So Damn Beautiful (A New Adult Romance) (8 page)

I rolled my eyes. Apparently, she didn’t know
the guy that well if she was appealing to his desire for fame. As I
made that observation, two things happened simultaneously. A small
mob of girls who looked like they were about to swoon and faint
circled Chase, vying for his attention—at the very moment he caught
my eye.

My heart started beating double-time, even as
I felt myself retracting from my body.
Shit
, I thought.
He’s coming over!

Somehow, Chase had managed to beg off his
little platoon of fans. He had a cocky smile on his perfect lips as
he walked toward me.

“If it isn’t Goldilocks, and her baby boo,
too!” He gave Kendra a cursory nod, at which point Kendra pierced
me with an I’ll-leave-you-to-handle-this look and skedaddled off
toward the wine bar.

Chase stepped closer to me, and I could smell
whiskey on his breath, but as I inhaled, it was like I was
breathing in a tantalizing and heady mixture of velvet and
leather.

“What . . . what are you doing here?” I
asked, dazed by his closeness and, as always, mildly irritated by
his ability to strike me dumb and wordless.

“I’m guessing I’m here for the same reason as
you—to see the man himself, Quentin Pierce.” Chase pronounced the
artist’s name with such a sense of significance that I wondered
whether he was serious or joking.

“You’re a fan?” I asked, trying to sound cool
and disinterested.

He tilted his head to one side and sucked in
his cheeks, like he was deciding whether or not to let me in on a
little secret. I shifted my weight nervously. “I guess you could
say . . . I have some regard for him, from way back before his work
became a dog-and-pony show for all the Upper West Side
flunkies.”

At that point, a video monitor close to my
head turned on. Startled, I backed up so that I was practically on
top of Chase. “Uh, sorry,” I said, embarrassed.

“I’d be all herky-jerky, too, if I was coming
into contact with this shit for the first time,” he said drily.

The monitor flashed a few times before the
screen alighted on an old interview with Quentin Pierce. I couldn’t
tell who was interviewing him, but it was very cinema verité–style,
with Quentin walking down an urban block and turning to the shaky
camera every now and then with a comment. He was wearing a T-shirt
with colorful graffiti spray-painted across it and torn, faded
jeans, and his hair was scraggly and long. He even had a beard. I
wouldn’t have known it was Quentin if it weren’t for the subtitle
next to his face. “You know, man, whatever the peanut-gallery side
commentary is trying to tell us, street art is here to stay. Banksy
and Shepard Fairey have pretty much changed the art world for the
better in a lasting way, so don’t believe the haters on the
streets,” he said earnestly, as he took a drag from a cigarette and
pointed out some murals on a street corner.

I raised an eyebrow.
This
was Quentin
Pierce? It was a far cry from his current persona, which was fewer
words and more voguing. I wasn’t all that up on fashion, but I’d
say he was undergoing some kind of androgynous David Bowie phase at
press time.

As if Chase had read my mind, he remarked,
“That was Quentin circa 2005, way before he achieved megasuccess.
Now it’s all played out. I mean, take a look at all this
installation crap. Haters gonna hate and all, but let’s be
honest—it just plain sucks. No innovation. Pedantic and boring. His
early stuff, before any of the shit you see here, wasn’t trying to
hit you over the head with a message. It was true to where he came
from: the streets. It was a description of the world around him,
but it was also a description of the world people like us are
trying to create. None of that MTV bullshit. That’s why New York
was rockin’ it in the heyday of graffiti. But then folks like
Quentin traded in their tag names for big bucks from Wall Street or
Hollywood—took the best parts of graffiti and sold their souls
mass-marketing it to
People
magazine–reading drones. And now
you see him back here, trying to reclaim street art like it’s some
kinda gutter punk that just needs to be cleaned up a little to look
presentable. Fuck that—he’s the reason anything street is so wack
right now!”

I rolled my eyes.
Here we go again
, I
thought. Chase was going to launch into one of his tirades about
art. I barely knew the guy, but he was starting to sound like a
broken record. “I thought you had ‘regard’ for Quentin,” I
said.

Chase shrugged and got a slightly glazed-over
look in his eyes. “For the person he used to be. He sure as hell
isn’t that anymore.”

