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“Aaaaaahhhhhhhh,” Jenna sighs, as though she is trying to take this very seriously. “Just Seattle then? One name, like Madonna?”
“Nope!” I answer, popping the P for emphasis. “Seattle Chen.”
Jenna pulls a face. “Chen as in…”
“Bup!” I warn her, holding up a finger so she doesn’t mistakenly fall into Seattle’s clever little trap. “No, it is not a family name. But if you mention it, you’re a racist. So don’t do that. And if you don’t say it, you’re also a racist. And if you mispronounce it—”
“A racist, got it,” Jenna chuckles.
Jenna has a good attitude. She doesn’t usually fall for college-kid drama. In a lot of ways, she seems beyond all this, like she is already living her real, adult life somehow, while the rest of us are still stuck in thepause modeof college life.
She goes back to her drawing and scowls at it for a second, before dragging up a new piece of paper. On the fresh sheet, she does try to pull together a decent likeness of Diego, who is over there just being beautiful, far too beautiful for me to look at right now.
“Yeah, who knew being socially aware could be so argumentative and obnoxious?” I mumble.
“I guess Stevie… I mean,Seattleknew. Seattle seems to know a lot of things,” Jenna says, her voice trailing off as she begins to concentrate.
Class is almost over. I don’t have time to start over, and I don’t have time to finish. In fact, more work on this drawing is just going to be more sad.
I realize that just sitting here and not drawing means that I am only staring at Diego’s thighs. It’s interesting the way that the hair on his legs gets more sparse as it heads toward his hips, then suddenly darkens dramatically over his cock. A nice, neat triangle with a sharp edge on the top. He must shave it, I think.
As my gaze travels upward, I almost feel like I am memorizing this. Maybe I could draw it later. In secret, in my dorm room, where no one can criticize me for it.
How many ab muscles are those? Eight? Ten? I like the way they are framed in by the tight shapes of the serratus anterior muscles. I like the diamond-shaped plateau between his pecs. The chocolate-drop shape of his nipples. The violin bows of his clavicles underneath the strong arch of his trapezius muscles.
He’s on the football team, and has that thick-necked presentation of someone who spends a lot of time engaging in feats of strength. Strong jaw. But sensitive mouth. A curved upper lip with a sensual divot in the center. A waxy pinkness to his lower lip. A fine, long nose with flared nostrils. Smooth skin. A bit of a sunburn across his nose.
And those eyes, green or hazel. Piercing. Intense.
My breath suddenly catches in my throat as I realize our eyes have locked. And then I realize right afterward that he knows I haven’t been drawing. I’ve just been drinking him in. I’ve just been staring at him without reservation, forgetting all the rules of art school or even normal manners.
Almost imperceptibly, he raises his eyebrows as if to say I’m welcome to do it.
I’m frozen to my chair. I mean, I am totally busted here. I’m sure I was absolutely obvious, if anyone else was looking. For now, I only know for certain that Diego knows.
Mr. Pecker clears his throat again, and everybody stands up, almost all at once. Class is over.
“Shit, I barely got to do anything,” Jenna grumbles, continuing to add vicious, dramatically diagonal strokes.
“I— I’ll see you later,” I mutter quickly as I grab my stuff.
Diego whips his robe off the back of the chair and walks from the podium, but I am not going to wait around to see what happens next. I am out of there. Flying. Running down the stairs and out the door.
Chapter 3
SPENCER
The office door is halfway open, but I knock anyway on the wavy opaque glass with the words “Adorjan Rhodes” in all capital letters, “Dean of Art” directly beneath.
“Come in!” I hear a voice call from inside the room and push the door open.
It looks like a Dean of Art’s office, I guess. There are bookshelves along one wall, just like everybody’s office, but the books tend to be really tall. Under the windows are long filing cabinets with short drawers that are very wide.
On top of those cabinets is a collection of anatomical models in marble and maybe plaster or something. Some of them look really old, some of them look really new. Some of them have the skin all the way on and are very pretty, and some of them look like medical dissections with the skin cut away in big triangles.
The third wall contains two large paintings. Neither are framed, but the canvas wraps around the sides and is painted black, the way that I have seen people do in the school art exhibitions. Strings dangle from one corner, probably from the edge of the fabric tucked behind the painting.
The first painting is all in blacks and browns. Really dark. A figure sits on a single wooden bench, hunched over, not facing out. Both his arms are slightly extended, kind of limp. He’s wearing boxing gloves. It looks like he’s either preparing for a match that he doesn’t have high hopes for, or contemplating a match he already lost.
