Chapter 12
12
MADDIE
I ’m on Rhys’s bed, reclining against his new pillows with my knees bent to support my sketchpad. I’m working on my next assignment for my Figure Drawing class while Rhys sits at his desk, leaning over his Biology homework.
My laptop sits at the other end of Rhys’s bed, its speakers pumping out a playlist of songs by Camera Obscura, one of our favorite bands. We’re both focused on our work, grooving to their song French Navy .
Jasmine and I got some good news over the weekend. The college announced that we’ll be able to move back into our dorms by the end of this week. Staying here has been fun, but I’m already getting tired of sleeping on a couch every night and not having any real space for myself.
I groan in frustration, examining my sketch and realizing the lines and curves I’m making with my pencil just aren’t coming together the way I want them to.
“What’s wrong?” Rhys asks from his desk.
“I suck at sketching,” I moan, letting my head drop back to look up at the ceiling.
Figure Drawing is by far my hardest class this semester. Anatomically accurate, detailed sketching of the human body just isn’t something I was ever into as an artist.
I thought my first series of sketches were pretty decent—and so did James—but when my professor returned them graded this morning, I got a C-minus.
Now my confidence is shaken, which makes getting started on this next series of sketches even harder.
“Bullshit,” Rhys declares. He drops his pencil and swivels his chair towards me.
Rhys is always like this. When I have a problem, he instinctively drops whatever he’s doing to shift all his attention to me. Butterfly wings flap in my stomach, but I force them to settle down.
“I’m supposed to sketch a muscular male figure in the middle of a discus throw. Discus! What is this, Ancient Athens? I can’t get the pose right, or the muscles right, or the proportions right, or anything right!”
“Have you tried to find, like, a picture online to copy or work off of?”
I sigh. “Yeah, but most of them are clothed, obviously, and this is supposed to be a nude. Emphasizing the effect of the motion on the physique. I can find other drawings or sculptures online of similar poses, but I don’t want to just copy someone else’s work. That seems like it defeats the point of the assignment.”
“What if you had a live model?” Rhys asks.
I laugh. “Yeah, that’d help. I’ll just go down to the live model store, rent one for an hour, and ask him to strip down and pretend to be throwing a discus.”
Rhys leans back in his chair. An idea glows in his tawny eyes. “You act like that can’t be done.”
“Uh. It can’t,” I deadpan.
Rhys holds up his big, thick index finger; then he curls his wrist so he’s pointing it directly at his chest. “I’m your man.”
Rhys saying those words while his eyes are locked with mine scrambles my brain for a minute. I can’t put two and two together right away.
“Huh?” I ask.
“Use me.”
Those words make a knot of hot tension pull low in my core. My mouth goes dry, and my gaze ticks down to where Rhys’s finger points at his chest. The sight of those big slabs of muscles stretching out a grey Brumehill College t-shirt doesn’t do any favors to my state of discombobulation.
Rhys laughs after a beat of silence. “I swear, I never have to work so hard to make a girl realize I’m offering to strip down for her.”
Heat blasts in my cheeks. Rhys really needs to stop saying things like that if he wants my brain to function any time soon.
Wait a minute. Rhys is offering to strip down so I can use him as the model for my sketch?
My nude sketch?
I try to swallow through the tight knot in my throat. “You … you don’t have to do that,” I squeeze out the words.
Rhys’s chuckle carries a familiar cocky tone. “Are you kidding? Having all this,” he elevators his hands up and down his torso, “be immortalized in the soon-to-be-famous artistic hand of Maddie Larsen? It would be an honor.”
He unfolds himself from his chair, suddenly towering over me as I lie on his bed. Hot tremors skitter up and down my back as I imagine the hard, sharp lines and firm contours of his muscles hidden underneath the shirt and jeans he’s wearing.
“I don’t have to be totally nude, right?” Rhys asks. “Just stripping down to my boxers would work for you?”
Waves of sizzling heat roll through me. I take a deep breath and try to steady myself.
I know he’s just trying to be helpful. And it would be helpful.
Rhys has the perfect athletic physique to serve as a model for the sketch that’s giving me trouble. Having someone like him pose for it right in front of me would make this assignment so much easier.
It makes perfect sense why he’d volunteer to do this and think nothing of it. To him, stripping to his boxers to help me with this assignment is no different than him wearing a bathing suit at the beach around me, something that’s happened tons of times.
“I mean, if you don’t mind …” I say tentatively.
“Don’t mind at all.” He flashes his pearly-white smile.
Even though what we’re doing is, surely, as innocent as can be, Rhys still walks to his door to shut it. And there’s still a long beat of heavy silence when he steps back from the door, his hands gripping the hem of his shirt before he pulls it up.
When he does, my eyes go so wide I’m surprised they don’t fall out.
I’ve seen Rhys shirtless before. But never while both of us are alone, behind the closed door of a bedroom.
The context accentuates every detail that I already knew about his physique. The pop of his rounded shoulders, the width of his chest, the incredible definition of his abs, the way his broad, bulky upper muscles taper deliciously down to his trim, sleek waist.
All those features are covered in intricate tattoo designs which do nothing to obscure the razor-sharp peaks and valleys of his musculature.
