"Alright folks, let's all recenter."
The professor of my mixed media art class used a calming, wise voice that I always thought would be appropriate for an elementary school class. From the first day, we were told to call her simply Jan. Not Professor or Dr. Carmichael. I only knew her bona fides because I read the entire syllabus before spring term started.
"Very good, thank you," she continued, as the group of twenty or so of us quieted down. "Now as most of you are probably aware, today we start on our unit on the human form. While probably more familiar to our mind's eye than a bowl of fruit or a mountain landscape, I'll bet you'll find people much more challenging to represent."
"Dude, it's finally happening," said Donny under his breath, leaning toward me.
I arched an eyebrow and deliberately kept my focus on the careworn woman at the front of the room.
"You think she'll be like, you know... totally nude?" he whispered.
"Who said it's a she?" I said with a smirk. I was pretty sure I remembered Jan talking about a specifically female model for this unit, but guessed my dorm neighbor hadn't been paying much attention on the first day of class. Our instructor spoke again before I could catch his reaction.
"Alright then, if you'll all follow me to the atelier and bring your supplies..."
The class rose from our chairs and gathered our choice of medium. Charcoal, colored pencils, and a large sketchbook for me, an iPad and electronic pencil for Donny. We followed Jan out the side door of our usual studio, and into a narrow hallway towards a different corner of the building.
Jan stood near the door, ushering people through as the group dwindled. I was a bit surprised when she fell in step next to me.
"Hello, Sage," she said warmly as we walked. "I'm very curious to see how your experience plays here." The professor cocked her head and flashed me a knowing smile. "Your work showed some obvious skill in many of the intermediate forms."
Although it was an introductory class, everyone had been given the opportunity to submit a portfolio of work if they wanted specific guidance. I'd hand-picked a few of the drawings I'd done in high school, a collection I was proud of that didn't sway too far toward suggestive. Most of my work tended toward manga and anime styles, the proportions of certain elements a bit more pronounced than others. Stuff I drew for my buddies, usually on request, skewed toward, well... as you could imagine.
"Oh, thanks," I said, surprised that she'd even remembered. "Should be a new challenge, right?"
"Indeed," she said with a nod, cutting ahead to open the door at the end of the hall. As she pulled it open, warm light spilled out into the hallway.
We filed into the larger studio, a huge open room with high ceilings and full windows on two walls. Skylights with translucent glass let even more diffuse, natural light into the space. Narrow workbenches lined the two opposite walls, the splattering of years of dried paint covering them almost art in its own right. We made use of a stack of folding chairs, stands, and easels as appropriate, all surrounding a kind of multi-level plinth that was obviously to be our point of focus.
"Very good," said Jan, her gaze sweeping us. "Now, a little expectation setting for our session today. Our model is uncompensated, and participating only to further your journey as artists. She is familiar with the process and will attempt to make our session productive and comfortable."
"See, told you it was a chick," Donny whispered.
"Shut the fuck up, Donny," I hissed back, suppressing the grin that usually accompanied my overused Lebowski reference. We'd agreed about a month in to fall term that I got one of them a week. I'd learned to make the STFUDs count, and this seemed like a worthwhile use.
"I'll ask that you do your best to make her comfortable as well," Jan continued. "It will be up to our model to what state of undress she's comfortable with, her pose, expression. Now..." she said, sinking into an even more calming tone, "for some of you, this level of nudity might be new." She paused and the expected quiet snickering circled the room before she continued.
"I would ask that you show respect to our model and each other, and refrain from unhelpful commentary."
I could have sworn she gave Donny a briefly pointed glance.
"I'll be wandering the room and observing. If you have questions or need help, simply ask. Alright, without further preamble, I think we're ready."
The instructor strolled to a door in a gap between workbenches and knocked lightly. It swung open and our model strode out.
A collective intake of breath echoed around the room, at least among most of the guys. Even though she wore only a robe, I still would have described her as stunning. Her face was objectively beautiful. High cheekbones, a smallish nose with an adorable almost-upward point to it. The feature that drew my eye, at least initially, was her hair. While I'd been prepared to get very far away from comic books and graphic novels in this exercise, her bright, almost-silver strands would have been quite at home on a busty anime girl.
I could see a few warm highlights when the light caught it just right as she walked, suggesting she was probably naturally a light blonde at one point. My eyes finally wandered down her body as she made her way up onto the plinth, still wrapped in the robe. She certainly didn't have unnatural anime proportions, but the gentle curve to her hips and the way her bust stretched the robe was quite alluring for a real, flesh and blood woman.
Her skin was fair, bordering on pale, but again, the natural light gave her a warm glow that seemed to emanate from within rather than simply being revealed by good illumination. I couldn't tell if she was wearing makeup, the smooth even tones of her exposed skin were the same everywhere, with maybe a slight rosy blush on her cheeks.
Our model stepped up one level on the platform and gazed around the assemblage of students.
"Well hi there, all!" she said brightly
Her voice somehow perfectly matched her, at least in my head.
Jan smiled at our muse and addressed the class again. "As this is a study on how to represent the human form in your chosen medium, I'd recommend you try and replicate our gracious model as closely as possible. However, this is art! Follow your inspiration."
I glanced at Donny, who was indeed looking appropriately inspired. When I turned my gaze back to the girl, I found her at least briefly looking directly at me.
"I guess you're waiting for me then," she said with a pleasant glance around the room.
Two distinct emotions immediately clashed in my brain as polite chuckles reverberated through the room. I was a bit surprised to realize that my embarrassment for her, or something like it, was the overriding feeling squeezing my adrenal gland. I could feel my cheeks getting hot, as if the bare skin she was about to show us should make me self-conscious instead of her.
As she slowly undid the tie around her waist, the obviously more visual part of my mind took over. The robe slowly slid around her shoulders, then arms and chest before fluttering to the floor. She unceremoniously kicked it aside before sitting primly on one of the upper stair-step levels of the plinth. While she took obvious care to keep her legs together as she bent at the knees, her breasts were now on bare, glorious display.
I stared at her face almost unflinchingly for what felt like an eternity before finally dropping my gaze to her body. Her breasts weren't overlarge, but they also weren't small. Like her nose, her delicate pink areolae and nipples might have had a slight upward angle. The beautiful swell of her chest collaborated with her taut, narrow waist and rounded hips to form a sensuous hourglass, even while sitting. I was no stranger to nudity in art, and while some might prefer a bit more here or a bit less there, I would have described her form as perfect. At least to me.
"Do your best," she said brightly, with more than a hint of challenge in her pretty voice. The look on her face was now as far from embarrassed as I could imagine. Her eyes sparkled as they met the pointed gazes of the strangers watching her.
I had a brief thought that neither Jan or our model herself had shared her name. I supposed that was to maintain some bit of anonymity, even though she was now obviously rather intimately sharing with us.
"Alright then folks, you have an hour," said Jan from a corner of the room. "Remember our chapter on the basic building block shapes, start there. Get as much of the framework as you can while we have access to our beautiful and generous volunteer. After an hour..." she chuckled, "you'll have to rely on your memory. And no pictures," she added pointedly.
I instinctively turned my head to glance at Donny, who already had a live camera view of the plinth on his iPad screen. I glared at him until he closed the app, the shutter button fortunately untouched. He shrugged somewhat apologetically.
"I'm not sure I'm gonna be able to do this," he whispered.
"Remember the exercises. Start with ovals, get the proportions right. Watch me."
I popped the cap off a charcoal pencil and began to draw. I'd done this a thousand times, and even though the circumstances were quite different, I knew the shapes. Torso and hips. Shoulders, upper legs, lower. Biceps and forearms, then hands. Head. The head was the most important, it needed the most detail. I could usually get the shape right in one try, but anime people were drawn to be easy to animate by human artists, not whatever miracle of nature created the person perched in front of us in her birthday suit.
"God, how do you do that so fast?" Donny said, peeling his gaze away to watch my deft strokes.
"Just practice. Go on, then."
