So Damn Beautiful (A New Adult Romance) (14 page)

“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 interruption, 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.”

Harrison glared at Chase. “I thought you were
leaving, dude.”

Chase just kept looking at me, and my last
reserves began to melt. I breathed deeply and said, “William
Wordsworth. You know that poem?”

Chase gave me an inscrutable half smile.
“Looks like we’re both deep wells, Goldilocks.” And then he was
gone.

As Chase walked off, I could hear Pike and
Reynaldo bitching over the fact that they hadn’t gotten to brawl.
Despite myself, I couldn’t help but be amused at their childish
enthusiasm.

“Who
was
that, Annie?” Harrison said,
sitting down.

I paused, not quite knowing what to say.
“He’s just . . . some guy I met a while ago. He’s a jerk, but he
isn’t dangerous or anything.”

Harrison frowned. “Well, I’ve met guys like
that before—dumb pricks who think they’re cool because they have a
little gang to boss around. But, looking at the guy, I doubt he can
even read. He’s not at NYU, is he? Annie, if he ever messes with
you . . .”

At that point, I just wanted Harrison to stop
talking, and I was so hopped up on the adrenaline of watching the
movie, running into Chase, and feeling all of Deanie’s repressed
desire coursing through my own body that I impulsively grabbed
Harrison by the collar and kissed him—hard and deep. He didn’t need
to be coerced. He met my passion with equal fervor, moving his
tongue into my mouth and grabbing me by the small of my waist as he
pulled me down onto the blanket.

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see that
Chase was staring back at us. I closed my eyes and tried to simply
enjoy the moment—as well as my realization that Harrison was a
pretty decent kisser. But, try as I might, the vision of Chase, of
his deep and mesmerizing eyes piercing through mine so that I felt
as if he had penetrated down to my purest nakedness, was seared
into my skull.

“Okay, Annie, you’re up,” Claudia said without looking at me as she
tapped away at her laptop keyboard, recording the minutes of our
meeting.

I gazed out the window, onto the sparkling
New York City skyline. I was literally and figuratively on top of
the world, but that world seemed to be crashing down around me like
a building hit by a wrecking ball. It was the Monday after my
run-in with Chase, and I was still didn’t have an idea as to whom I
could approach to do the piece. I was determined not to ask any of
the committee advisors for leads—I was going to have to come up
with my own idea and my own contacts somehow; otherwise, I’d never
live down the embarrassment of not meeting the challenge like a
trouper—like the person who, at the very least, Mom and Kendra knew
me to be.

Quentin was still visibly absent, but Claudia
was in a somewhat more chipper mood than she had been the week
before—she even stopped to crack jokes and compliment the
committee’s work along the way. The three others were ahead of the
game, predictably. Elsie had some kind of plan to do a video
sculpture piece that would juxtapose the present landscape and the
New York of times past with another well-known, reclusive artist
and filmmaker, Todd Butcher, who’d retired in Woodstock to create
massive environmental installations centered on the themes of UFO
sightings and dying indigenous tribes.

Hayden’s project was going to be an homage to
the New York tenement building, but with the added bonus of
fiber-optic architecture and some kind of lighting system that
would be determined by temperature, sound, and people’s emotions.
(I didn’t know quite how that would work, but she even had a
technical-looking blueprint from the person she’d commissioned, an
architect–installation artist who’d just designed a new opera house
in Florence, Italy.)

Shawn had commissioned a prominent
techno-geek–visual artist to design a suite of “smart object”
sculptures: people, things, and environments networked seamlessly
together, with no need for little devices like iPhones or computers
to connect to the Internet. “Google Glass is an early awkward step
in that direction,” Shawn explained. “But our take would be more
artistic, of course—a haunting yet beautiful look at the way
technology is changing our lives, and what it’s turning us into.
José even thought we could maybe make some of the pieces
interactive with the spectators.”

“Well done, you guys,” Claudia remarked on
their progress. “You’re all definitely working in idioms that we’re
not seeing enough of in today’s artwork, and I love the attention
to crossovers into different disciplines. We need to show people
that art is as relevant as ever, and that it cannot be extricated
from any other part of our lives.”

As she said this, she was clacking away at
her keyboard. Claudia told us that she was sending Quentin instant
messages in real time and that he was “in approval.”

If he’s in approval, why can’t he just
tell us himself?
I thought, getting more irritated by the
moment at our incognito mentor.

And then . . . it was my turn.

As I attempted to figure out how to wriggle
out of the fact that I was nowhere close to coming up with a piece
or selecting an artist for it, I tried to waffle. “Um, uh, you
know, there are a few different artists who have, uh, expressed
interest, but I was thinking of taking a different tack altogether.
Um, maybe, like, what if, instead of commissioning one artist, we
got a bunch of local schools together to create some kind of, uh,
mural with artwork by a bunch of kids? You know, like, pushing the
idea that our streets belong to our kids, and that kids are the
future of art in America . . . something like that.”

I knew I sounded bumbling and inarticulate,
and so did Elsie, who preened like a cat.

Claudia didn’t mince her words. “That’s a
horrible idea, Annie. We’re not the city arts council or some
god-awful community-art nonprofit that puts material out there
willy-nilly, without any respect for craft or technique. This isn’t
a public-service announcement, either. We are talking about
producing genuine works of art by people who are poised to become
the next Keith Haring or Ron English, not the poster child for Save
the World by Supporting Artists.” She frowned at me. “Please tell
me you’re joking.”

I giggled nervously. “Um, yeah—it was just .
. . I thought it would be kind of funny and ironic, as, like, a
prelude to the other work.”

Claudia’s eyes narrowed. “So . . . do you
have a project in mind or an artist you’ve talked to? Because this
isn’t your art-history class. There are no extensions here.”

“That’s right—if you can’t take the heat, get
out of the kitchen,” Elsie mumbled loudly enough for me to hear as
she crossed one long leg over the other and leaned back serenely in
her chair.

I swallowed, hard. All eyes in the room were
on me. If I admitted my defeat, it was highly likely that Claudia
would recommend to Quentin that he find someone else to do my
job—or, worse yet, get one of the committee members to double-team
it and take on my project in addition to his or her own.

As if she’d read my mind, Elsie yawned and
said, “Claudia, wouldn’t it make sense to hand the street-art
project over to someone who actually knows New York like the back
of their hand? Hayden, Shawn, and I all grew up in the city . . .
Annie’s, like, from Nebraska or something.”

I didn’t bother to correct her as I sank
deeper into my chair, my head bowed in silence.

Hayden looked around at all of us, concerned,
as Shawn’s eyes darted back and forth between Elsie and me in
anticipation—since the potential for a catfight was quite high.

“You guys, I’m really concerned this is going
to slow us all down,” Hayden said. “I’ve been working diligently
the past few days to ensure that my artist and I finish this work
on time and within the assigned budget—but is that even going to
matter if some of us aren’t on the ball?” she asked, staring
pointedly at me.