Chase massaged his neck slightly, and I
caught a glint of something bright in the light. My attention was
drawn to a beautiful silver crescent moon around his neck. Funny, I
hadn’t noticed it before.

Chase noticed where my attention had drifted
and fingered the delicate pendant lightly. “It’s an
apotropaic.”

“A what?”

He snorted slightly. “What, didn’t get that
word when you took your SATs? It’s kind of an amulet, something to
keep me safe from all the bad guys.” He leaned into me a little
closer. I could smell his cologne, a deep and musky scent that made
my knees turn to liquid. “Ward off the evil influences, rival
taggers, shit like that.” He looked around at the artwork on the
walls. “Hopefully it’ll make sure I never become a talentless hack
whose business is all up on TMZ.”

“Those are fightin’ words for a guy who’s
supposedly the next big bad-boy heartthrob, according to
Variety
,” I snapped. I didn’t care for Quentin’s work
either, but Chase was really starting to get on my nerves. “I’m not
understanding your beef with Quentin, given that you seem to be
well on your way to stardom yourself.” I gestured to the growing
crowd of lollygagging chicks closing in.

“Look at you—all jealous and shit!” Chase
said amusedly, crossing his arms and stopping to consider me.

“What? I am so
not
jealous, Chase
Adams. I’ve just been doing a little research . . . on current art
movements in the city, is all.” My cheeks turned scarlet. I was
stunned by the accusation, but I couldn’t exactly deny it. The fact
that a small army of gorgeous women were wasting their time on this
arrogant bastard should have made me feel sorry for them, but,
strangely enough, I couldn’t help but wonder wistfully whom he’d be
taking home tonight.

Chase chuckled almost good-naturedly. “The
way you were checking me out a couple weeks ago, Goldilocks, I’m
just surprised
you’re
not stalking me!”

“You are
so
full of yourself,” I said
through gritted teeth, before turning my back on him to go look for
Kendra.

Chase grabbed my elbow and pulled me back
toward him. I gasped. My head was practically smashed against his
chest, given how crowded the gallery had become in the last few
minutes. I looked up, straight into Chase’s bottle-green eyes, and
almost forgot how horrible he’d just been to me. He was just . . .
so damn beautiful.

“Goldilocks, about the day when you and your
lil’ homegirl came by?”

I frowned. “What about it?”

He opened his mouth, but before he could say
anything, he careened right into me, toppling the glass of red wine
I’d been idly holding in my right hand (I didn’t really drink, but
I didn’t want to look juvenile, either, so I’d taken the glass when
Kendra had shoved it at me). I gasped as the entire contents
splashed out and arced over onto my dress, spattering me with angry
burgundy droplets.

“What the fuck, Chase?” Before I could react,
a very angry-looking brunette with long, straight hair and a tight
black-leather corset dress gave him another accusatory push.

“Jesus, Daisy, what’s your damage?” Chase
yelled, not backing down.

“What’s my damage? What’s my
damage
,
you frickin’ dickwad? As soon as I turn my back, you practically
have your tongue down some other chick’s throat—and I’m sure, if
you had it your way, something else, too.”

“Aww, man, Daisy. You know I don’t like it
when you get vulgar.”

“My ass, Chase!” Tears of anger welled up in
the girl’s overly eyeliner-laden eyes. “This is the last time I
fall for your game. You won’t break my heart again!”

Daisy turned and walked away, leaving both
Chase and me in a slight daze. Amazingly enough, the gaggle of
girls around us seemed to close in even tighter after all the
drama. Chase didn’t notice them. He turned to look at me, a
strangely pained expression on his face, but when he noticed the
wine all over my new designer dress, he broke out into a slightly
loopy grin.

“Damn, my reputation precedes me, I guess.
Cheers, Goldilocks. It’s kind of like graffiti—looks good on you.”
At that, he headed off, presumably in search of Daisy.

I was fuming. Yet again, Chase Adams had
managed to ruin an otherwise perfectly pleasant time for me. It was
like I turned into a walking disaster whenever he was around. When
Chase Adams wasn’t making my heart do backflips, he was making my
blood boil.

This is way too much anger in one week for
you
, I told myself.