We turned back to our respective media and continued. After a few moments I had the basic overlapping shapes outlined, then switched to my putty eraser. Slowly removing the crossing lines, the cartoonish shapes began to become more human. A small but insistent voice in my head encouraged me to simply stare at her, to take every advantage of laying my eyes on the actual flesh and blood in front of me, the most beautiful creature I'd seen in real life. My inner artist ended up winning the argument most of the time, allowing a glance only when I needed it to refine a shape, a proportion, or a detail.
I had to suppress a giggle as I glanced at Donny's iPad, he'd started with her chest. The two large perfect circles dominated the screen as he clumsily attempted to add nipples.
Twenty minutes had passed before I even started on her face. After getting the general outline right, her features were, from an outline perspective, indeed more anime-like than I would have expected. I initially did draw her eyes a bit too large to begin with, and had to erase and reshape. Another ten minutes and I was happy with the overall effect, the happy, almost excited expression on her face translated to the paper well.
Quite out of order, I hadn't yet started drawing our model's exceptional breasts. Normally the swell around the bust would be early, shaped at the beginning with the other ovals. Perhaps out of some nervous deference to her obvious sacrifice for our class, I had left them undrawn. The girl on my sketchbook looked odd without them of course, so with an uncharacteristically shaky hand, I began.
Donny stopped his own drawing to watch me, which didn't help my nerves. I forged ahead anyway, starting with the standard basic heart shape. After a few tweaks and more erasing, I had the reasonable shapes of a pair of breasts. The rounded teardrops looked accurate from my vantage, with a light smudge of charcoal in the center of each, what I hoped looked reasonably close to her areolae and nipples. I was just touching up to make sure I had the position and angle of those oh-so-important bits when I felt someone behind me.
"Not bad, Mr. Carter," said Jan warming, looking over my shoulder. "Good job with the proportions."
I willed my hand not to shake as I continued, specifically not looking at anyone or anything other than my drawing.
"Thanks, Jan."
The instructor wandered off, pointedly not bothering to glance at Donny's iPad. I grinned at nobody in particular.
Over the remaining time, I added as much basic shading as I could, trying to replicate the softness and luminance of her skin. The crease where her thighs met, under the arm propping her up on the plinth, the slight change in light where the underside of her breasts met her chest. Except for the unique tone of her hair which I'd have to figure out later, I was reasonably pleased when she spoke again.
"Well," said our model, sharing a nod with Jan, "I guess that's an hour." She smiled widely and carefully bent to retrieve the robe.
I felt the overwhelming urge to rush forward and help her put it on, as a chivalrous man might help a woman don a jacket. Obviously no such gesture happened, but I watched as the majority of her skin was gently covered by the light fabric.
"Thank you all for being so kind," she said, almost gushing as she knotted the tie around her waist.
No, thank you! My brain yelled inwardly, still wondering how she could be so calm amidst the sea of eyes that had stared at her for the last hour. My psyche was simultaneously terrified for and proud of her. The confidence she must have to sit there wearing nothing and smiling would be huge. So many times I'd wished I had the chutzpah to not care what people thought, to be able to just be. I had succeeded in some measure in the less than a year I'd been here, but my facade felt more like a house of cards than a real difference. This girl had just sat in front of twenty people for an hour... very, very naked. I couldn't even comprehend the amount or quality of whatever it would take to do that.
As we packed up our supplies, the mood in the room quickly descended from the oddly other event that had just occurred... to simply another group of kids being let out of class. I slid my sketchbook into my leather portfolio, not wanting to risk it to a stray spring shower that were all too common. Donny had already stowed his iPad and we walked out.
I risked a glance over my shoulder as we left the room, Jan was just closing the door to whatever room our muse had entered from.
"You still doing Harry Potter cards tonight or whatever?" said Donny as we walked out of the art building.
"Magic the Gathering," I said, shaking my head. "Why you gotta be like that?" I said with a grin, dropping a shoulder and shoving him toward the sidewalk.
Donny laughed, stumbling ahead into the late afternoon sun. "It's just a head trip, someone like you still playing a kids' game."
I wasn't about to have the adults play it too, douchebag discussion. Instead, I went for a quick Lightning Bolt card like any self-respecting MTG player.
"Dude, you're an engineering major... make fun of gamers and you'll end up real short on friends in life." The words sounded harsh as they left my mouth, but it had been eight months and he still ribbed me about it.
"Sorry, sorry..." he said, smiling back. "Have fun being king of the nerds, I'll probably still be studying for my calc final when you get back."
"Later," I said coolly, parting ways as we reached the sidewalk.
Since arriving in the fall, Donny had been my shared bathroom roommate. We were both freshmen, living in a quad room that was really more like an apartment. I was very glad to have at least a little of my own space, having envisioned the bunk room style dorms I'd seen in movies. Despite my parents being barely able to scrape enough together to get me to my first year of college, I saved a good portion of my paychecks from the day I turned sixteen to make sure I could afford a single room, at least for the first year. Getting a few small scholarships and some financial aid helped too, but I knew the sacrifices they were making for me to be here.
The real miracle, without overselling it too much, was me. With a bit of unintended motivation from Donny, the person I'd become closest to in the months since arriving, I'd managed to keep alive the idea that I wasn't some comic book-loving, Magic the Gathering-playing, basement-dwelling indoor kid that was simply trying to reinvent myself. I knew lots of people tried to manage the same new place, new person grift after graduating, I just never thought it would be me. And yet somehow, I was kind of pulling it off.
Donny played sports in high school, I was in AP math. He dated two cheerleaders, I had a kinda-girlfriend for a month that I was reasonably sure would tell funny stories about me to her future wife.
Somehow in the first weeks of university, I had managed to keep alive the impression that I was one of the cool kids. Maybe a little misunderstood, a little alt, but enough on the other side of the fence. In reality, I'd only come close to approaching the other side of that fence a handful of times in my short nineteen years.
I knew it was largely an outward thing. Not working at my parents' bakery anymore, I was able to let my jet-black hair grow out over the summer. The day I turned eighteen I got my ears pierced. I don't think my folks would have cared if I'd asked to do it earlier, but the act of doing it on my own was a stepping stone. Having the guts to do something as permanent as putting extra holes in my body was exhilarating and terrifying in the best of ways.
The day after graduation took my newfound confidence up another notch. One of my best friends in high school handed me an envelope after the ceremony out on the football field, no explanation, just a smile. I didn't open it until I got home. The handwritten note inside was from his mom — a gift. I knew what she did for a living, but didn't realize until I showed up at her studio the very next day that she was one of the best tattoo artists in the state.
I asked if she'd made the same offer to all her son's friends, not downplaying the generosity by any means, but I was absolutely dumbfounded when she said no. Something about me, she said introspectively, whatever her son had told her somehow put me on a different level. She told me about seeing some of my drawings in one of the school shows, and knew she had to offer her own talents as a fellow artist.
I was floored at the magnitude of the gift. I knew how much tattoos cost, and honestly would have never considered getting one. When reading the note that there would be no restrictions on the size or colors, it just felt like a sign. I brought along the original of the piece I was most proud of, the only image I'd ever created that I would even remotely consider getting permanently etched on my skin.
She stared at the thick paper and grinned, saying something along the lines of I knew that's what you'd pick. She had apparently come to the event junior year when I'd displayed it in our regional art sho. The design had felt a bit random and meaningless at the time, especially amongst my peers' less than subtle jabs at social justice, and some honestly superior works that were simply really good art.
The ordeal took three sessions. I managed to keep it hidden from my parents, which wasn't hard considering I wasn't the shirt off, throwing a football in the yard kind of kid. I did finally show them the day I left for college, feeling both surprised and disappointed that they weren't more scandalized.
I arrived at university riding higher on my own merits than I ever had, my self-sufficiency seeming to gust wind into my sails. My cockiness lasted all of about four hours, or the time it took me to realize I was about to start classes in accounting.
In high school I had loved art and writing, but they were never easy. Anything I was ultimately proud of was an ordeal of effort and soul searching to get it there. As a counterpoint, I worked through every math class barely lifting a finger, even supplementing my dorm fund by tutoring senior year. When my parents sat me down the week after graduation, they gushed with the idea that someone with my skills could help small business owners like them everywhere. Mom wrung her hands with stories of how hard it was to find a CPA that would help with both their monthly books and yearly taxes, someone they could trust. A market just ripe for the picking, dad said several times before I finally started nodding along.
