“This is gorgeous,” she said breathlessly, her fingertips tracing the delicate link design. “My father had one exactly like this that was stolen. Is it Victorian?” She looked up at him and realized his face was only about six inches from hers. She quickly turned back to the bracelet, fingering the latch and enjoying the closeness of his skin on her fingers. If she moved them a centimeter to the right, she’d be touching his arm. Her heart raced.
“I guess you know your antiques too.” Eric gave her a quick smile and made no effort to step away. “Yes, um, it’s Victorian. It was my great-grandfather’s, actually, my great-great-grandfather’s. It was a gift from the royal family for … I’m not sure what, actually.” His chest rose and fell beneath his perfectly pressed shirt and tie. It was clear he was in agony, but Tinsley wasn’t ready to let him get away yet. She looked up to find his cheeks flushed. She opened her violet eyes wider, knowing that from his angle, looking down at them through her thick black lashes, they were irresistible.
“Do you think I could borrow it?” This, she thought, was the ultimate test. If he gave it to her, it meant he was ready to forget all about Brett and take his chances with her. “I’d love to know what it feels like to wear it, just for a while.”
Eric blinked his gray eyes. Without speaking or moving them from Tinsley’s face, he unlatched the bracelet with his left hand and held it out to her. Instead of taking it, she thrust her right arm out, palm up, so that Eric could put it on himself.
“Be very, very careful with this,” he told her solemnly as he fumbled with the latch, his fingers grazing her arm. “Your wrist is much smaller than mine, so keep your eye on it.” Tinsley watched as his gaze progressed up her slender arm to her body.
“I will guard it with my life,” she vowed, her lips unable to suppress a flirtatious victory smile. “And I’ll give it back the next time I see you. I promise.” Impulsively, she stood up on tiptoe, planning to kiss him on the cheek. He smelled like Ivory soap and Crest toothpaste. But just as her lips were about to touch his cheek, Eric turned his head, and her mouth landed halfway on his lips.
Oops, Tinsley thought happily. She kept her mouth where it was for a moment before finally pulling away. They stared at each other.
Eric spoke first, quietly, as if his voice were trying to hide some emotion. “Then I hope I’ll see you again soon.” He opened the door for her, keeping his eyes on her face the entire time. There were other students in the hall, hurrying off to class. Tinsley lingered outside his office as she fingered the bracelet.
“Don’t worry, you will.”
EasyWalsh: Hey, how r u?
JennyHumphrey: Booooored. In a research seminar at the library. I already know how to use the dewey decimal system!
EasyWalsh: Bummer … Did you hear that it’s, uh, official with Callie now?
JennyHumphrey: Yeah, I did … You okay?
EasyWalsh: Yup.
JennyHumphrey: That’s good.
EasyWalsh: I really hope this doesn’t sound sleazy, but do you want to meet up in the woods today for the art project we were talking about yesterday?
JennyHumphrey: OK.
EasyWalsh: I’ll give you directions at lunch.
JennyHumphrey: Good. I’m …
EasyWalsh: Yeah … I think I know what you mean.
BrettMesserschmidt: Can I see you later?
BrettMesserschmidt: I’ve been thinking about you. …
[EricDalton has signed off Thursday, September 12, 10:37 A.M.]
11
A WAVERLY OWL DOES NOT POSE NUDE ON A FIRST DATE.
Jenny could barely concentrate in English class on Wednesday, even though it was normally one of her favorites. She loved the way the classroom was set up as if it were a conference room—one giant oval table with fifteen chairs around it, filled with cashmere-sweater-wearing students and the ultra-petite Miss Rose, who wore bubble-gum-pink lipstick. It was a discussion class, which meant Miss Rose would talk for about ten minutes and then open the conversation up to the students. At first Jenny had been shocked at the intimacy and sophistication of it all. There was no hand-raising or wrong answers, just how she imagined classes would be in college. They were already a third of the way through Madame Bovary, and Jenny was completely enthralled with Emma and her struggles living with a man she didn’t love. It made her wonder what it would be like to never find love or to be forced to settle for something inferior just because that’s what people did. What would it be like to be stuck with a Charles Bovary when she knew there was an Easy Walsh out there?
