So Damn Beautiful (A New Adult Romance) (38 page)

“It’s like a graffiti gallery,” I noted,
getting used to the bleakness of the place, even beginning to see
it as quiet and meditative.

Chase smiled nostalgically. “This is where I
first started to write. Then I’d hop the trains and take ’em to
different places. You just gotta make sure it’s flat enough on the
floor, because that gives you more room to write. And sometimes
there are even ladders to assist you.”

I shook my head. “I don’t get how people do
it.”

He looked at me and gave me a wily smile.
“You will.”

Before I could protest, he grabbed me and
boosted me up onto a nearby freight car. Our side was completely
open. Nonetheless, the car was dark, musty, and halfway filled with
cartons of unmarked cargo. I laughed at Chase. “I don’t see the
point of hopping a train if we aren’t going anywhere.”

“According to my calculations, that won’t be
true for long!”

I heard a slow rumble, and the train gave a
little lurch, shuttling me back onto the cold ground of the car.
“Ouch!” I screamed. My heart began to pound as the train staggered
to life, making the car jerk and sway ever so slightly. Chase
jumped nimbly onto the car with me, and within moments, we were
hurtling down the tracks. I edged back into the car so my back was
against a solid surface. A vertiginous feeling took hold within
me.

“You said we wouldn’t be moving!”

“I said we wouldn’t be
tagging
while
moving.”

“This is crazy!” I said, half angry and half
exhilarated.

“Relax, babe. The subway operation was kind
of a fool’s mission, but this is just for fun. This is just for
us.” He gave me a disarming smile and uncorked the bottle of
champagne, which bubbled over. He raised it and took a giant gulp
before handing it over to me. “To you and me, Annie.”

But it was hard to appreciate the romantic
gesture. “We must be going, like, sixty miles an hour!”

He shook his head. “Nah, we wouldn’t be able
to see anything except a blur if that was the case. Come look.” He
got down on his belly and crawled over to the open edge of the car.
The sight of it made my stomach roll uncomfortably, but I got down
and scooted over next to him, ensuring that my legs were wedged
between a pair of cartons behind me and that I had a steady
foothold in case the train came to a screeching halt.

What I saw when I looked up from the rushing
tracks beneath me took my breath away. We rode out of the freight
yard and past walls and walls of illuminated murals, full of bubbly
tags and abstract mixed-media collages splashed across the walls of
enormous industrial buildings. As I silently took in the roughness
of the urban landscape, covered over by this almost ethereal
phantasmagoria of images, I could feel the cold wind snaking
tangles through my hair. Ragtag crews of graffiti artists were out
and about, while homeless people assembled around flaming garbage
cans to stay warm. The sight was both weird and wondrous.

Chase whooped and hollered as the train raced
on. “Isn’t this fucking amazing?” he yelled, his words catching on
the breeze.

I could only nod. Trails of water were
starting to trickle out of my eyes, not just because of the intense
exhilaration I was feeling but also because of the arctic gale that
was sweeping into the car. Chase looked at me and grinned. “This is
what you get when you fall off the straight and narrow, Goldilocks.
Stick with me and I’ll take you places.”

I finally found the courage to scoot a little
closer to the edge of the car and soon found myself whooping and
hollering along with Chase. Quentin Pierce’s show was to be
unveiled in just a couple days, but I knew from the wild feeling in
my heart and the rivulets of tears falling freely down my face that
this was where the real art lived.

Just then, Chase turned to me and gave me a
kiss that made me light up from my toes to my ears. When he pulled
back, he nodded over his shoulder, indicating we should move back
in. Once we did, he wrapped his hand around the back of my neck,
drawing me toward him, putting his hungry mouth to mine, and I
could feel his fingers fumbling with the buttons on my jeans, but I
stopped him midway.

“Right here, Chase? But when’s the train
gonna stop?”

He gave me a smoldering look. “I have no
fucking idea.” Somehow, in the midst of the noise of the clamoring
freight train, the icy wind that was creeping into every nook and
cranny of our car, and the bumpiness of the ride, we managed to
unpeel our clothes. The animalistic passion of our lovemaking made
me wonder if we would accidentally hurtle ourselves off the train,
but it was hard to care too much. If I died that night, in Chase’s
arms, I would die a happy woman. For weeks, I had been expecting
his effect to wear off on me, but as his tongue and mouth circled
around my most sensitive spots, and as I filled myself voraciously
with his taste and heat, something in me knew that Chase was a drug
I’d never grow tired of.