I had never begrudged my folks for the life they gave me, it was good, it honestly was. They worked six or seven days a week, but we always ate well and I more or less got what I needed. But doing something other than slinging dough, sanitizing mixing bowls, mopping floors... just to deal with the money flowing in and out of such an enterprise — the idea was compelling.
And just like that, I'd declared as an accounting major. Initially it felt like a major step backward in my newly-cool, pierced, tattooed, good hair self-reinvention. As the summer wore on though, I got myself to a better place. Being a fully grown adult, I could make choices to be both more edgy and more practical. Those things could coexist. Right?
I worked through two terms of practical, getting boring gen-eds out of the way, and at the same time delving more deeply into accounting classes. I couldn't say I got any more excited about ledgers and financial statements as a career, but I could at least stomach it. The mixed media art class I managed to get on my spring schedule as an elective was like a breath of fresh air, a small connection to my old life that I'd tried to convince all the new people around me didn't exist.
I had never and would never refute Donny's assertion that someone like me would play a fantasy card game, but a significant part of me was still that person. A big part of me was still a scrawny kid in a basement. Even now that my outside was an even six foot tall and beginning to fill out, I was okay with the inside kid still being a dorky beanpole.
Treating myself to an afternoon cafe mocha on Magic Wednesdays had become a pleasant habit. The sugar and caffeine were essentially necessary for our gaming that often went late, and one of the baristas always smiled at me in a way that made my stomach twist a bit.
There was already a line as I strolled into the busy shop. I glanced behind the counter, looking for Jessica. I didn't much think her name suited her, but as a Sage, I could appreciate the plight of a name you don't like. I finally spied her, unfortunately sporting a headset and working the drive through instead of the lobby. Nearly to the register, I felt a hand tap my shoulder. I spun around and stifled a sharp inhale. A pretty face framed by bright silver hair stared back at me.
"Hey there, you were in Jan's class this afternoon, yeah?"
"Yeah," I choked out, half extending my hand. She shook it more firmly than I would have imagined. "You were uh, really great." I let myself glance at her body, she wore a decidedly more normal outfit, tight jeans and a soft lavender hoodie.
"Awh shucks, thanks!" she smiled, finally releasing my hand. "Your first human study?"
"Was it that obvious?" Oh god, please don't ask if I've seen another real woman naked, please don't, please don't.
"You did look a little nervous I guess, but I think you were taking it more seriously than the guy next to you."
I chuck led. "You would be a hundred percent correct, there." The person in line ahead of me finished and walked off. I glanced between the register and my still anonymous model. I ordered my mocha and stepped out of the way, gesturing at the menu. I guess I'm buying her a coffee, I thought, wondering where new me was taking this.
"You sure?"
I nodded back.
"Well thanks." She ordered a hot chocolate and we moved toward the end of the counter.
"Too late for caffeine?".
"Nah, I don't like coffee. Too bitter."
"I see. So uh... class this afternoon, that wasn't your first time posing, I'm guessing?"
"Oh no," she grinned, "I've been modeling for Jan's classes for two years now. She gives me a TA credit for it, so good deal for me."
"Nice." I nodded. My brain lurched like I'd reached the end of a path that had nowhere to go. "Thank you... for your service," I blurted out. Before I realized it, I had added a lazy mock salute. She giggled, but mirrored it back.
"You're funny," she said. "I'm Skye, by the way."
We'd already shaken hands, so we simply shared a nod as we waited for our drinks.
"I'm Sage."
Skye laughed brightly. "Oh my god, another poor kid with woo woo parents! Wait, do you have any siblings? Lemme guess, Sage and... River. No, something else botanical, maybe—"
"Only child," I cut in.
"Well, dunno if that's good or not. My little sister is Soleil,"
"French for sun," I said. "Sun and Skye, that's actually pretty cool."
She gave me an appraising look, but a smile eventually pulled the corners of her mouth up. Our tentative shared gaze was cut short.
"Grande mocha, tall hot chocolate for Sage!" called the barista. We took our drinks from the counter.
"Sit with me?" said Skye, nodding toward a table in the corner.
"Sure." I followed her like a puppy.
"So, freshman art major?"
I laughed as I propped my portfolio against the leg of my chair. "No... accounting." I wasn't trying to make it sound sad, but it was.
"Tragic!" she said with a laugh intermixed with appropriate sympathy. "So is this your first art class? Just took it as an elective?"
"Something like that. I used to draw a lot in high school, I was a lot more into it then."
"What happened?"
"I dunno," I shrugged. "Life, I guess."
"I get that. So, were you any good?"
"Not bad, I think. I entered a few shows at school." I unconsciously dropped my shoulders, leaning in like I was trying to tell her a secret. "I actually was really into it..." I trailed off, suddenly worried that I was pulling back the covers to show a glimpse of a person that I wanted to pretend didn't exist anymore. At least not here.
"Parents wanted you to have a real career?"
"Yeah."
We shared a long exhale and sipped our drinks. My brain was going a hundred miles an hour in different directions. This objectively gorgeous girl approached me in a public place, started a conversation, then asked me to sit with her. In the span of less than five minutes, I'd shared more honest thoughts with this person than I had anyone in this part of the world, in a random Starbucks on a Wednesday afternoon. I floated down to reality for a brief moment and wondered if I'd blinked.
"Sage..." she said seriously, "feel free to say no, but I kinda want to break one of my rules."
I'm sure my eyes went wide for a second. "Yeah, what's that?"
Skye chewed her lip for a moment and glanced under the table. "Could I see your drawing... of me?"
I thought about all the reasons she would have a rule about not looking at the probably hundreds of drawings of her bare form. My chin shook for a moment before I tentatively hoped my drawing probably didn't fit in one of those scenarios.
"Um, yeah, I guess. Sure. Like... right here?" I glanced nervously around the shop.
"It's not a drawing of you naked, is it?" she said with no ire in her voice.
Certainly for my benefit, she twisted her chair so her back was more or less to the corner. I slid the paper out of my portfolio and gently put it into her hands. I didn't get a scandalized look followed by a slap, so I hoped I was at least not reinforcing any reasons for her rule.
She gazed intently at the paper for a few minutes, almost expressionless. I could see her eyes darting around the shapes that definitely weren't finished. The spotlight above us illuminated just the barest bleed-through of the drawing to the backside where I could see it.
"It's obviously not done yet," I finally managed to croak out.
"Uh huh," she said offhandedly.
God, I hope it's not horrible. It isn't, is it? Would she tell me? She's probably just trying to spare my feelings. Jeez, I thought I was better...
We each took a few more sips before the coffeeshop chatter muffled into awkward silence. She handed the drawing back to me, I quickly stowed it back in my portfolio.
"Thanks for the hot chocolate," she said with a warm smile. "I should probably get going."
"Oh yeah, me too," I volleyed, obviously not volunteering that I need to go grab my custom leather carrying case of Magic cards.
"See you 'round then," she said, standing up. "Bye." Skye flashed me a friendly smile as she left.
Well that was interesting, I thought. I shook off the brief novelty of sitting with her, and diminishing my in-the-moment deduction that we'd just had some sort of mini date. It was a casual run-in, nothing more.
* * *
I woke up Thursday morning and made the early trek to the rec center. Although not a credit class, I'd joined a kind of group fitness thing during orientation week. When I signed up the first day of school, I'd have given it a twenty percent chance that I'd keep going. The longer I went, the more I enjoyed it. The group of people that showed up was pleasantly diverse, and our time was spent doing yoga, Tai Chi, all different kinds of body weight exercises, even some guided meditation. It didn't feel like my kind of thing for a while, but I eventually realized it was changing my body. Somehow I'd never gotten fat living off a steady diet of baked goods, but the combo of not being around my parents shop and doing this stuff — I started to look good. Like... I never knew I had muscles. I thought that if I ever did manage to be in some kind of dating scenario, maybe it would help.
