CHAPTER 9 #2
“Would’ve been romantic if the peanut gallery hadn’t been in the backseat. Lydia refused to let us roll the top down.” Nellie sat back in her chair with a huff. “Really ruined the vibe.”
“The vibe. You wanted to vibe, huh? Little miss girl in love.”
Nellie’s face flamed a beautiful shade of pink, splotching across her cheeks. “You’re ridiculous. We went through so much to get here, but I’m just… happy.”
“With Beckham Jennings.” I made a kissy face at her.
She kicked me under the table.
Nellie and I didn’t really talk too deeply about our love lives, but while the piano played overhead, she told me in more depth about the last month. Beck had gotten on her buttons every chance he could, but she’d slowly caved.
“The beauty and the bad boy,” I said thoughtfully, nodding. “I dig it.”
“Ugh.” She wrinkled her nose, but I didn’t miss the smile she tried to hide. “What about you, then, huh? You and Jamie? I’ll get everyone to call you two beauty and the bookworm.”
A new voice said, “Ooh, it’s got a good ring to it.”
Both Nellie and I turned to find Beck walking into the game room, carrying two iced coffees. His black shirt hugged his frame, but his jeans were so loose that, without the studded belt he wore, they looked like they’d fall off him. The picture of nonchalance.
“How’d you find us tucked away in here?” I asked him, eyeing the items in his hands. “Or, maybe a better question is, how did you know our coffee order?”
“I figured out how to tap into that Boyfriend Telepathy,” he returned casually, one corner of his lips tugging up.
“I may or may not have texted him,” Nellie said sheepishly.
Beck passed one of the iced drinks to her before offering the other to me, giving it a shake so the ice tornadoed inside. “And I, with no life, had nothing better to do than to drive to an Expresso’s and get two iced shaken brown sugar espressos for my girlfriend and her cool BFF.”
“I appreciate your lack of life,” I said as I took the drink, taking a sip from the straw. It was perfect. “So we’re in the clingy stage of the new relationship?”
Nellie tried objecting, but Beck curved his hand around her shoulder. “I know. She’s obsessed with me. It’s kind of cute.”
Nellie smacked him in the stomach, to which Beck just laughed.
He drew a chair out from beside Nellie and sank down into it, his eyes catching on my sketchbook. “Wowza, Daisy. That’s really good.”
His tone was mild, but his eyes were closely scanning the page. It was my realism style, and I nearly flipped the sketchbook lid shut, but forced myself still. I hadn’t drawn any death and gore yet, just Kit behind the beginnings of a steering wheel. “Thanks.”
“How long have you been drawing?”
“For fun? My whole life. Seriously? A few years.”
He whistled a little under his breath. “Your portfolio must be insane.”
If it were insane, NYU wouldn’t have put me on their waitlist. The thought sucked any wind out of my sails.
“You’re doing that in case anyone else sees?” Beck asked.
I blinked. “What do you mean?”
“Nellie told me about the—” He glanced over his shoulder, as if someone might’ve spawned there, and then lowered his voice. “—fake dating pact. And don’t worry,” he added, miming zipping his lips shut. “I’m a vault.”
I wasn’t worried about that. Even though I didn’t know Beck that well, I could tell that he would rather die than spread gossip. “I still don’t know what you mean, though,” I told him, tapping my pencil against my sketchbook. “Am I drawing in case anyone sees?”
“Drawing Jamie.”
His words were like a rubber band snap against my skin.
“I’m not drawing Jamie.” The sting still smarted, and now I yanked my sketchbook away from him, scanning the page as if something had popped up in the point-five seconds I’d looked away.
No. Still Kit. “This isn’t Jamie. You think this looks like Jamie? ”
Nellie leaned forward to look closer at the sketch page, and for a moment, I found myself holding my breath. “It’s one of her original characters,” she explained to Beck, not at all seeming bothered. “She doesn’t draw people she knows.”
Right—refused to, actually. Drawing people I knew in my realism style was an impossible feat because I could never quite capture their essence. With original characters, I could make up whatever essence I wanted and could easily manipulate it on the page.
That was how I knew this wasn’t Jamie. Kit’s hair was longer, normally brushing the tops of his shoulders, and straighter than Jamie’s. Kit’s face shape was more angular, with a pointed nose and thick eyebrows. Kit didn’t wear glasses. Definitely not Jamie.
“Must’ve just been the angle I looked at it from.” Beck shrugged. “When does his book club thing end, anyway?”
