So Damn Beautiful (A New Adult Romance) (18 page)

Chase nodded. “He is. Our parents were baked
out of their minds when Kyle was born, but that didn’t seem to
touch him too much. He’s a child prodigy who couldn’t care less
about school, so I’m trying to fix that, but I don’t seem to be
succeeding.”

“Well, I don’t know. . . . You seem to have
done pretty well for yourself,” I said.

Chase laughed. “I’m not trying to set an
example here. But at least he has Marcie. They’ve been together for
a couple years. Josh and Amy are like the parents Kyle never had.
They’re good people—they take care of him when I’m not able to be
around as much as I’d like.” He shook his head. “Sometimes I think
if I’d done a better job raising him myself, he’d be less
apathetic. Sure, he can ace standardized tests like no one’s
business, but still . . . I wanna be sure he has some kind of
future.”

A pang of tenderness went through me. Chase
was becoming more and more complex every time I encountered him.
Suddenly, the gruff and overconfident guy I’d first met was being
cast in a totally different light. I couldn’t even imagine taking
care of someone else while I was still a kid myself, but it was
clear that Chase’s sense of responsibility and love for Kyle were
totally instinctual.

“So . . . Lila Maynard was a blonde?” I asked
teasingly.

Chase looked at me wolfishly. “Yup, and she
was hot.”

I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from
smiling too hard. What was wrong with me? I’d come here to do
business with Chase, not to flirt with him or get swept up in the
particulars of his life.

At that moment, I was startled by a man with
a large camera, who came right up to us and started snapping
photos.

“Hey, what the—” Before I could say anything
more, Chase got in the guy’s face and gave him a hard shove.

“Put that fucking camera away, dude, or I
swear I’ll put it where the sun don’t shine,” he growled.

The guy backed off. “Hey, man, don’t you
wanna be on TV? I’m just trying to get some shots for my story.
Help a brother out, would ya?” His voice was nasal and
high-pitched.

Chase took an aggressive step forward,
sending the camera guy flailing and running off.

I breathed deeply. “Now I’m starting to see
why you hate people so much,” I joked. “Is that something you have
to deal with on a regular basis?”

Chase gave me an ain’t-no-thing gesture.
“Nah, it doesn’t happen that much. Most of these guys know better
than to fuck with me, especially when I’m in the act of creating.
But in any case, the entire scene around here is wack. If you wanna
see my process and the way I live, come by the Silver Edge in the
Bronx tomorrow night. Me and some of my crew are getting together
to put up some new work.” He leaned in and whispered in mock
confidentiality, “It’s the quarter moon tomorrow, so I’m duty-bound
to throw up some writing. You’ll wanna be there. We’re planning on
hitting up some interesting stations.”

“Stations?”

“Just come, and I promise you’ll get a taste
of what I’m gonna bring to this Quentin Pierce thing, okay?”

I looked at him warily, then sighed. I wasn’t
that crazy about taking a trip out that far, but it was clear that
Chase wasn’t going to comply with my rules unless I showed him that
I was just as enthusiastic as he was. “It’s a deal. But you have to
give me your permanent address and a working phone number in
return. Okay?”

He pulled out his phone, grinning at me.
“Give me your number, and I’ll call you now. Then you can save my
info on your phone.”

I inhaled deeply, feeling simultaneously
giddy and disconcerted. The idea that I could now call Chase
anytime I wanted was a huge relief, but more than that, it felt
like I was a step closer to a kind of intimacy with him that I
couldn’t quite put my finger on. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to,
but whatever the case, I could definitely feel it. Things were
about to get interesting between Chase Adams and me.

The
next night, I met Chase at the Silver Edge, a dive bar with a neon
placard announcing its presence. The inside was tiny and smoky,
with a pool table in one corner and a medley of vinyl-covered
booths flanking the long bar. A disco ball complemented the lurid
decor. Girls in tight dresses and knee-high leather boots were
pouring into and out of the bar, while flinty-looking guys with
sinewy arms and tattoos galore took long drags off their
cigarettes. Rap music boomed over the speakers; I could feel the
music pulsing in my bones.