I got back to my dorm and showered. I usually allowed myself a couple of hours of brain-off chill time before my next class, but today I was oddly focused. The piece of paper in my portfolio dominated my thoughts. Finally hopping off my bed, I set up my portable easel and took it out.
Seeing Skye's naked form in my room was jarring at first. As I gazed openly at the drawing, my hands went to work. They quickly and deftly refined lines, shaded in flesh and soft shadows. Although I knew it was only due to our coffee shop meet up, I changed her smile a bit to match the more comfortable, less posed version she'd shared with the class. Before I knew it, I'd spent two hours and had to rush off to Corporate Tax class.
* * *
Fridays were my favorite day of the week this term. I had ten o'clock Econ 103, a four hour break, then art class. I knew this instance of my very last commitment of the week was just our studio time, a chance to work on anything we hadn't finished, or just ask Jan for help or advice. I briefly considered bringing my unfinished human study, but felt oddly and privately protective of it. While I knew everyone in class was in the same room and saw the same naked truth that I had... now she had a name. She was a real person with a life and feelings and a little sister and parents.
Skye.
The Friday afternoon studio was always a bit more loud, a little more happy accident vibe than when we were actively learning something. Jan let everyone do more or less what they wanted, as long as it was more or less related to art. I'd brought an unfinished landscape I'd been working on since the start of term. It was still as boring and tedious as I'd remembered.
Donny had no qualms about working on his version of Skye, and had actually made some reasonable progress. I helped him refine a few shapes and got him heading in the right direction. I noticed Jan watching me out of the corner of her eye, giving me a look that reminded me of my mom. With a subtle nod back, I returned to my boring canvas that I'm sure that even Mr. Ross wouldn't have been very proud of.
I took a deep breath and let it out as we all packed up. Friday nights were the best time of the best day. A good portion of the dorm would empty out to frat and house parties. Another portion would congregate in the floor lounges or in the common room in the lobby. I usually forced myself into a couple of hours of mingling and hanging out, even talking with a stranger if I could manage it. By the time eight or nine o'clock rolled around, I'd usually had enough and would retreat to my room and my games. I reasoned that I was taking baby steps, and that for someone in my previously-deserved social strata... I was crushing it. Well, at least not hiding.
As we left the studio, Donny was rather attached to a girl he'd been working on. I didn't even bother to catch up with him. As I left the building, my Friday afternoon went a bit sideways.
"Hi there, you," said a voice from behind me as I walked out.
I spun around to see Skye leaning against the brick wall just beside the door. She was wearing some kind of mesh or lace shirt thing over a tank top. I deliberately tried not to stare at the tasteful cleavage clearly plumping out the tight undershirt. The lavender lipstick was almost the same color as the hoodie she had on last time.
"Hey there, Skye," I said, regaining my composure. "Sage, from art class?" I somehow turned it into a question.
"I remember," she said warmly, falling into step next to me.
"Oh, okay," I said, glancing at her. She smiled, I hoped I returned it.
"Saw you coming out as I was walking by, figured I'd say hi."
"Cool. Um... hi!" I laughed nervously.
"So," she said casually as we walked, "I feel bad about last time, letting you buy my drink. I didn't expect you to, you just kinda—"
"Oh, it was no problem," I cut in, "just consider it a thank you for—"
"Going au naturale' before you even knew my name?"
I felt my cheeks start to burn. "Something like that."
"Well still, it was nice of you. What do you say to me returning the favor? There's a boba place at the student union that's pretty good, unless you're all stuck on coffee."
I chuckled. "No. I don't think I've ever had boba, they're the weird little bubble things in the juice, right?"
"Yeah," she said. "It's really sweet. I like it."
Is this actually happening?
"Why not, I'll try it."
Skye smiled widely and we took the next turn toward the center of campus. We chatted idly and made the short walk, enjoying the weather that had finally made it into the comfortable sixties. The late afternoon sun felt like a wonderful reprieve from the gloom that we'd endured for the months prior.
I asked her to order for me, the possible combinations of 'tea' and little boba pellets were overwhelming. We sat down at a table in the main area, with our cups and humorously large straws. My drink was strawberry-mango with coconut bubble things. After getting over the strange sensation of sucking up the little globs and biting them open in a slurry of flavored juice, I had to admit it was really good. Skye smiled and just casually switched our cups, letting me try her raspberry lime with vanilla. Also good.
"I feel a little bad," I said after a moment, "I didn't ask you really anything about yourself last time. I think having you look at my drawing mighta been a little overwhelming."
"I get it, it's a strange experience your first time."
"You could say that," I said, offering her borrowed drink back. We switched and each took another swig of oddly textured beverage. I gave myself an inward high-five for not making a thing about sharing a straw with a relative stranger. "So are you, like, an art major? Or are you doing something boring and just get nekkid on the side?" I was glad she laughed.
"More of the first, and maybe a little of the second," she said, still giggling. "My parents' only stipulation was that I finished college with a degree, they didn't care what it was. So... I did what I liked."
So is that creating art, or being art?
"That's awesome," I said genuinely, maybe wanting to pull on that thread. "Not many people get to do what they love."
"Right?"
We spent a few minutes chatting about her artistic journey. Skye had been largely focused on charcoal and colored pencils as her preferred medium, which I'd only recently started using. I assumed she was probably better than me, but honestly had no idea. Her lack of comment on my drawing of her suggested that was a distinct possibility.
"Now it's my turn to apologize," she said coyly.
"What for?"
"I might have stalked you a little after the coffee shop?"
"Like... followed me home?" I said, cocking my head a bit.
"Omigosh no, creep!" she laughed. "Internet stalking."
I realized my confused look didn't change much.
"You said you'd entered some art shows in high school. I assumed you graduated last year, and obviously there's not a ton of Sages out there. It was pretty easy, honestly."
For the second time in half an hour, I felt the blood rushing to my cheeks. I remembered the photos they'd taken of everyone, including me with my favorite piece when I'd won the show. With my short hair, shorter body, my un-pierced ears, and probably wearing a Pokemon shirt. In the matter of a minute, she'd unearthed old me. She knew more or less where I lived, where I came from. I knew my jaw was sagging when she spoke again.
"What's wrong?" she asked, almost consolingly. "I wanted to see more of your work, and if you were actually any good."
I sat, frozen, waiting for judgement.
"Sweetie," she said, reaching over and taking both my hands, "you are good."
I felt my held breath release and some measure of relief wash over me. Just as quickly, the warmth of her hands on mine began overwhelming my senses. Still, no words. I think I was honestly more worried about her seeing geeky, high-school me than the artwork I knew was decently alright.
"You could probably get a job doing graphic novels tomorrow. Not super glamorous or anything, but you're good enough."
"Thanks," I managed to choke out. "You honestly think they were okay?"
"Yeah! I mean it's not my style of work, but I know it's good. I uh... saw the piece that won you best in exhibition at... what was it, district something?"
"Quad City Arts Annual High School Art Exhibition," my mouth blathered out on its own.
"Yeah, that one," she said, absentmindedly stirring the remaining bubbles of whatever it was in her drink. "Your entry was..."
"What?" I said meekly.
"Not like your other stuff I saw," she said, "but in a good way," she added.
"Thanks, I think."
"It's totally a compliment. And Sage?" she added slowly, giving me an uncomfortably warm smile. "All this—" she gestured at my ears, hair, and maybe my torso. "I like what you've done with the place."
Okay, so she noticed.
"Thanks."
We chatted as we drank our boba tea, both enjoying people watching at the student union. Even if you had no idea what day it was, the burgeoning energy on everyone's faces would have pointed solidly toward Friday. We eventually finished and got up. I wondered to what kind of elevated level this had taken our... whatever this was. When we silently agreed it was time to leave, Skye followed me out. Neither of us said goodbye, so we just started walking.
We made our way nowhere in particular around campus, neither of us making a move to separate or otherwise split up. In less than an hour, I'd already said more words that I probably had to Donny in the months I'd known him. Skye and I talked a bit more about our families and high school experiences, although hers was a couple of years further removed than mine.
By the time twilight began to fall, it felt like something was happening. We talked and laughed, both seeming content to just wander together. The weather wasn't cold enough to push people indoors yet, and we certainly weren't the only ones out and about.
