The Artistry of Love

by C. J. Scarlett

  “There, no harm, no foul,” the woman said. “We can all be adults about this and civil.”

  Alessia was perfectly ready to agree to those terms, though she wasn’t sure her companions were. Dr. Tekkin still seemed on edge and hovered closer to her. The woman took a breath and sighed.

  “I think this child is more scared than anything else,” she said. “And while you may not trust motives, Kyle, trust fear. The instinct to keep oneself alive is incredibly strong. So I will trust that she won’t do anything stupid. She wants to preserve herself. Tekkin seems to trust her well enough. I’m more than willing to let that be enough—”

  “But, ma’am—”

  “Enough. Matter closed. Get her out of here; she’ll stay quiet,” she said. “Dr. Tekkin, she’s your responsibility. Everyone else, back to the boardroom.”

  The room cleared out. The angry one, Kyle, stayed a few seconds longer than everyone else. His nostrils flared as he took in breaths like he was getting up on his hind legs to get ready for a fight. But eventually turned away with a glare and marched out, slamming the door behind him.

  She was left alone with Dr. Tekkin who, as per usual, didn’t look happy. He let out a breath of relief, dropping to sit on a milk crate. When he opened his eyes, it wasn’t relief on his face. He scowled in the kind of way a parent might at a child. She felt herself bristle at that. He was only older than her by a few years, even if he wanted the world to think him so much wiser and older with the speckling of gray hair in his stubble. The lines in his face had less to do with years of world wariness and more to do with how many hours a day he spent frowning at the world.

  “What the hell were you doing?” he asked.

  “What the hell was I doing?”

  She seemed to have found the voice she lost in the room moments ago, feeling a fire kick up in her belly.

  “We found you on the ground. Do you know how many bruises you’ve already got working over your body?”

  “Of course I do. I can feel them.”

  “What the hell were you doing?” she asked. “Is this why you didn’t bring up the protests in class? Because you dropped the flyers yourself.”

  “You’re going free right now under the good graces that Veronica thinks you will drop all of this, which you will,” he said, moving to stand. “The innocent, scared act worked well, but I’m not above doing what I must to protect my friends.”

  “Are you threatening me?”

  “I’m telling you to drop it. You were the only one hurt today. It was a demonstration, not an attack.”

  “Well, you managed to terrify a lot of people, no matter what you intended.”

  He sighed and rubbed at the deep lines in his forehead. He paced for a minute. “Let’s just get you out of here and back to your apartment.”

  “You going to blindfold me or roofie me?”

  “We move our meeting spots every month. You knowing about this one is hardly dangerous.”

  When she crossed her arms and didn’t move, he gripped at the bicep of her right arm and pulled. She wasn’t prepared and her legs stumbled forward, falling into his chest. It was hard as a rock beneath her splayed fingers. She gulped, staring at the black t-shirt that hid the strong muscle beneath. She looked up at him but he was already turning away, pulling her down the hallway. She followed after, her hands feeling cold where they’d moved away from the warmth of his chest. The phantom shape of his pectoral muscles was still there, lingering like a buzz at the very tips of her fingers. She heard once that women had more nerve endings in their hands and fingers than men did. She was willing to believe it right now.

  They walked out into the night air together. She didn’t recognize her surroundings. It was somewhere on campus. She could tell that much from the red brick building nearby that read the name of some dorm. Good to know shifter anarchists chose a meeting place so close to the residential home of students. She rolled her eyes.

  Now that they were out in the open, he let go of her arm but stayed close to her, not trusting her not to run off completely. Not that it mattered at this point. But she could feel him bristling with energy just behind her, his eyes likely trained on her as she moved. They started to move towards areas where more students gathered and she wondered if they’d notice. But he put distance between them and if anything, it made her feel even more uneasy. He tried to make their interaction look casual, normal, which made it that much more obvious that something was wrong with the whole thing. She didn’t necessarily feel like she was in danger. She felt safer than she’d been moments ago, locked up in that cell, but she didn’t exactly feel right other.

  She led the way back to her apartment and considered, for a brief second, leading him to a completely different part of campus, unsure of whether or not she wanted to let him know exactly where she lived. But she figured he’d have ways of finding that out no matter what. She was in grad student housing. She’d be easy to locate on a register. So she marched to her home, thinking about her bed and blanket, and getting a long, hot shower to burn off all the grime and the places where she’d likely been touched by strangers as they carried her to their little clubhouse.

  “This is me,” she said when they got outside the apartment building.

  “I don’t need to tell you that all this goes away. You forget it, I forget it. We go to class on Monday like everything is fine,” he said.

  “You know you refusing to bring up the demonstrations in class doesn’t exactly make you seem innocent,” she said. “I’m not the only one who can see it. The students asked an awful lot about it in last week’s study session.”

  “I told you to knock it off with the study sessions.”

  “You can’t control what students do outside of class. We meet in a public forum to talk about the material,” she said. “You can’t control every single part of everything. You don’t own the information you’re imparting on your students in class. You’re just the messenger. You feel like you have ownership, whatever, but you don’t.”