The force of my first orgasm made me dig my
teeth into Chase’s shoulder and run my fingernails up from his ass
to his back. He howled in ecstasy and continued to pump his hips
into mine, bending down to kiss my breasts. His motion was
overwhelmingly pleasurable, and I could feel tiny, white-hot
fireworks exploding from my belly down to my thighs as I continued
to come. Chase’s body was like a spark plug I was drawing vital
energy from. The whirl of lit-up walls outside, paired with the
urgency of our fucking, made me feel like there were multiple
rainbows inside and outside my body, arcing and intersecting. Chase
groaned as he came. We lay there together, gasping and scarcely
able to speak.

Finally, he managed to get out a few words.
“I don’t know how we do it, Goldilocks—I’m gonna have a heart
attack one of these days.”

I laughed. “You and me both!”

We curled up into each other for a while, but
it was way too cold to lie there naked in the afterglow of our
sex.

As I hooked my bra, Chase studied me
intently.

“What?” I asked.

He smiled. “Nothing. You’re just so gorgeous.
I can’t believe I got so lucky.”

“Chase, I’ve seen your past girlfriends. They
were all knockouts.”

“Yeah, they were hot. But I’ve never seen
anything quite as beautiful as you.” He crept up beside me and
kissed my neck.

I cupped his beautiful face in my hands and
looked into those green eyes—eyes that had seemed so distant and
impervious only weeks ago. I was in a state of incredulity every
time I thought of how things had developed between us—and of how
they had changed me.

“You know, we could just do this Saturday
night: ride the trains, fuck ourselves into sweaty absolution . . .
,” I said.

“What are you talking about?”

“All I’m saying is that if you want to back
out of the show, I’ll understand.”

He shook his head. “No way. I put too much
work into this to back out of it.”

He’d continued to be secretive about his
final work for the show, but I’d chalked it up to artistic
idiosyncrasy. I was looking forward to seeing it, but a part of me
was also afraid, especially considering that Chase and Quentin were
going to be in the same room after years of not having seen each
other.

He traced my mouth tenderly with his
fingertips. “This meant the world to you, Annie. You put a lot of
work into it, too. Do you really want to give Elsie and all those
other art-school flunkies the satisfaction of flaking out at the
eleventh hour?”

I shook my head and pulled my turtleneck over
my head. “This isn’t about Elsie or anyone else.”

“Then what is it about?”

“It’s just . . . I know art is always going
to be my first love. I want to breathe it, I want to live it . . .
I just don’t know if the old way works,” I said, hugging my knees
into my chest. “I sometimes wonder if I put myself in a box at an
early age by thinking this was what I wanted to do. I didn’t have
the foggiest idea of how the gallery world even worked, but I just
kept moving forward anyway, like if I stopped, it would mean I was
weak or something.” I looked at Chase. “Sometimes I think art
became my way of overcoming the fact that my dad was a noncommittal
shithead who walked out on my mom and me.”

Chase caressed my hair. “I don’t follow.”

“He couldn’t commit to us, and I wasn’t going
to end up like him. I wasn’t gonna be a loser whose short-term
desires meant more to me than the bigger picture. I always had to
have a bigger picture.” I shook my head. “But I wonder if my bigger
picture kept me from seeing what was right in front of me. I was
always so fixated on principles, on ideas, that I barely noticed
what was real.” I gestured at the whirring trail of murals outside.
“I ignored this stuff for years because I thought it was trash, but
I was so damn wrong! So what else have I been wrong about? What if
I made my world so narrow that I didn’t even get to dream about the
other possibilities?”

Chase gently snickered. “If that’s the case,
my world’s been pretty narrow, too. All I have is graffiti, and
I’ve never even been outside New York.”

I shook my head. “But you’re talented, Chase.
You have something that’s all yours, that nobody can take away. Me,
on the other hand? I’ve been so busy trying to be good that I’ve
never really gotten a chance to follow my heart.”

“What about now?” he said softly.

