a concrete request), but after the shenanigans his friends had pulled, it was clear what Chase thought of me. To him, I was just some ditzy small
-town girl with stars in her eyes and zero street smarts. My stomach felt momentarily hollow when I thought about the harrowing story of his childhood. Why had he told me any of it? But it didn’t matter. I had too much pride to let myself go soft with Chase Adams one more time. As cliché as it was, our worlds were just too different from each other’s. And while that may not have been a deterrent to brokering a professional relationship, Chase had made it perfectly clear how he felt about graffiti “pros.”
So why, for the life of me, couldn’t I shake him from my thoughts?
I turned back to Harrison. “Besides, this isn’t about just getting a really good muralist—it’s about finding someone who’s going to change the way we look at street art forever,” I said, perhaps a little too intensely.
Harrison put up his hands in an I-was-only-trying-to-help gesture. “Listen, Annie, I think you should maybe just focus on having fun with it, not getting too stressed out. I’ve been to a lot of exhibits before, and the best ones seemed really effortless. I’m sure there’s a lot of work that goes into it, but it’s just art—I mean, how hard can it be to find someone?”
I didn’t really know how to respond to that. I realized Harrison was just trying to cheer me up, but his comment came across as highly uninformed and even a little hurtful. He was brushing off the most important thing in my life, and even if it wasn’t intentional, it still stung.
We still had about twenty minutes before the film started, so I decided to excuse myself and run to the bathroom before I found myself descending into a conversation that might be a bit too premature to have.
As I turned the corner into the public bathroom, something out of the corner of my eye caught my interest. Spray paint on the concrete wall . . . and it looked fresh. I peeked out around the outside wall next to the ladies’-room entrance and found a familiar sight awaiting me. A small cluster of guys with baggy jeans and spray-paint canisters were studiously tagging the wall, seemingly oblivious to the looks of disapproval on the faces of passersby. I rolled my eyes. I wasn’t a fan of all the crap I was way too accustomed to seeing on random walls, but if people were going to do it, they could at least do others the courtesy have the courtesy of being somewhat stealthy.
“Annie?”
I spun around, and my breath caught in my throat.
It was Chase.
A rapturous swelling of desire rose into my throat as I looked at him. He was wearing dark clothes—black jeans, black shoes, black T-shirt, and black hoodie—all of which brought out the prismatic beauty of his eyes. He was standing close to me, as usual, which meant he’d crept up like a cat while I was observing the young taggers. They could learn a thing or two about stealth from him, I thought.
Chase looked over to where my attention had been. “Dumb kids,” he said. “These aren’t artists, so don’t get it all wrong. Their style is totally fucked—if you can even call that style. Most of us who grew up on this have a degree of consciousness and discernment, you know.”
I sighed. I wasn’t about to have a debate about art with Chase. Especially after what had happened with Pike and Reynaldo, I was definitely giving him and his ilk a wide berth. Without a word, I went into the bathroom, half-expecting Chase to come after me. But, sure enough, when I came out, he was still there, grinning at me.
“Well, Goldilocks, aren’t you even gonna say hello?”
I crossed my arms and shot him an icy look. “Why the hell would I do that?”
He shifted his weight and shoved his hands into his hoodie pockets. “Listen, Pike and Reynaldo were dumbasses. I didn’t put them up to that shit, you know.”
“Is that your idea of an apology? Because if it is, you’re an asshole. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to my date.” I shoved past him.
“Hey, wait a second, Annie,” he called after me, sounding almost forlorn. “I really do want to apologize—not just for my asshole friends, but for that night at the show when I spilled wine on your dress.” A small smile played on his lips before he laughed. “I’m sorry—it’s just, you were so cute when you looked down and you had all that wine over you. It was like a cartoon or something.”
My palms started to sweat. Chase Adams thought I was cute? That would’ve been nice if he hadn’t been simultaneously making fun of me. I shook my head and kept walking. A few seconds later, I saw that he’d caught up to me and was loping easily alongside me, as if we were the best of friends.
“So . . . hot date tonight?” he asked.
“What do you care?” I snapped. “Besides, doesn’t Daisy have you on some kind of leash?”
He looked genuinely wounded when I said that, although I was doing my best to pretend I wasn’t even looking at him to gauge his reaction. “Nah . . . Daisy’s history. We weren’t even really together. She was pushing for some kind of commitment, but I . . . shit, why the fuck am I telling you this?” He raked a hand through his dark hair.
I had to admit I felt somewhat confused by his sudden self-consciousness. Why did Chase care enough to inform me that things were splitsville between him and Daisy? Like I even care, I thought defiantly.