Nellie glanced at the clock. “Maybe, like, ten minutes? Sometimes they run over the top of the hour.”
“The idea of Jamie talking with those ladies does not compute in my brain,” Beck muttered, folding his arms across his chest and tipping his head back. “Especially talking enough that they’d go over time.”
“Get Jamie talking about books and he won’t be able to stop,” I told him, peeling my gaze off my sketchbook. “Nell, hey, if you and Beck want to head out, you can. There’s… there’s something I want to talk to Jamie about, anyway.”
Nellie frowned. “Like what?”
“I said something the other day that I shouldn’t have.” I shrugged a shoulder, trying to seem more offhand. I was mad about what he said to Dalton when I really should’ve taken his side. “Gotta preserve my good karma and apologize.”
Beck swiped up Nellie’s iced espresso off the table, easily getting to his feet. “When’s the next convertible ride, Daisy dear?” he asked me, reaching for Nellie’s hand. “Just say the word.”
“Soon.” I narrowed my eyes at him. “I’m holding you to it.”
Beck winked.
Nellie waved at me as they walked out of the game room, and I watched them go with a soft sort of happiness. I knew she’d been through a lot these last few months, and it was good to see her happy.
With the game room silent now, save for the classical music coming from the speakers, I turned back to my sketchbook.
I stared at Kit, at the eye that I’d just drawn.
Maybe that was it? I wasn’t using colored pencils, just plain graphite, but the dark ring around the eye…
was it like Jamie’s? Or maybe it was the nose?
I had drawn it with too deep a slope; that was throwing off Kit’s entire face shape.
I quickly scribbled my eraser across the page, redrew his nose with a less narrow edge, and then stared at it some more.
Not Jamie. Definitely not.
Hesitantly, as if the mere act was forbidden, I leaned forward, bringing my nose close to the paper, and sketched something.
My pencil skittered across the page in short, slow bursts.
Glasses. I’d never drawn them before, but that would prove it.
I’d erase them in a second, because Kit did not wear glasses, and they’d look ridiculous on him.
Just to test Beck’s crazy theory, just to see—
I finished the arm of the glasses.
And found myself staring at a sketch of a long-haired James Brighton.
With a gasp, my pencil all but flung out of my hand as I jerked back in my seat, pressing my other palm over my mouth. I blinked, blinked again, but the lines on the page didn’t magically transform.
That was Jamie, who’d Clark Kented himself as my original character.
I was drawing Jamie.
Panic had me launching forward again, flipping through my sketchbook with a fervor that nearly had me tearing the pages.
I found a full body sketch of Kit, and without thinking it through, I started drawing more glasses.
It was a straight-on sketch, where he was staring through the page as if looking directly at the viewer.
I drew the frames low on his nose, the spot Jamie’s normally slid down to, the spot I always pushed them up from.
They were crude because I so didn’t have practice in sketching a realistic pair of glasses and was drawing them without a reference photo, but it didn’t matter.
Even poorly drawn, they still looked like Jamie’s glasses.
And Kit still looked like Jamie.
“Daisy?”
I was wound so tight with the horrifying revelation that I’d been secretly drawing my best friend for four years that I screamed at the sound of Jamie’s voice.
The sharp, high-pitched sound wrenched out of me as my pencil scraped across the page, slicing through Kit’s-slash-Jamie’s eyes, and I fumbled to flip the cover shut. Only with my subconscious sealed off and my heart racing did I turn, finding Jamie frozen in the game room’s entryway.
He had his book club book tucked into the crook of one arm, his light brown T-shirt loose on his frame. His eyes were wide behind his glasses. “Uh, you good?”
I was breathing hard; I couldn’t help it. The same character that I’ve been drawing since freshman year is standing in front of me, I thought dimly, the words laced with panic. I’ve been drawing Jamie ever since I met him.
Oh, man. Maybe I really did need to go back to therapy.
I cleared my throat. “Are you good?”
“I’m not the one who just screamed.”
I actually thought about denying it, as if the echo weren’t still loud in my ears. “You scared me.” I straightened my shoulders, but didn’t move my palm off my sketchbook. “I—I wasn’t expecting you to sneak up on me.”
“And I wasn’t expecting you to be here at all.” Jamie’s gaze dropped to my sketchbook. “What were you drawing?”
I could be nonchalant. “Hmm? Oh, me? Just… something.” You, apparently. I’ve been drawing you. Several times, in fact. Did you know that? Am I just going crazy?