“Jenny,” Miss Rose said as the other students packed their bags and filed out of the classroom. “Is everything okay? You were awfully quiet today.” Her hair was pulled back in a bun, making her look a little more severe than usual, but she still looked beautiful, like a china doll dressed in a black wool Dolce & Gabbana pantsuit. Whenever someone made some observation that was way off base, like maybe Emma Bovary was a lesbian, she’d say, “All right. What support for that can you find in the text?” instead of telling the student off. Jenny felt like she’d learned more from the way Miss Rose taught than the actual assignments in class.
“Oh, yes, I’m fine!” Jenny stuffed her notebook into her suede bag. It was packed with art supplies for her outing with Easy. The sight of her brand-new Rembrandt pastels and box of Prismacolor pencils sharpened and ready to go reminded her again that in twenty minutes, she’d be alone with the newly single Easy. “I’m just a little … distracted today.”
Miss Rose nodded sympathetically. “Well, I really enjoyed your short paper comparing the imagery of the novel to the Realist painting style of Gustave Courbet. I thought it was fascinating that you made those connections. Congratulations!” She handed Jenny her paper back, with an enormous A+ on top. It was the first grade she’d received at Waverly. What a good omen for the day.
She nervously felt for the note Easy had slipped her at lunch. Butterflies frolicked in her stomach. Jenny didn’t exactly have a stellar track record in her romantic relationships. And there weren’t many—her brief fling with beautiful stoner boy Nate had ended when she realized he was just using her to get back at his ex-girlfriend. Then there was her relationship with Leo, which had started out well, but she’d realized quickly that he bored her. Other than that, her romantic history included one molestation at the hands of creepy Chuck Bass and getting pawed at by Heath Ferro on the first day of school. She was so inexperienced with relationships, no wonder she was nervous.
In the dining hall at lunchtime, Easy had flashed her a smile and dropped a folded piece of paper on her tray. She’d forced herself to pick up a tuna fish sandwich and make a salad at the salad bar. Then she sat down at an empty table off to the side, grateful that there were only assigned seats for formal dinners. She took a bite of her sandwich and unfolded the note.
Directions to the SECRET painting pasture. (Shhhhhhh …) Cross main quad toward woods. Take path to boathouse. Halfway to the river, there’s a patch of birches on the right. Turn into them (watch for low branches) and walk about twenty yards. It opens into a small clearing. Keep going and you’ll come to a bigger clearing. I’ll be there.
Walking across campus now with her brandless aviators bought at the street market in Union Square, Jenny tried to calm down and enjoy the gorgeous afternoon. She wasn’t used to the damp dirt, cut grass, and drying leaves that greeted her every time she stepped outdoors. Even when you were so deep in Central Park you could imagine you weren’t in New York City, it never smelled like this, and you could still hear horns from cabs on Central Park West. As Jenny approached the woods, the pleasant scents grew even stronger—pine, mingled with the freshwater smell of an unpolluted Hudson. She was grateful not to be riding the crosstown bus home from Constance Billard right now, as she would have a year ago, wearing her ugly school uniform.
When she saw the thatch of birches, the butterflies started up again, but she plunged through the trees, careful to keep the clutching branches out
of her curls. She felt like she was stepping out of civilization and into a private world, one inhabited only by Easy. And now her. She crossed the small clearing Easy had mentioned, noticing a Zippo lighter near a collection of rocks. This obviously wasn’t the secret spot he was talking about.