I smiled. “This is the first time I’ve ever
done anything so foolhardy—and so right,” I responded.

He brushed my lips softly with his. “Well, if
you’re looking for a career change, maybe I need to teach you how
to write,” he said playfully. “You’ll be throwing up your own tags
in no time!”

I laughed. “I’m fine with the role of
awestruck spectator for a little while,” I said. “Besides, I’m
definitely not artistically talented. Believe me, I’ve tried, but I
never really got past stick figures.”

He shrugged. “Stick figures can be
interesting.”

I shook my head. “You don’t understand,
Chase. You probably emerged from the womb the way you are, but me?
I’ve always struggled with that. I found solace in schoolwork,
maybe because I was never all that good or talented at anything in
particular.”

He made a sound of derision. “That’s
bullshit, Goldilocks, and you know it! There’s no way I would’ve
agreed to working with just any NYU chick.” He looked at me with a
mixture of admiration and lust. “It takes bona fide talent to get
Chase Adams to do anything not already on his to-do list.”

I tugged his hair teasingly. “I got you to do
something? Then maybe I should become a con artist. Or a
Mafiosa.”

He raised an eyebrow. “You make backdoor
deals while I tag up the city. We’ll be an unbeatable team,
Goldilocks.”

I drew him closer. “You bet your sweet
ass.”

“Also, it’s never too late to change
your
mind about Saturday. It’s your call.”

I considered it. What was worse: showing up
to the exhibit without Chase’s piece or letting him reveal what was
sure to be a showstopper, and not necessarily in a good way? All
the same, I knew how important it was for Chase to be able to
confront Quentin—if not directly, then with a conversation piece
guaranteed to make people question Quentin’s integrity. I
wholeheartedly supported Chase in this, and I knew I’d be a
hypocrite either to censor his unfettered expression or to skulk
out of my curatorship to avoid responsibility. For better or worse,
Chase and I were in this together.

“It’s going to be perfect, Chase,” I said,
looking deeply into his eyes. “With you, it always is.”

The night of the art opening finally
rolled around. I’d withstood several sleepless nights in a row,
either because of Chase or because I was too nervous to do anything
more than toss and turn. Now that the big event was finally upon
us, I found myself in a flurry of busywork.

“Annie, make sure the bartenders don’t run
out of sparkling wine!” Claudia chirruped from across the sculpture
garden. She was in the midst of issuing a continuous volley of
orders and critiques. I was surprised she hadn’t equipped the
committee with walkie-talkies.

Although things were chaotic, all of it
seemed poised for success. A staff of waiters walked around with
trays of long-stemmed champagne glasses and delicate hors
d’oeuvres, and a constant stream of visitors (by invitation only)
flowed into the garden. Hayden’s artist, whose gorgeous fiber-optic
monument was holding down the fort on the south end of the garden,
had equipped the entire place with softly glowing LED lights, which
made it feel like we were in some kind of enchanted forest with
fairies whirring around us in a rush of luminosity.

Todd Butcher had given Elsie a signature
piece: an intricate teepee dwelling covered with beautiful designs
and choppy projected video of turn-of-the-century New York,
interspersed with news coverage and footage of iconic locations in
the city. Elsie had told us that Todd’s video loops comprised about
150 hours of footage, and that the number of combinations, which
came on at five-minute intervals, was infinite.

Shawn’s artist had contributed pieces that
felt a little less high-concept but were definitely the most
engaging: whimsical robot people who periodically moved around the
space, offering ambient soundscapes garnered from the conversation
that was present at any given time. I was having fun singing
snippets of pop songs and listening to how the robots interpreted
them, but we still had a lot of work to do, so I forced myself to
focus.

Although I was feeling somewhat nervous about
the course of the evening, I was relieved that Chase had installed
his artwork a couple hours before the rest of us had come onto the
scene. He’d texted me to let me know that it shouldn’t be unveiled
until he got there. Much to my surprise, the piece, which was
covered by a heavy tarp and playfully surrounded by stanchions and
yellow tape (the kind you’d find at a crime scene), had been placed
smack in the center of the garden. I didn’t know how long he’d been
at work installing it, but I was glad he’d made it past the
security guards, who’d been manning the sculpture garden pretty
staunchly for the last week or so.