  With that, she turned and walked into the building, hearing the door click behind her as the auto lock kicked in, keeping him out and cutting whatever lecture he had prepared for her short.

  Chapter 8

  Despite the shower and the comforts of home, she didn’t sleep that night. At least not well. She tossed and turned in her bed. She didn’t dream but every time she looked at the clock, the time had moved a little bit farther into the night and closer to morning. She was thankful that tomorrow was Sunday and she had nothing to be awake for. She had papers to write and worksheets to grade from Tekkin’s class and she wasn’t sure she even had the energy to get that done, but she had to try.

  When the sun finally brightened the edges of her window that peaked through her curtains, she got up, feeling the floor beneath her feet and getting an overwhelming sense of gratitude that she was there, that she was safe, and that she had this place to hide away. She made coffee and turned on the TV which, of course, was nothing but the demonstration across all the news channels. She settled for the obnoxious sound of some sitcom laugh track instead while she picked through her fridge for something to eat and tried to pretend that she felt normal.

  She wanted to call Trish; she needed someone to talk to about all this. But Trish was too close and too far away at the same time. Her thoughts of shifter rights and shifter protests were skewed, shaped by fear and desire for equality at the same time. Not to mention, she was across the country, practically in a different world. The next person who came to mind was Erik. She didn’t exactly want to grovel to him with her messy soup of feelings on what happened yesterday, nor did she want to endanger the veiled threat from the shifter group that her safety was in exchange for her silence. She had no doubt they would be watching her now. And Erik wasn’t one to stay quiet about absolutely anything that got him riled up.

  Still, he was the only other friend she had. Which was a depressing thought in and of itself; she really needed to get out more on campus.
But she had to talk to someone.

  You doing anything today? She fired off a text to him.

  She expected him to be asleep until noon at least; he seemed the type to bargain for any sort of shut eye that he could or work off a hangover. But a few seconds later, her phone dinged. Not a thing. Got something in mind?

  I just need to decompress a little.

  Brunch?

  She couldn’t stop herself from smiling. She quickly typed out a response in the affirmative and sent it off to him. He sent her back a location and told her to meet him there in an hour. She instantly felt better, the idea of getting out of her apartment, which was becoming a different type of prison all on itself. She threw on some clothes and makeup and felt a little lighter as she downed the rest of her coffee and then followed it up with mouthwash to get the bitter smell out of her mouth. She threw on a light jacket and stepped outside.

  The day was still overcast as it had been yesterday. That proved to be a slight damper on her mood, but she headed along campus regardless. The place he’d texted her was just in town, called Fran’s. It was a big brunch spot for the hungover and drunkenly disenfranchised of the college campus. As she got closer, she could smell why. It wafted down the street with the smell of frying bacon and the sweetness of powdered sugar, likely going over pancakes and French toast. Her stomach rumbled. She hadn’t eaten anything since a snack at the festival yesterday before she’d been knocked unconscious and taken captive.

  Right. That happened. It sounded like something warzone journalists talked about with such nonchalance, not something a twenty-five-year-old graduate student on her way to brunch thought about. If her mother knew, she’d be petrified. If her father found out, she’d never hear the end of how dangerous shifters were and how they all needed to be banned from schooling and public places.

  She spotted Erik waiting outside for her. He looked a little worse for wear as well. She imagined he had to be if he was up this early on a Sunday. She knew why she was; she wondered what had him so sleepless.

  “I am fucking starving,” he said. “I’m ready to eat the goddamn golden calf.”

  She snorted as she stepped into the restaurant under his arm, which held the door open for her. The smells inside were even more tempting as coffee mixed in with the smell of grease and sugar.

  “There’s something about brunch,” he said. “That makes all of the food taste better.”

  “Are you high?”

  “No. Just think about it. You can have lunch, you can have breakfast, you can do whatever. Throw alcohol in there and it’s perfect.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Definitely high.”

  He stuck his tongue out and held the chair out for her as they were shown to their seats by the hostess.

  “Are you a breakfast brunch person or a lunch brunch person?” Erik asked, opening the menu.

  “I’ve never been one for breakfast,” she said. “Usually just a Powerbar and some coffee, and I’m good until I hit the salad bar at lunch.”

  “Okay, you can cut the whole fucking bird eating habits for a day,” Erik said. “Get the breakfast supreme.”

  “Don’t tell me how to live my life.”

  He gave her a fake look of narrowed eyes and it was her turn to stick her tongue out. It was already working. She already felt better, forgetting about the things that had happened the night before. Well, it wasn’t really forgetting, she knew that. She simply pushed it back, putting it on some shelf in her mind that was undusted, that she couldn’t touch. She’d leave it there as long as possible.

  “Bloody Marys?” she asked.

  “Not a mimosa girl?”

  “I’m feeling like vodka is the way to go after the night I’ve had.”

  “Then by all means.”

  The waitress was some depressed-looking undergrad, ruining her Sunday morning and probably her Saturday night beforehand by working the opening brunch shift at a college diner. She didn’t smile, she wrote down their orders with objectivity, saying okay and sounds good. Alessia ended up getting the omelet with a side Caesar salad. Erik got his breakfast supreme with two sunny-side-up eggs, a short stack, a side of bacon and sausage, and two pieces of rye toast. He claimed he would eat it all and then some. She bet him five dollars that he would want to throw up before that happened.