My gaze crawls down to the sharp V shape carved into his lower ab muscles, pointing sinfully below his beltline. The beltline that his hands are now reaching for …
I’m gawking. Shamelessly gawking. But I couldn’t stop myself if my life depended on it. Not as his jeans fall down the muscular columns of his legs, and he steps out of them.
Rhys Callahan is standing in front of me, wearing nothing except a tiny pair of black boxer briefs that cling to his trim hips, pinning me with his whiskey-hued gaze while I’m on his bed.
How many times have I imagined this exact scenario?
A thought pops into my mind that has an unpleasant sensation spiraling through me and a bitter taste rising to my mouth.
How many girls have been in this exact scenario? How many girls have had Rhys step out of not just his jeans, but his boxers, too? Had him crawl on top of them and touch them all over just like I’ve imagined more times than I can count?
Dozens, for sure. Hundreds?
And he has no interest in me ever being one of them.
That’s enough to extinguish the sparks that were dancing over my skin, and to make the heat pulsing in my core dissipate.
He’s just my friend, he’s just helping me out, and I’m stupid to be sitting here letting the sight of him affect me physically as if it were anything else.
“So, how should I pose?” Rhys asks, an amused twinkle still in his eyes and a twitch still on his plush lips. “Like … this?” He adopts the perfect pose of a discus thrower mid-throw, his torso curled, his hips set, and his arms poised.
“Perfect,” I say, trying to shift mental gears back to being an artist, treating the incredible body in front of me the same way I would treat a figure model in the middle of a classroom.
I pick up my sketchpad and get to work. Happiness rises in me as the lines and curves my pencil scratches out on the rough paper finally come together.
As I work on the sketch, I try to force my brain to stay in objective artist mode.
Still, no matter how I try, no matter how I tell myself that this is an utterly platonic gesture from a friend just trying to be helpful, it’s hard to keep a flame from licking at my center when my eyes pass over a particularly defined muscle; it’s hard to keep a muscle of my own from tugging at the peak of my legs when my gaze sweeps over the curve of Rhys’s firm ass.
Eventually, though, I make enough progress that the artistic part of my brain fully takes over. I’m totally focused on the product on my paper, filling in the fine details of Rhys’s musculature.
“How’s it coming along?” Rhys asks.
“Good,” I say, feeling like I’m in the zone with my eyes narrowed and my right hand seeming to attain a mind of its own. “Really good.”
Then, the spell breaks. Thanks to a knock at Rhys’s door.
The muscles in Rhys’s shoulders and neck tense. My stomach drops.
“Hey, Rhys, you in there?”
A mortified feeling stiffens my back. Rhys’s chest visibly hitches on a sharp, silent inhale.
I was just telling myself that this is nothing but an innocent, helpful gesture. But for some reason, it’s suddenly hard to feel that way when my older brother is standing on the other side of the door with his best friend stripped to his underwear in front of me while I’m on his bed.
The temperature in the room shoots up. My palms go damp and clammy, the small of my back tense and tingling. The set of Rhys’s jaw is hard and rigid, his mouth pressed into a thin, tight line.
He doesn’t make a sound. Neither do I.
Lane knocks again. “Yo, Rhys? You home?”
My gaze ticks to Rhys’s doorknob. Rhys closed his door, but I don’t think he locked it. Time stretches out torturously as I wait to see if the doorknob is going to turn, as my mind races with wondering what Lane’s reaction is going to be when he sees us in this state.
But it doesn’t happen. The next sound from the other side of the door is that of Lane’s footsteps retreating, then padding down the stairs. Then the front door opening and closing.
Rhys relaxes. I breathe a sigh of relief. But the temperature in the room doesn’t come down. The bead of sweat trickling down my back attests to that.
“Answering him would have, uh … made it hard for me to get back in this exact pose,” Rhys says, his voice rougher than usual.
“Right. Of course. Makes sense.”
I dry my palms on my pants and stretch out my fingers to stop them from shaking. Then, with a deep breath, I pick my sketchpad and pencil back up and fill in the final details.
I hurry to finish. Because I don’t want to take up any more of Rhys’s time that he needs for his Biology homework. Not because I’m mortified of Lane coming back and discovering us like this.
Why would I be? There’s a very simple, straightforward explanation for why my brother’s best friend is standing in front of me in his underwear with his body contorted, and there’s absolutely nothing either of us have to feel awkward or guilty about.
“I think I’m done,” I say. I take in the finished product on my sketchpad. It’s good. The best sketch I’ve drawn for this class by far.
“Holy shit,” Rhys says. The mattress sinks as he takes a seat on the edge of it, inclining toward me to get a look at the sketch. “That’s fucking incredible, Maddie.”
Heat rolls off his muscle-piled body, and my senses fill with his woodsy, cinnamon-infused scent. The way I can feel his body weight bending the mattress makes the muscles between my thighs pull tight.
For a moment, I get lost in letting myself feel good about Rhys’s words of praise while my body luxuriates in his warmth and proximity.
Until realization floods into my brain: realization that Rhys Callahan is sitting almost entirely naked next to me on his bed, and I’m feeling way too hot and slick between my legs.
I shoot to my feet. “Thanks. You were a big help.” I hurry the words from my mouth. “I have some other stuff to do, I’ll let you get back to your homework.”
I leave his room quickly, wishing I had my own room to go back to so I could slide under my blanket and do something to relieve the tight throb that pounds between my legs.