I looked around for napkins to wipe off the
excess drippage, although by now I was resigned to the fact that my
dress was ruined.
So much for wearing it to date night with
Harrison
, I grumbled to myself.

At that moment, Kendra walked up to me and
started to say something but then did a double take when she saw my
outfit. “Nuh-uh!” she exclaimed. “That prick
better
not be
responsible for the state of you right now.”

I sighed. “Actually, he is . . . at least
inadvertently.”

“Want to head out? It turns out Quentin
Pierce isn’t even here. They’re supposed to have some kind of Q and
A with him over iChat later tonight. Thanks, but no thanks.”

I guess I’d already figured that our plans to
romance the reclusive artist with my clear lack of interest or
knowledge about street art would bottom out.

“So, are you going to tell me what happened
with Chase? I want the details, woman! And who the hell were all
those skanky girls around you?” Kendra looked behind her,
mad-dogging the remaining cluster of Chase groupies.

I frowned as we made our exit. I could see
Chase in a smoky corner, a cigarette between his lips, as he
listened to Daisy, whose hands gesticulated wildly. His eyes darted
toward me, the green of them piercing me like two perfect shards of
glass. He took the cigarette between two fingers and blew out the
smoke, his intense gaze never wavering. I turned away quickly. “I
don’t know, but one thing is for sure: I am officially allergic to
Chase Adams.”

It was
past 2:00 a.m. Kendra was asleep, and I could hear her light
snores, which had always seemed like music to my ears in my
insomniac, espresso-addled state of the past few weeks. But as I
sat with the covers nestled around my body, hunched over my MacBook
Pro, sleep was the last thing on my mind.

The curatorship letter of interest was due
tomorrow. Professor Claremont hadn’t given us much lead time, since
she was asking for only a page, maximum, and also because Quentin
had made an eleventh-hour decision to do the retrospective. It was
already mid-October, and the plan was for it to open in early
December, which meant I had to scramble if I still wanted to be in
the running.

I had a bad case of writer’s block. But more
than that, I was feeling dispirited by my encounters with the art
world in my brief time in New York. Between the rude art snobbery
of Chase Adams and the highfalutin narcissism of Quentin Pierce, I
was lost. The world I had thought I’d be entering was a far cry
from the whimsical Parisian cafés and salons of my high-school art
books. Nobody was having civil discussions about beauty and the
Muses, from what I could see. Everything was way more intense than
I’d expected. The business of making and showing art was full of
complicated politics and voices vying to be heard. I knew I had my
own opinions, but they seemed embarrassingly simplistic compared
with everyone else’s.

I looked over at the wastepaper basket next
to my bed; in it was the dress I’d worn that night, a sad and
crumpled reminder of my hopes and dreams . . . which seemed to be
fading as fast as those wine stains were setting in.

I frowned.
Get it together, Annie—quit
with the melodrama
, I scolded myself.
You’re just as urbane
and smart as all those art-school dropouts, especially Chase
Adams
.

All I had to do was figure out where I fit in
the midst of it all. What made me special?

I had a sudden flashback to the time my
mother bought our current house in Apple Creek. I was only twelve,
and after years of shabby apartment living and my mom’s storing up
all the money that didn’t go into my college fund, we bought a
fixer-upper on the outskirts of town, close to a small wooded area
with a creek and little trails that went into out-of-the-way
gullies and secret picnic spots. I loved that we were so close to
nature, but the house itself needed a lot of TLC. When we first
moved in, there was no insulation in the walls, and the windows and
floors had to be completely redone. I even remember finding a small
family of raccoons in the musty basement our first week there. The
entire situation was a rude awakening about what it meant to make a
home livable.

I immediately took responsibility for
decorating. I went to the library and looked up color swatches in
Martha Stewart Living
, scouted flea markets and estate sales
for handmade pottery and one-of-a-kind antiques, found exotic
tchotchkes at the local Tibetan store, convinced my mom to splurge
on the occasional giclée print by Chagall or Monet, knitted
colorful throws cobbled together from yarn I’d found in the bargain
bins at Marshalls, and even learned how to make mosaics and stained
glass to add a little oomph to boring desk lamps and shabby-looking
windows. We didn’t have a lot of money, but I was committed to the
task of making our home beautiful, warm, and inspiring.