  Their drinks were placed in front of them and Alessia wasted no time in diving into hers, sucking down the salty mixture of thick tomato juice and the tart, sharpness of vodka. It was her least favorite alcohol, and she was rarely able to drink it by itself. When she needed it, she could stomach it in a mix of tomato juice and pepper or even in a Coca Cola. She’d managed a large sip of it and Erik looked at her with wide eyes.

  “That bad of a night?” he asked. “There’s the hair of the dog but this is something else entirely.”

  She sighed and moved the ice cubes in the glass around with her straw. She wanted to tell him. She wanted someone to talk to about these things, to run the whole situation by. Fuck, she needed some way to decompress. Wasn’t that a thing therapists said people needed after something traumatic happened? They needed an outlet, a place to put their grief or their anger. She wouldn’t exactly call her situation last night traumatic. It had been scary and she maybe, once or twice, feared for her life. But she came out of it unhurt and unharmed. Though she was convinced she was being watched.

  Erik was still watching her and waiting. He wouldn’t stop looking at her until she said something, or made some sign that she was somehow okay. For all his obnoxious jokes in class and the ways he’d rubbed her in every wrong way before, she knew he was caring underneath, at least for his friends. He watched her with concern and the longer it took her to talk about it, the worse the theories in his head would get, the more dangerous his thoughts would become.

  “I got caught up in the stuff yesterday,” she said. “The protest.”

  “On which side?”

  “I got a little bit knocked around while people took off running.” He looked at her with furrowed brows, his eyes moving over her body and she knew that he was looking for injuries on her body, checking for signs of unwell. She shook her. “I’m okay. Nothing physically happened to me except I’m a little bit sore and I’m exhausted.”

  “Are you sure?” he said. “You’d tell me, right?”

  “Yes,” she said, feeling guilty suddenly about all the things she wasn’t telling him. She tried not to cringe too much and give away her mind. “What were your thoughts on all that?”

  He leaned back, clearly not convinced, but he wouldn’t push it. That was a first for him, he always seemed like the type to shove and shove until he got the information he wanted. “I think it was nonviolent, which is good; but it was threatening, which isn’t. We need to separate shifter rights from the fanatics and what they want. People won’t see the difference. It’s like how men get all bent out of shape over feminism because they think it’s some kind of man-hating philosophy after a few women took it the wrong way and got loud about it. Just like feminism, this movement is about equality; but after things like yesterday, people will see it as being about someone, thinking they’re better than someone else.”

  She hated how articulate he could sound. He was supposed to be the annoying boy in her seminar, not the one she went to brunch with and had deep conversations about idealism and the state of the nation. Worse, she wasn’t supposed to agree with him. But he had a good point. She wondered if he’d been thinking about these things too, since the protest.

  “Where were you yesterday?” she asked, sipping her drink some more.

  “At home,” he said. “I knew it would be a total shit show and I was right.”

  “Okay, Mom.”

  He glared at her as their food arrived and Alessia took greedily to keeping the conversation at a minimum, while she worked through her food, taking bites and alternating with sips of what was left of her drink to keep him from asking more questions. She occasionally caught him staring at her, asking s
ilent questions with his eyes. She wanted to tell him, but she also felt a loyalty to Dr. Tekkin to not. And this wasn’t rooted in fear. She knew they would come after her if she spilled too much information to anyone. She also understood she was probably being watched and next time she wouldn’t be so lucky. But where Dr. Tekkin was concerned, she felt a true sense of loyalty.

  Even before Veronica had set her free, he’d tried to protect her. Despite his attitude in class and all the awful things he’d said to her and the ways he’d been incredibly rude, he still tried to keep her safe, keep her protected. She owed him back for that by not breaking his trust, by not putting him in danger as well. And she wasn’t entirely sure that she could trust Erik. She trusted him with her, she knew at this point that he was her friend, for better or for worse. But she didn’t trust him not to go blabbing himself, to tell the wrong people and then cost Dr. Tekkin everything.

  So, she ate her food and drank her drink, but didn’t say a word to him the rest of the time about it, finding a way to change the subject to their work in the seminar instead. He took to it fine, though she could tell from the way his eyes shifted over her that he knew what she was doing, what she was trying to hide. She ignored it, shoved her own nervousness away, and pretended to be the most carefree girl in the world after some brunch and some good drinks.

  He insisted on walking her back to her apartment and she realized this might be his way of finding out where she lived. She considered lying, saying she had to go to the grocery store or something. It felt a little personal, to have him walk her to the door. She didn’t want that with Erik. He was handsome and they had matching thoughts on the world, but she didn’t want him like that. It was entirely possible he didn’t want her either and she was making a bigger deal out of it than there needed to be. But she was a woman and it always did better to err on the side of caution when it came to men. So, she tried to keep it casual, talking only about class or the food, staying away from any chance he might use to ask to come up, or what other plans she had today, to see if she wanted to go out again.