I hugged my arms around me, recognizing
exactly how out of place I must have looked. I was wearing a simple
blue sweater dress and dark gray boots under black tights. I was
almost embarrassed to admit that I had wanted to look cute for
Chase, but as I faced down the adversarial stares of the bar’s
inhabitants, I began to wonder if it would be all that easy to
impress him on his home turf.

The bar was smoky and crowded enough that I
couldn’t see Chase anywhere. I frowned. If this had been one of his
schemes to bring me out to a shitty neighborhood just for the sake
of shaking me up, I didn’t know what I was going to do. The Silver
Edge was far enough away from public transportation that I’d opted
for a cab. When the cabbie had dropped me off, he’d looked at me as
if I were completely out of my mind. “You sure this is the place,
honey?”

I nodded. “Yeah, this is where a friend is
going to meet me.”

He looked doubtful. “Well, if ya need to get
back to Manhattan, I’ll be makin’ my rounds for the next half hour.
Just call if you decide you want a, er, classier scene,” he’d said,
shoving his card into my hand.

As I scoped out the bar, I was beginning to
consider calling the cabbie and getting the hell out of there. But
I decided to give it a few more minutes. Maybe Chase was late.

“Excuse me.” I intercepted a woman with long
purple hair and multiple eyebrow piercings. “I’m looking for Chase
Adams. Do you know if he’s around?”

She stared me down as if I were a cockroach
on the wall.

“What the hell? It was a simple question,” I
mumbled to myself as I backed off.

At that moment, I felt a friendly tap on my
shoulder. “Hey, baby, looking good.” I readied myself for an
unwelcome confrontation with some sleazebag as I turned around, but
it was just Chase, grinning at me with those perfect pearly whites.
He was wearing a leather bomber jacket and a white T-shirt, and his
hair was slicked back from his face to reveal his high cheekbones
and gleaming green eyes. He was a more beautiful version of James
Dean. I willed my heart to be still.

“I didn’t think you’d show,” he said, rubbing
his chin and nodding approvingly.

“Yeah, well, you thought wrong,” I snapped.
“Does everyone around here have a chip on their shoulder?”

“Nah, just the girls who hate me,” he said,
winking. “Come on back. I have a table.”

I followed him through the haze of cigarette
smoke and sour whiskey stench. At his table were four people: a
pretty black girl with dreadlocks and what looked like a necklace
of tiny skull beads, two fairly nondescript bearded guys, and
Chase’s friend Reynaldo. I frowned as he and I made eye
contact.

“Hey,
mami
, you glad to see me?” he
said amiably, as if he hadn’t scared the shit out of me a couple
weeks ago by acting like an immature ass.

“Not really,” I replied coldly, which sent a
wallop of laughter around the table.

“Yo, I didn’t mean nothin’ by last time. Pike
and me were just having a little fun!” he protested, holding his
hands up as if I were the aggressor here.

“You might want to try your fun on someone
your own size next time,” I shot back, realizing I sounded like a
schoolteacher admonishing a playground bully. But I didn’t care to
humor Reynaldo or any of Chase’s other friends—not in the mood I
was in.

Chase attempted to change the subject by
introducing his other friends. The girl, Rowena, seemed genuinely
friendly (and even complimented me on my dress), while the two
bearded guys (who called themselves Entropy and Z) were more
taciturn.

“We were just talking about art,” Chase said,
grinning at me. “Annie’s an art student at NYU,” he told the others
at the table.

“Does she know about any of the illegal shit
you do, dawg?” Reynaldo asked.

Chase shrugged. “Annie’s cool,” he said,
stealing a glance at me.

The conversation at the table was spirited
but a little predictable. The gathered group were discussing the
benefits of maintaining artistic street cred.

“We never want to become the kind of coveted
commodities the world is turning graffiti artists into,” Rowena
said passionately. “You see the kind of posturing all these street
artists turned sellouts do. It’s led to the destruction of the art
itself.”

“I don’t know; I think keeping it to
ourselves just keeps our people down,” Reynaldo piped up. “You’ve
got the big-ass galleries coming in and stealing our shit without
even giving us credit. In the meantime, it’s war out here. You
still have turf conflicts, a hail of bullets, and talented writers
getting brought down because we’re not willing to just go public.
All this alias bullshit is keeping us reined in.”