"So what does Sage do on a Friday night?" she asked as we cut across one of the large lawns I knew I could see from my dorm window.
"Nuthin," I answered with a shrug.
"You can't do nuthin."
"I guess," I volleyed. "Well what does Skye do on a Friday night? You go to parties?"
"Sometimes," she said. "Not really my scene, but it's fun every now and then."
"Heading to one tonight?"
"Are you trying to get rid of me?" Skye stopped and gave me a sideways smirk.
"No, I—" I stammered, thinking that was quite the opposite of what I was trying to do.
"So seriously," she went on, "if I wasn't here, what would you be doing right now? Not tryin' to grill you or anything, I just wanna know what makes you tick."
I thought for a moment, reluctant to tell her the truth, but she'd already seen high school photos of me. No point in trying to make up something cool at this point.
"Well, I'd probably be in my room playing some vintage video games."
"For real? Like... how?"
The spark ignited in my synapses a split second before the words left my mouth.
"You wanna see?"
Her eyes lit up in the best possible way and she grabbed my hand. I wordlessly led us our way toward my dorm whil I tried to will the palm pressed into hers not to sweat.
Donny gave us a brief wide-eyed stare as we walked in through the common room. Despite his normal confidence, walking in unannounced with Skye in tow reduced him to a croaked Hi. I flashed him a friendly glare that hopefully telegraphed that I was not looking for his input on what was happening. We traipsed through the living area and into my room, closing the door behind.
"One of my high school buddies helped me build it," I said, gesturing toward the strange contraption on the shelf below my monitor. I pulled the desk chair out and rolled it over for her.
"What, that?" she asked, giving the small device a sideways look.
"It's an emulator," I said, pushing a button on the small circuit board. A single red light flashed and I handed her one of the attached controllers. After watching the boot sequence on the screen, Skye's eyes went wide as the selector menu came up, showing the thousands of available games crammed into the small memory card. "So I've got most arcade games before two-thousand, and just about all the old consoles. Whatchyou wanna play?"
"Oh my god, this is amazing! Do you have—"
We spent the next hour, ten minutes at a time, bouncing between games. We hit the expected original Super Mario and Donkey Kong, but eventually got into some more obscure titles. When we switched immediately from Dig Dug to The Legend of Kage, I wondered how much time she'd spent in arcades as a kid.
Somehow, seeing her squeal with delight every time we found a new game, it felt like the playing field was slowly being leveled. Not that we were competing or anything, but against all odds, the list of things we both liked was getting longer. We were getting closer and closer to... something. For every minute that passed, it felt like my stomach was twisting just a little further. There was just no precedent for what was happening, a girl who genuinely seemed to like spending time with me.
We took a break for sodas after a while, but got right back into gaming. As we laughed and played, my brain was increasingly focused away from the screen. By the time I'd lost three races in OutRunners, I think she noticed.
"Am I distracting you?" Skye giggled, putting down the controller. She leaned off the chair and wrapped an arm around my shoulders. "Sorry, I'm ruining your Friday night game time."
I wanted to stammer out something along the lines of best Friday night ever, but she squeezed me and hopped up before I could work up the courage to say any words.
"Why don't you play for a bit, I'll just chill. You pick."
"Uh, okay..." I finally managed to get out, glad that she wasn't leaving. My tuned-up psyche was still wrestling with the unlikely reality that I had a very attractive girl alone in my dorm room. With a couple of tentative glances at her, I finally navigated the game menu and loaded Street Fighter II. It wouldn't take too much brain power, just muscle memory.
Skye watched me play for a few minutes, cooing appropriately when I finished a KO or managed a special attack. I'd gotten through five or six levels when she stood and began to look around my room.
"You mind if I look at some of your stuff?"
Even though I was studying accounting, I'd brought the narrow, upright art box my dad had helped me build. It wasn't fancy and didn't even have a lid, but the felt lining and thin dividers helped store my favorite drawings. Without looking away from the screen, I knew that's what she was gazing at.
"Yeah, help yourself," I said with as much confidence as I could muster. I wondered if she expected my drawing of her to be in there. I wouldn't have called it finished by any means, and was a little glad it was still in my portfolio. Glancing at her, I watched as she thumbed through my work, pulling one out every now and then to study.
"I wondered if you'd brought it," she said quietly after a few minutes, holding up the letter-size piece of paper I didn't have to see to know which work it was.
Skye was quiet for a moment as she stared at the drawing. I was glad for my many previous hours of playing the game currently on the screen, as my brain had completely disengaged from the characters fighting. My thumbs simply worked the controls on autopilot. A little lightning shock ran down my spine as she spoke again, both relieving some of the pressure and adding more of a different kind.
"Come look at this with me," she said, "do you mind?"
I hopped up without even bothering to pause the game. The drawing I'd spent so many hours working on, that I could now see in the mirror every time I pulled a shirt on... it was literally part of me now.
"Tell me about it," she continued, "in your words."
"Well," I started, still feeling the tingles radiate through my nerves as I sat on the bed next to her, "I started with the idea of a möbius. It's a shape that appears to twist in on itself, but only has one side, right?"
She nodded.
"I kind of elongated it and made the two parts more like a sideways figure eight, like the symbol for infinity."
We glanced at each other, the interest on her face obvious. I knew I wasn't done.
"Keep going."
"Okay." I gestured to the space under the large symbol, a stylized patch of scrub desert in yellows and drab greens and browns, with a single woody trunk rising out of the dirt. "The plant is getting out of its natural environment, reaching for the— I dunno, promise of more? Maybe not infinity, but..."
"And what kind of plant is it?" said Skye with a sideways grin.
"Sagebrush," I said, mirroring her smile. I took a moment and admired my work with her. Actual Sage is a difficult to reproduce green-gray color, and the fuzzy skin of the leaves was even harder to get right. The lower portion of the infinity möbius was solid and thick, like flat, carved stone. The sage enwreathed it, the branches growing more sparse as it climbed the figure. Skye was somehow following my gaze.
"The top part isn't filled in like the bottom," she observed, tracing the upper portion of the symbol.
I'd been rather proud of the way I'd drawn it, the less solid, almost Escher-esque wireframe further reinforcing the illusion and unfinished nature of the unknown. My eyes naturally wandered further up the page, a slow gradient of darkening atmosphere giving way to stars and a few tiny, swirling galaxies.
I simply nodded. Skye turned away from the drawing and looked directly at me for a moment.
"Tell me what it means. To you."
I took a deep breath and exhaled it out. When I'd been asked the same question at the art show, I'd given some lame answer about trying out different drawing techniques and maybe some juxtaposition of subjects. It appeased the kid from the school paper, but I was getting the sense that it wouldn't work here.
"I guess it's obvious the plant is me," I chuckled nervously. "Hard to hide it being Sage. And I'm growing—" I gulped, never having admitted this out loud before, "out of a desert, kinda. Not to say that my parents starved me or anything, but..."
"I know," she said softly.
"The möbius infinity is kinda like life, right? Everybody says there's always two sides to things, like you can have a good life or bad, make good choices or not, but that's not how it works. You get one life, just one set of decisions. But!" I paused and realized I'd raised my voice. I'd never put it into words, even for myself. "Even though you just get one shot, there's no real limit to what you can do. Infinity."
The smile on her face had been slowly turning her lips upward. I just kept blathering.
"So I'm kinda climbing up into my life, and have all this potential ahead of me, but there's no certainty, it's not solid yet." I pointed at the wireframe section of the figure as it got closer to the darkening sky above. "I just have to keep growing." In the span of a couple of seconds my brain had already launched into the cosmos of possibilities ahead, the newest twinkling star in the form of the girl sitting next to me.
I could hear the pulse in my ears.
"Never said that out loud Before, have you?" Skye asked.
I shook my head, confused that I was a bit dumbstruck at the idea. I tried to open my mouth a few times but nothing wanted to come out. Finally, I put my confusion into words.
"Is it weird that I've never actually thought about it like this?"
"Not really," she said softly. "It happens with a lot of artists. Your conscious mind don't really know what you're creating or why. Sometimes it doesn't mean anything to you, but sometimes it does."
