Page 20 of Goode Vibrations
“A psych?” He asked. “What’s that?”
“C-Y-C, cyc, short for cyclorama. The plain white backgrounds they use in videos and such so it looks like you’re in an all-white room. It’s a huge piece of white cloth, essentially. You can rig one lots of ways in a pinch, but a pro cyc setup costs serious money, and he had a pro set up. Including a chaise lounge for me to sit on, covered by the cyc.”
“So he wasn’t fucking around.”
“Showing off, you mean. That should have been my first clue. I’d come prepared for just about anything, but I was hoping he’d say nude so I could use that as a jumping-off point for the seduction part of the day. And he did not disappoint. He got this big smirk, like a real shit-eating grin, and he was like, ‘so, you up for a nude portrait?’ I thought it was a shoo-in. Pose nude, he’d like what he’d see, we’d have some fun, and I’d be over the stupid crush.”
“He batted for the other team?” Errol suggested.
“What, like he was gay? No, I knew for a fact he liked women—as I said, I had it on good authority, meaning I’d spoken to his ex, who had been more than happy to share details. So no, he played for my team. So, I say sure, I’ll pose nude. Strip down, sit on the chaise lounge. He goes to work, does the sketch, and then starts painting. I’m waiting for him to make the move, right? I provide the in, he just has to take the hint. Like, why the hell else would I agree to pose nude for a classmate for a portrait assignment? I knew his style, and he didn’t go in for shock stuff, he was super classical. The day wears on, and I’m still just posing, a pretty conventional portrait pose, you know, lounging on the chaise, thigh over the other so you can’t quite see my hoo-hoo, elbow just here. Hours of posing. Like, when do we get to the fun part, right?” I sighed. “Never happened. He just went, ‘okay, I’m done, you can go.’ But he had this smirk. I was like, ‘So that’s it? We’re just done?’”
“He didn’t take the hint?”
“No, and I was still buck-ass naked, like, I could not have been any more obvious.”
“Had to be gay, in that case.”
I frowned. “What? No, I already told you—”
“Yeah, I know what you said,” Errol interrupted, “but I submit that no heterosexual male, faced withyou, naked, all but throwing yourself at him, could or would remain unmoved. Therefore, gay.”
I eyed him sidelong. “You haven’t seen me naked, though.”
“More’s the pity, and not for wanting,” he muttered, and I wasn’t sure I was meant to hear it. “So what the hell was his game?” he asked.
“I wasn’t sure myself until the day we all turned in our work. He was last to present his. We all had these prepared presentations, right? Like talking about our influences and the style we chose and all that, but Teague? Walked up, stood next to the easel that had his portrait on it, covered with a piece of canvas. He hesitated for dramatic effect, and then whipped the canvas off.” I paused, recalling with uncomfortable clarity my horrified mortification at the time. “He’d done it as a direct copy of Titian’sVenus of Urbino. Which if you don’t know art history, is one of the most famous and scandalous nude portraits in history.” I slid my phone out of my purse and Googled the painting in question, the Titian version, I mean, and showed it to Errol.
He glanced at it, back at the road, at the image on my phone again, and then at me. “I see why it was scandalous.”
“The frank, unapologetic look in her eyes? The position of her hand?”
“And she’s not facing away or semi-modestly arranged. Just laying there all like, ‘look at me, I’m naked!’”
“Right. I’d assumed he’d do the modest version. Oh no. He did theVenus of Urbino. And he went further. He made it look like my fingers were unmistakablynotjust resting demurely over my crotch.” It was still embarrassing to think about. “And he exaggerated…certain features, like, into cartoon-level absurdity. Made me look like a porn star with beach ball-sized tits, fingering myself.”
Errol glanced at me. “Why exaggerate perfection?”
I looked at him—no grin, no jokey smirk. He was dead-ass serious.
He looked at me. I looked at him.Why exaggerate perfection?Three words, a genuine compliment. But the way he looked at me right then took it somewhere else. Not hitting on me. Something beyond that. Not undressing me with his eyes—nothing so simple or pedestrian as that.
I was going to fuck the blue out of his eyes, I realized. It was going to be world-class sex.
Not yet, though. I mean, I had to at least give it twelve hours from hello to naked. But with compliment comebacks like that, how could I refuse?
I mean, shit, all he’d have to do is look at me with those devilish blue eyes and say something clever in that delicious Kiwi accent, and I’d be naked and screaming in no time.
It would be purely physical, though. Purely. My heart had nothing to do with this whatsoever. I was traveling, he was traveling—our paths intersected for a while, we’d get some mutual satisfaction out of it, and then we’d go our separate ways and that would be that.
It felt like our eyes met for an eternity, felt like sparks flew thick and fierce as if someone had thrown a log on a campfire. In reality it was a matter of seconds, a mere heartbeat, and then he wrenched his eyes away and back to the road. Hand passed through his hair, he blew a sigh, scrubbed his beard, glanced back at me again ever so briefly, and if I wasn’t mistaken he mumbled something like “Gonna be in deep fuckin’ trouble with this one, ain’t I?”
Oh yes, Errol, you are. The best kind of trouble.
A long silence.
“He was a bastard.” Errol growled, eventually. “Pulling a cheap trick like that. What was his game?”
“His game was he was just an asshole. Thought he was nice, but I was mistaken. His ex told me he was a real asshole, but I chalked that up to her being a bitter ex. He’d caught wind somehow that I liked him, and figured he’d have fun with it. I was nowhere near his social status, and that meant I was not even worth sleeping with. I guess he only slept with girls who were his social equals, or nameless nobodies, and I was neither, so he just…had his fun fucking with me. Led me on, painted me, embarrassed me, and then didn’t give a shit. He got a shitty grade for the piece because Mrs. D knew exactly what he’d done and why, but he didn’t give a shit. He didn’t need the degree—he was set for life. He was just taking classes for something to do until Daddy gave him the keys to the family business and the unlimited credit that went with it.”