“Authenticating your art on the street is
basically the same as admitting you’ve committed a crime,” Entropy
argued. “Don’t think for a second the pigs will let us fly under
the radar for the sake of preserving our city’s culture. You’ll end
up at Rikers before you get a pat on the back from folks at the
Guggenheim.”

“It takes the beauty out of the whole thing
when we let ourselves out into the daylight,” Chase said, glancing
at me now and then as he spoke to see if I could keep up. “You have
some graffiti artists who were able to connect to the mainstream,
but this has never been a subculture that was about cashing in on
your art or being successful. Even people like Banksy have said
commercial success is a mark of failure for the graffiti
artist.”

Z snorted. “He’s been riding the coattails of
social media for years. He does a piece, and now the entire world
Instagrams it. Why the fuck is
he
complaining?”

They continued to debate about whether or not
graffiti becomes advertising when a price tag is placed on it. I
was fascinated by the conversation, although I didn’t think I had
much to add to it, so I was at a loss for words when Rowena turned
to me and said, “What do you think, Annie?”

I blushed as all eyes turned to me. “Well, I
. . . I’m not an artist, but . . .”

“See, she’s just another chick who doesn’t
know what she’s talking about,” Reynaldo quipped.

“Let her speak, man!” Chase said.

I frowned at the blatant sexism of Reynaldo’s
statement, which made me think of some of the research I’d been
doing on modern graffiti movements. I looked pointedly at Reynaldo.
“Actually, what you just said sums up one of the things this art
form is afflicted by: a lack of women. Graffiti could benefit from
some more gender equity, especially considering one of the primary
criticisms against it is that it’s dominated by a male perspective,
one that’s often violent and tied to gang activity. I’m not saying
that’s true for all graffiti, of course. I’m just saying there’s an
entire world that exists beyond the debate of whether or not
graffiti is a viable form of art, and whether or not artists who
get signed to big galleries are sellouts. We should also be
thinking of whose voice, whose art, is being heralded as the next
big thing.”

Amazingly, everyone was nodding emphatically.
“You should check out Olek,” Rowena told me. “She’s a badass yarn
bomber. She’ll go out and knit stuff around cars, trees, buildings,
whatever. Her installations are phenomenal, and they also throw
dirt over the establishment’s idea that knitting isn’t real art,
just stuff your grandma makes.”

I smiled. “That sounds awesome, as well as
funny.” I looked around, feeling emboldened. “I think maybe
graffiti could use a dose of good-natured humor, not just scathing
satire.”

That pushed us into a new tangent about the
aesthetic value of comedy, which I almost immediately zoned out
on.

Chase glanced at me as if to see if I was
doing okay. “You want a drink?” he asked, practically bellowing
over the loud thumping of the music.

I nodded and followed him to the bar. “Two
vodka tonics,” he said to one of the bartenders. I stood tall, as
if that would add a couple years to my stature. As I’d been told
before, most dive bars in the Bronx weren’t all that rigid when it
came to checking IDs, but you never knew.

“Actually, I’ll have a beer,” I piped up,
then gave Chase a playful half smile. “As a liberated woman, I can
order for myself.”

“Hey, there’s nothing I appreciate more than
a liberated woman,” he offered back, giving me a grin that just
about made me want to shed my clothes. “But I’m paying, and that’s
final.” He threw a few bills onto the bar. Before we could make our
way back to the table, two women—a sultry brunette with icy blue
eyes, and a blonde with a pouty smile—stopped Chase in his tracks.
The latter draped herself shamelessly over Chase to block his
path.

“Hey, baby, I haven’t seen you around in a
while,” she drawled, kissing his ear in the process.

He easily shook her off, and the expression
on his face was cool and unaffected. “That’s ’cause I’ve been
busy.”

She pouted some more, which made her look
like a disfigured Barbie. “What about me, Chase? You wanna buy me a
drink?” The girl glared at me, but I wasn’t going to let myself get
flustered. I felt like I’d been granted entry to an exclusive
federation, and I was on top of the world. I raised my beer bottle
in salutation to the girl, but she ignored me.

“Nah, I don’t think so, Shari. The way you
smell, seems like you’ve had enough.” Chase smiled, as if to add
insult to injury.