In a sudden upwelling of anger, I said, “You know, you are so full of yourself, and so are your friends. You’re so quick to judge me and stereotype me as some kind of sheltered rube from the middle of nowhere, but you don’t know the first thing about me. You complain about how people misinterpret you and your art, but when it comes to your thinking you have everyone and everything figured out, you don’t seem to have a problem slapping labels on other people. You’re a hypocrite, Chase Adams. Just admit it!”
He widened his eyes, surprised. “Annie, I’m really—”
But I wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction of the last word. “I, for one, actually bothered to ask you about your life. I gave you the benefit of the doubt—I didn’t just write you off as some street rat. But did you bother to ask me anything about my life? No! Because you’re a consummate narcissist.”
“Annie, I’m trying to apologize here!”
“Well, thanks but no thanks! Stay away from me!” I practically screamed as I headed back toward Harrison.
“Okay, okay, if that’s how you wanna play it, fine,” he said.
I kept walking back to the picnic blanket without looking behind me. If I did, I feared I would trip or do something really dumb. I felt strangely proud of my outburst, like it was a sign of the fierce Annie who was beginning to show herself.
I sat down next to Harrison. “The film’s about to start,” he said. When he looked at me, he squeezed my shoulder lightly. “You okay?”
I nodded and dug around in the picnic basket for some more food, trying not to reveal how flustered I felt. I wanted to protect Harrison from that side of me.
The movie finally started, and I was immediately sucked into the sultry world of Elia Kazan’s masterpiece about two teenagers in love: beautiful, working-class Deanie (played by Natalie Wood) and handsome and wealthy Bud (played by Warren Beatty). It was the late 1920s, and Deanie and Bud were parked in a yellow roadster convertible, kissing passionately. I felt almost embarrassed by the sensuality of the first scene, considering Harrison and I barely knew each other, but I quickly overcame it as I was swept up in the drama of the rest of the film.
I instantly found myself aching for poor Deanie, who was filled with longing for her boyfriend but whose puritanical mother instructed her to repress her desire. Deanie’s feelings, compounded by the intensity of being young and discovering love for the first time, as well as by the class difference between her and Bud, quickly led to her mental disintegration. I felt completely compelled by the film, by the archetypal story of star-crossed lovers and a tender sexual awakening, and I was eager to let myself be consumed. I wonder if I could ever be that obsessive about anyone, I thought almost enviously as Deanie thrashed about in the bathtub and screamed at her overbearing mother.
At that point, I heard some chuckles not far from me. I turned around, irritated by the inter
ruption, and saw Pike and Reynaldo, tooling around about ten feet away from us.
“Man, this movie’s for pussies,” Pike said loudly. “What the fuck we doing here? Let’s go to a bar, maybe find some ladies.”
“Nah, man, this chick is hot. Is she gonna stand up already? I wanna see some titties,” Reynaldo said.
Unsurprisingly, right there with them was Chase, and he was gazing straight in my direction.
Shit, I thought to myself. What is he still doing here?
We locked eyes for a second, and then he did the unthinkable. He walked over.
“Hey, Annie,” he said, ignoring Harrison.
“Uh, I . . .” I was at a loss for what to say.
Harrison frowned and moved a little closer to me on the blanket. “You know this guy, Annie?”
“Don’t sound so surprised, buddy,” Chase said, still not looking at Harrison. “How are you liking the film?”
“It’s one of my favorites, so, if you don’t mind, I’d like to watch,” I said shortly.
“Come on, don’t be like that; I said I was sorry,” he said, although there was a mischievous twinkle in his eye.
He knows he’s fucking up my date! I realized, which made me angrier than I remembered ever having been. I turned to Harrison, purposefully placing my hand on his knee to express that we were an item. “No, Harrison, I don’t really know him. Not really. And he was just leaving. Right?” I glanced at Chase.
“Are you serious? Harrison?” Chase said, finally stopping to look at Harrison.
Harrison stiffened and stood up. “What’s your problem, man?”
At that point, Pike and Reynaldo sauntered over, ears perked to the tension in the air. “What’s your problem, dawg?” Reynaldo said, getting in Harrison’s face.
Harrison looked like he was about to bite Reynaldo’s bald head off, but Chase got between the two. “Nah, man, it’s cool. She’s right—we were just about to leave.” At that point, Chase looked over at me and said, “I really hope you enjoy the rest of the film.” He paused, and then, if things weren’t already weird enough, he recited poetry—actual poetry. “Though nothing can bring back the hour/of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower/we will grieve not, but rather find/strength in what remains behind.”
So Damn Beautiful (A New Adult Romance) Page 10