"I think this one does."
"I think you're right."
We'd been sitting on the bed next to each other as I psychoanalyzed my drawing. Skye had been holding the piece of paper, but had gently laid it down next to her leg without me noticing.
"Come 'ere", she said, leaning toward me. Without warning, she wrapped her arms around my shoulders and hugged me. "Thanks for sharing with me."
I made some kind of noise in response, but otherwise sat there still, arms at my sides. Her body pressing against me did nothing for my racing pulse, and I could feel my cheeks getting warm. Through whatever fog I was stuck in, I could smell some kind of pleasant floral scent on her. Shampoo, maybe lotion.
"Well, I've derailed enough of your evening," she said, pulling away. "Thanks for the video games, that was a fun trip down memory lane. I wouldn't say no to doing that again sometime."
"Oh totally," I finally managed to croak out as she stood. A slim part of my thought process wanted to tell her she didn't have to leave, that she could stay all evening and play, hang out, just talk. That part of me was apparently still non-verbal and simply had to watch her step through the door as I feebly waved.
I sighed loudly as the door clicked shut. Not knowing whether Donny was out in the common room and saw her leave, I flipped the lock. I didn't need to deal with his take on this, at least not yet.
My brain spun for a good half hour after Skye had gone. I'd beaten myself up from several directions, spinning the memory that I'd gone basically comatose while she helped me see the meaning behind my drawing. I reasoned my way out of shame pretty quickly though.
A beautiful, worldly girl had liked my art enough to come to my room, singled out my favorite piece, and essentially praised me for it. Through all that, I didn't bolt out of the room, vomit, or both.
I was nearly mentally high-fiving myself by the time I'd finished the last round of Street Fighter II before turning in to sleep.
I'm doing good, right? Sage two-point-oh hasn't crashed and burned.
Yet.
* * *
I'd just poured a cup of coffee when I heard it behind me in the kitchen, the word I knew was coming.
"Dude..." said Donny's voice, still gravelly from god knows what shenanigans he'd been party to in the last twelve hours.
I considered using next week's STFUD, but decided to keep it in the bank.
"Good morning, Donny," I said coolly as I grabbed the creamer from the fridge.
"Are you kidding me right now? Spill! You had a fucking nude model in your room last night."
"She left before it was even dark, and her name is Skye. And she's not a fucking nude model, she's an art student. Gets credit for attracting horny engineering losers to art class." The last words came out a little sharp, as intended.
"Ooh, ouch," he said with a stifled laugh. "Alright, so you're still not giving me details here. Left before dark... did you strike out or something?"
"We played retro games and... looked at some of my art," I added quietly.
"Video games, for real?" he said, glossing over the more important part of my admission he probably wasn't thinking about.
"She wanted to play," I said, sitting down at the bar. "You think just because she's pretty that she wouldn't like to game?"
"My previous personal experiences would support that, but hey... college, right? So what's the deal then, you gonna see her again?"
"No idea." The thought lodged in my consciousness for a hot second. Despite hanging out for a few hours getting familiar, playing together, then sharing what I considered a reasonably personal moment... she left.
"Well, if she's down with accounting nerds and video games, tell her you got an engineering buddy that would step things up if she were so inclined."
I laughed out loud and choked back a mouthful of freezer waffle.
"Highly doubtful."
I sipped my coffee while Donny trundled off, presumably to shower. At least I hoped so, based on the delightful mix of stale beer smell and body odor he left in his wake.
Nearly every Saturday morning, it had become my ritual to stroll through campus while it was still early. On the south side just past the liberal arts library, was a little family-run bakery. I'd found it by smell alone the first week I'd been there, almost floating on a waft of warm, familiar scent that was practically woven in with my DNA. The vibe wasn't exactly the same as my parents' place, but it was pretty close. A question about one of their doughs quickly got me on the almost family list and since... I'd never paid for anything. I always put a couple bucks in the tip jar anyway. Gerri, the matriarch of the operation, always glared at me when I did it, but I think she appreciated the gesture.
"Have you called your mom this week?" she asked as she flapped open a small bag for my order. "Tell her the overnight cold proof for my sourdough did just the trick."
"Not yet," I said with a nervous grin, "but I will, and I promise I'll tell her. I think they're adding some butter laminated pastries soon, I don't think my mom could take me raving about yours anymore..."
"Well, you'd better have one of these too then," she said, grabbing a small filled croissant from the top shelf and adding it to the bag. "Not too often, but every now and then is okay."
"Thanks, Gerri."
I walked out with a half eaten pain au chocolat and a couple of bagels for later. The warm fuzzy high of that little reminder of home usually carried me well into the afternoon, but something today was different. Skye's presence in my room the evening prior certainly played into it, but as I neared home, I realized that it wasn't her specifically, but my drawing of her. It wasn't finished, and the fact gnawed at me. I was nearly power walking by the time I reached the dorm, resigned to the fact that I was excited to work on the piece.
I would normally have spent the remainder of a Saturday doing laundry, gaming of some kind, just chilling out on my bed. Today, I was hunched over my desk with a very specific drawing out.
God, she's beautiful, I thought, gazing at the picture. It wasn't finished, but it certainly captured her. The slightly different smile I'd added after the coffee shop exuded her effortless way of making you feel comfortable, at ease, even though the clothing half of the equation was woefully unbalanced.
My gaze drifted down the paper to her body. Although I'd spend less time with my eyes on it than her face, I remembered it almost like a photograph. I stared at the top of her chest, the slight protrusions of her collarbones giving way to the swell of her breasts. The shading was still rudimentary, but the way her waist tapered before the round of her hips, slightly off center due to the way she was sitting... even in rough pencil strokes she was objectively gorgeous.
The longer I gazed, the blood flowing through my brain had to fight against the blood flowing south. It was a weird flex to think that something I drew was very obviously arousing me, but everything in my psyche was telling me that it was her, not my talent. My jeans had stretched uncomfortably tight by the time I got a handle on things, chiding myself into grabbing a pencil instead of the other shaft I wanted to grab.
"Okay Sage, you got this," I said aloud. "It's a drawing, man up and finish it. Just... start."
With a couple of gentle erasures, I got to work on finalizing the outlines. One of her hips was a little off kilter, it had probably been because I was off-center from the plinth as she leaned a bit to one side.
Slowly, monochromatic charcoal Skye became closer and closer to my vivid memory of that hour a few days prior.
I took a short break and stood, staring down at her alluring form from higher up. Just as quick, I dropped back into the chair. One side of her slender neck wasn't quite right, the longer portion visible with her head turned slightly the other way. I erased the line and drew it a little closer in, then shaded the gentle curve where it met her shoulders. A sharp breath caught in my throat as the change clicked. Like pulling out a splinter, there was a kind of physical relief as the last curve of her shape fell into place on the page.
Like shifting gears, my hand instinctively grabbed a twig of vine charcoal and began the shading process in earnest. I had to close my eyes a few times to remember the light in the room, where the shadows and contours of her body were both revealed and hidden. It took a few minutes to blend the delicate shade I put on her cheeks. A few of my fingertips were quickly blackened in their task.
I stood again and stared at the paper, knowing it was close. Fighting the urge to continue shading and softening, I took another approach. Areas of her skin that were still plain, exposed white paper, I started adding chalk. Soft oranges and yellows and peach colors blended to show the warm highlights, the places where the light made her skin glow.
The juxtaposition of dark charcoal and pale, almost pastel colors quickly pushed the drawing to something new. Not anime or any of the comic-appropriate styles I usually gravitated toward. This was something different, a kind of reality highlighted with magic. A few plain white highlights remained, a corner of her forehead, a contour of her nose, a gentle crescent on one side of her breast that was closest to the windows.
There was only one minor detail left, her hair. I'd gotten the gentle wave right and the way it cascaded down over her shoulders, even the appropriate lightness, but something was still missing. I knew she had to have naturally been blonde, but whatever she'd done had made it silver. Not gray, dull silver like your grandma, but an almost-liquid flow that captured and reflected the light in delicate strands.
I gulped as I knew what I had to do. Reaching back to color theory, I took out a single piece of pastel chalk, hoping desperately that I wouldn't ruin the entire work. Reflections, whether in a mirror or water, always appeared slightly cooler than the original. My stomach twisted as I mixed the pale blue dust in with the thin, flowing lines of her hair. Once I'd blended in the color with the rest of the charcoal, I finally sighed out a breath.
"Wow..." I said aloud, again to nobody but me.
Adding a seemingly unnatural color, even if just the barest hint, felt almost sacrilegious, until I got the joke I didn't realize I was making.
"Skye Blue," I chuckled to myself. Against the whole of the drawing, the tint had the desired effect — not blue, but a shimmering silver.
I took a deep breath, closed my eyes for probably ten seconds, and opened them again. Just like that, I was looking at something I'd seen before. Not a drawing that was only seconds old, but a person. A real person that I'd gazed at for an amazing, unlikely hour. I began to react how any other red-blooded nineteen year old might... aroused. My hand had slowly begun to palm across my thigh and I could hear the growing pulse in my ears.
"Sage, dude!"
My door swung open and I could feel the pressure in the room change. Crouched over my desk, I pushed my shoulders out in some kind of attempt to hide my workspace. I hoped my body was wide enough to block his view.
"Dane and Kai got some kind of all day bowling pass at the student union, you in? We need four."
A significant part of me wanted to stay and agonize over my drawing. I reasoned I could certainly do it later. Our other two roommates rarely did anything social, so I quickly shifted to being glad they were getting out of the dorm on a weekend.
"For sure, be right there." I waited till the door closed behind him to let out a held breath. I gave the work one more glance before gently blowing off the stray charcoal and chalk dust, then slid it carefully into the felt-lined box.
* * *
Monday classes began rather like any other week. Even though I knew how utterly boring it sounded, the unit on tax strategies for small business was fascinating. With maybe a few of Gerri's words in my brain, I kept thinking about my parents and how just a few adjustments to their financial strategy could do so much for their business and their lives. And at this point, my life.
If they formed an LLC and paid each of them a salary, that would be an expense that would lower their business taxable income!
I had half a dozen things I was going to try and remember to tell them by the time class finished.
My mild obsession with finishing my drawing of Skye temporarily abated, a new and perhaps not surprising thought pattern was taking its place. Skye herself. I knew it wasn't my roommates' ribbing that pushed me there. She had to have been interested in my at least a little, right? I understood the flattery of having someone draw a picture of you, but that wouldn't be reason enough to hang out a few times, play games. Maybe? We never exchanged numbers or Instas or anything. Maybe she did just see me as an awkward amateur artist that happened to draw her well. Was I reading too much into this?
After about twenty-four hours of flip-flopping, the solution smacked me upside the head. I simply needed to tell her the drawing was done. She was interested enough to ask to see it while it was a work in progress, it made sense to assume she'd want to see it finished. It was a plausible, reasonable setup to see her again. If I was brave enough to take a shot at said art viewing, maybe something would happen. I was pretty sure she would like my rendering of her, so at least I'd have that. Even if that was it, at least I'd know for sure.
Not having any way to contact her was my next challenge. As I sat in art class that day, an easy solution to that problem presented itself, like the universe was lining it up for me. I'd brought the drawing with me to have it graded.
"Sage," said professor Jan, gazing at my drawing, "I'm really quite impressed. You've branched out from your previous work, and I have to say, this style is bold and really... provocative."
"Thanks, I uh," I gulped as the idea hit me, "I'd really like to show it to her, to Skye. Not tryin' to be creepy or anything, but she saw it before I finished, and—"
"I'm guessing you don't want to just leave it with me," she said with a grin.
"I'd kinda like to show it to her in person, if you think that's not too weird."
"I don't," said Jan, putting a hand on my shoulder before leaning in closer. "Yours is the best one, by the way," she whispered. "I'm sure she'll be thrilled to see it."
"So yeah, I don't have any way to get in contact with her. Do you know if—"
"I have her in class this afternoon. I'm sure you could find her afterward, if you were so inclined."
"Thanks, Jan."
She squeezed my shoulder and took a deep breath before making her way to Donny's station.
The art buildings were about as far away from my dorm as they could be, so I found a free bench in the lobby of the larger building next door. As I passed the time scrolling on my phone, it began to lightly drizzle. The day had that look from the very outset, and I was glad I'd packed a rain jacket. I knew the waxed canvas of my portfolio bag would be fine and keep the handful of pages inside it dry.
As it neared three in the afternoon, I finally just got up and trudged outside. Like Skye had done the week prior, I leaned against the old brick next to the door and watched the upperclassmen file out. A head of silvery hair passed by me just as she pulled a hood on.
"Skye!" I called, falling in next to her.
"We'll hiya, Sage," she said brightly as we hit the sidewalk. "What are you up to?"
"Oh, you know, just in the neighborhood. Saw you come out, thought I'd say hi."
"I see," she giggled. She gave a surreptitious glance at my bag, but didn't linger on it.
We chatted idly for a few minutes as we walked, with no indication of where we were going. Did she have another class, maybe she was headed to her... wherever she lived? I felt my stomach begin to seize up as the reality of my plan gut punched me. Hey pretty girl, I have this nude picture of you I drew, I'm just sure you want to see it, right?
Skye asked about the rest of my weekend after our retro gaming marathon, if I'd done anything fun. I barely made out eleven games of bowling as I tried to steel my resolve. Now or never.
"So... my drawing, you know, of you— it's finished."
"Kinda figured," she said, giving a less-veiled nod at my bag. "Did you... by chance, want to show it to me?" She glanced at me with a version of the disarming smile that somehow made it okay for her to be naked in a roomful of clothed strangers she didn't know.
"I'd like that, if you wanna see it."
She stopped on the sidewalk and took both my hands, our skin now pretty damp from the rain.
"I would like that. You have anywhere you need to be? My place isn't far."
"No, I mean yeah, that works. Wouldn't want it to get wet out here," I added with an awkward laugh.
"Yes, absolutely," she went on, "you definitely wouldn't want to get me wet."
I sucked in a breath, wondering at her choice of words. She flashed me a devious grin and we started walking again. After a block or so, she looped a pinky finger in mine. Though neither of our digits were warm, there was definitely a new source of heat radiating between us.
"This is me," she said after a bit, nodding to a large craftsman house on the next block. The wrap-around porch reminded me of my grandparent's house from when I was a kid.
"You don't live in the dorms," I said blankly. "Cool house."
"The rent isn't bad with five of us. And, I have the best room."
"Nice."
We strolled up the wide steps onto the covered porch. Skye tried the door handle and found it unlocked, so we stepped inside.
"I have the whole basement," she said quietly. "All the others thought it was creepy or something, but wait till you see it."
We took a narrow hall off the entryway, then through an even narrower door at the top of a set of downward steps. The staircase was a little dark and claustrophobic, but quickly opened up into a large room. One corner had a wide sliding glass door and another set of floor-to-ceiling windows nearly the same size, looking out into a manicured backyard. The rest of the space was part bedroom, part art studio, and just... cozy. The back half of the large room away from the windows housed a small bathroom and the laundry facilities.
"The light for painting and drawing is pretty good in the morning," she said, dropping her backpack on a large wooden desk. "Kinda sucks right now with the clouds and rain though. Skye gestured to an easel and turned on an overhead light. "Alright, let's see it."
My heart started pounding as I unshouldered the bag and took my jacket off. With a reverence that felt only fitting, I carefully extracted the sheet and placed it on the easel. Skye had been standing a bit behind me, so I sidled out of the way. The excruciating silence that followed nearly undid me. Finally, she spoke.
"Sage..." she said quietly, "I—" her voice trailed off and she simply stared, standing uncomfortably close to me.
A small part of my brain wanted to prod her for a reaction, ask what she thought, demand some kind of critique or evaluation. Thank god, that part shut the hell up.
"It's amazing," she finally said, moving closer to the easel.
I stayed rooted to the spot several feet back.
Several times it felt like she was about to say something and stopped, but finally spouted not a praise, but a question.
"Is that how you... saw me? Like, for real?"
"Yeah," I said quietly, aware how soft my voice sounded. "You're..." If I'd been an English major I could have come up with a dozen words that meant something like gorgeous-amazing-stunning and too beautiful to be real. I hoped my silence said something in that vein.
The quiet stretched out, and she eventually stood up straight again and backed up for a wider view. I felt her shoulder brush my arm as we stood there, gazing at my version of her. My body felt nearly frozen, like some kind of thing would need to happen before I could move again. The universe answered in kind, although not how I'd have drawn it up.
"Skye!" a voice called from behind us, accompanied by heavy footfalls on the creaky wooden treads.
"Tuesday cheap pizza!" said another voice. "You in?"
"Obviously," Skye called back, just as the intruders reached the bottom of the stairs. She quickly turned and kind of spun me around with her. "This is Sage," she said warmly, "he's a frosh accounting major. Sage, this is Devyn and Mallory. Mal, if you don't wanna get verbally eviscerated."
"Hey," I said nervously, trying to commit their names to memory.
The two girls sized me up behind smiles, but quickly shifted their eyes back toward Skye.
"He's in Jan's beginning mixed media class," she said, slowly putting a pace between us to open the view to the easel behind. "Yeah," she said with a grin, "that one."
Both girls' eyes focused in on the paper behind us as they stepped in closer. I could hear both of them stifling some kind of gasped breaths, their gazes flashing to Skye, then back. The three of them shared a conspiratorial look that made my blood pressure rise. When I glanced back at Skye, her cheeks had an uncharacteristic pink tinge.
"You're pretty talented," said one of them, Mal, I think.
"Thanks," I responded genuinely. "I kinda needed a creative outlet, you know, doing accounting."
"For sure," said the other one. "Have they..." she said quietly.
Skye seemed to understand and shook her head. Devyn whipped out her phone and tapped wildly before putting it in the back pocket of her skinny jeans. The four of us casually turned back toward Skye's bared image. Not thirty seconds had passed as noisy clomping turned the four of us into six.
"Oh my god," whispered one of the newcomers, being not at all shy about pushing through us to get a close-up view of my now very shared work. "Who did this?"
"Sage," said Skye warmly, nodding toward me. "This is Ana and Bridge."
"Bridge?" I echoed, honestly thinking I'd misheard. The girl was nearly as tall as I was, and had at least ten pounds on me. Somehow I was certain she'd win if it came to some kind of physical combat.
"Short for Bridget," she said, "my little brother's a dumbass and couldn't say it. Just kinda stuck."
"It's nice to meet you all," I said, unsure if I should shake hands, give hugs, what. Instead, I was met with the strangely inside-baseball look widening to the group of now five girls as they gazed between me and my drawing. I'd begun to feel like I was intruding on something like paparazzi that had just photographed a private family moment. An indeterminable amount of time passed before someone spoke.
"Whaddya like on pizza Sage, anything weird?" Ana asked.
"I uh, no — whatever." Apparently I was staying to eat. "Except pineapple," I blurted out, "blech."
"Preach!" said Devyn, the shortest of the girls, offering a high five.
I raised my palm as her much smaller hand smacked mine with a definitive crack.
Eating pizza with five college girls was a lot more normal than I would have assumed. Never once did the group break out in a pillow fight, nor did I see anyone in a state of undress. They did take what I would have deemed a little too much pleasure in messing with the pizza delivery guy, each of them in turn playing like they had to scrape together enough cash to pay the entire bill. After witnessing the whole thing, I'm pretty sure both sides knew it was a game.
Ana was the only one of us who didn't immediately grab slices of pizza and migrate to the living room. I heard lots of clinking and various kitchen-y noises as the rest of us sat down in front of the TV. The very pretty, vaguely olive-skinned girl appeared a moment later with a large glass pitcher of deep red liquid, packed full with what appeared to be sliced fruit.
And... what the hell, that's not a gummy worm, right?
Skye handed me a glass of Tuesday Sangria, and I coughed at the first sip. I'd been to only one college party since I'd been here, and the Jungle Juice there was at least in a specific lane of flavors. This tasted like all the fruit in the produce aisle tossed in a pitcher with some battery acid and a bit of lighter fluid.
Okay, it wasn't that bad. After a few sips I got used to the bizarre combination of flavors. I guess the base was some kind of cheap red wine from a box, but beyond that, I was apparently close on the 'whole produce aisle' guess. Whatever fruit they hadn't eaten over the last week made its way in.
I asked about the gummy worms, which fortunately hadn't made it into my cup. Bridge piped up with the shared opinion that they were a welcome add, discovered a couple of months prior after the second or third pitcher of the evening. Ana laughed and quickly launched into the retelling of the time they'd tried to add overripe banana. I nearly spit out a bite of pizza and told them I'd rather have pineapple.
The girls curated a playlist of videos and reels that wouldn't have been out of place in my dorm, mostly. Lots of people doing stupid things, influencers being extra cringe with people they thought were beneath them, the usual. There were quite a few more puppy videos in whoever's algorithm was signed in, but hearing all the girls awwwh in unison didn't hurt my feelings.
The whole group was up and down, in and out quite frequently as we ate pizza and continued pouring sangria. I'd mostly kept to one end of the couch facing the TV. As I'd finished my third slice, Skye seemed to make a point to sit close to me, enough that our hips were touching. I couldn't play it off like it was an accident and scoot away, there was simply nowhere to go. I became very aware of my own arm resting on my leg, only an inch from touching hers.
"I should probably get going, I have an early Econ class tomorrow." I took the last swig of my drink, feeling the nice tingles that had come along for the ride.
"Bye, Sage!" said a chorus of voices as I stood from the couch before taking my plate and glass into the kitchen. When I turned around from the sink, Skye was standing near the doorway.
"Thanks for tonight," she said warmly as she walked over, now uncomfortably close to me. "Your drawing is still downstairs, don't forget it."
I briefly considered asking her if she wanted it, but knew I'd be heartbroken giving it up.
"You're really okay if I keep it? It's not weird?"
"You made it, it's yours."
"But... it's you." I knew she knew what I meant.
Skye shuffled a little closer and ran her fingers up my forearm. "Maybe we can have some kind of shared custody arrangement," she giggled. "Go on, go get your stuff."
I grinned and trotted out of the kitchen, through the strange hallway, and down the claustrophobic stairs. With just the feeble overhead light now, the space was indeed now dim and a little depressing. With a gentle hand, I slid the drawing back into my portfolio. I ascended the stairs to find her waiting for me.
"Come on, I'll walk you out."
We made our way out to the covered porch, the last of the spring light barely filtering through the clouds and rain that still hadn't let up. The sound was calming and soft. Skye took my hands as I stood facing her, one step down, still under cover of the large wraparound porch.
"Your drawing is really good. I hope you..."
In an interesting position, I found myself between two equally unlikely paths. One path was to ask her what it was that she hoped, the other was to assume the hoped thing and go for it. My brain pointed out that we were nearly eye to eye, faces only inches apart. As if ordained by whatever fates of circumstance had put me here, I watched her eyelids begin to close.
It could have been my wavering sense of balance, but it looked like she was getting closer to me as well. I waited until her hands slowly draped over my shoulders to let myself believe it was happening.
As my eyes closed and vision winked out, I sighed a breath out through my nose. Our lips met tentatively at first. Hers were soft and warm, mine felt dry and scratchy. My arms instinctively wrapped around her waist, and both of us seemed to be gently pulling the other closer.
Skye turned her head turned just slightly, I mirrored the other direction. I could hear my pulse in my ears as we kissed. She opened her mouth first, the barest trace of her tongue brushed my lip. I began to follow her lead, reciprocating as the kiss deepened. The taste of Tuesday Sangria flowed between us.
I can't believe this is happening, some tiny, still-cogent part of my brain offered. Skye is kissing me. ME.
I was still aware of the soft rain sound as we gently made out. Hands began to roam, and I could feel my jeans getting a bit tighter. We'd reached some kind of tipping point when I realized I hadn't been breathing very much. Skye made some adorably contented sound and we retreated, only slightly. I was still rather insistently holding her body against mine, not wanting to let go in case this turned out to be some giant misunderstanding.