She continued through the trees as they got closer together and any trace of a path disappeared. She was a little worried about getting lost—she’d never been a Girl Scout—before she caught a whiff of turpentine in the pine-scented air and knew Easy couldn’t be far away. The trees abruptly gave way to a much larger grassy clearing, but she didn’t see him at first. This had to be it, she thought, setting her bag down on a rock and admiring the beauty of her surroundings. The grass was the scratchy, wild kind, and tall stalks of purple asters and black-eyed Susans grew along the edge of the woods. She stepped closer to a giant rock just as Easy stood up from behind it and Jenny’s heart skipped a beat, something she thought people just talked about happening. The sight of Easy, in his Levi’s and a baby-blue T-shirt that said FOOD NOT BOMBS, gave her such a thrill that her heart really did forget to beat.
Easy’s face broke into a grin. “I like your T-shirt,” Jenny told him shyly, her long brown curls tickling the tops of her arms. “My dad has a button that says that.”
Easy looked down at his shirt, as if to remind himself of what he was wearing. “My father hates this shirt. He calls me a hippie when he sees it.” He had put together his easel and was setting out his tubes of paint, brushes, bottles of oil and turpentine, and a paint-stained cloth.
Jenny stepped closer to him and started pulling her own supplies out of her bag, placing them on one of the large, moss-dappled rocks. “Well, my dad is kind of a hippie, so I know he’d approve.”
“You’re lucky.” He didn’t say anything else, and Jenny assumed he didn’t get along too well with his father. But she didn’t want to press it. Instead, he grinned at her. “Glad you found me.”
“It’s beautiful,” Jenny said, meaning it. “I can see why you like coming here to paint. It’s so peaceful.”
“Yeah, it’s great.” Easy stretched his arms above his head, his T-shirt raising a little so that Jenny could see the top of his Calvin Klein boxers peeking out from his jeans. “So, did you look through the art syllabus yet?”
“Syllabus?” Jenny had no idea there even was a syllabus for art.
“Yeah,” Easy teased. “You know, those things the teachers hand out at the first class?”
“Yes, smarty-pants, I know what a syllabus is.” She stuck her tongue out at him. “I just don’t remember getting one for art.”
“Well, the midterm project involves incorporating portraiture into the landscape. Any media we want, any subject, any setting.” He looked at Jenny sheepishly. “I knew right away what setting I wanted”—he indicated the field around him—“and I was hoping you’d be my subject.”
Jenny had to keep her jaw from dropping. Easy wanted to paint her? Here? “You didn’t tell me that’s why you wanted me to come out here! I thought we’d both be … um, working.”
“Oh, you can work too,” he said with a smile. “You can talk or draw as long as you don’t move too much,” he said, repeating her words to him in art class. “I didn’t get a chance to draw you in class, remember?”
“I can’t believe you’re working on your midterm project already!”
“I know.” Easy’s dark blue eyes searched her brown ones. “I’m not normally an overachiever, by any standards. But the wild-flowers will be gone soon, so it seemed like the perfect chance. I’ve always wanted to paint someone here. …” He trailed off after that, looking suddenly nervous.
Always wanted to, Jenny thought. Meaning, never had. He’d never painted Callie here? Wow. It was as if he’d been waiting for her. Jenny could barely believe this was possible.
“I don’t have to be naked, do I?” Jenny asked suddenly, and immediately regretted it. Her cheeks burned. “I—I’m not sure I’m ready for the entire art class to see me naked yet,” Jenny stammered. “Even in a painting.” Never mind the art class; she couldn’t imagine what Easy would do with her boobs. He’d run out of paint!
Easy frowned in mock disappointment. “Clothes are okay.”
Jenny looked around awkwardly. “Should I pose or something?” She fiddled with her necklace, a silver magnolia leaf on a leather cord wound twice around her neck, suddenly aware that the leaf looked like an arrow pointing directly downward toward her ample cleavage. As if Easy needed any signs to point him there.
He stepped toward her and clasped his chin in thought. “I was thinking Klimt by way of Modigliani, if that makes sense to you? On the grass, if it’s not wet and you don’t mind. Somewhere with wildflowers. I know it sounds totally cheesy, but I think I can make it work if I don’t use too much pink.”
Jenny thought she was more likely to be compared to the full-figured girls in a Rubens than the elongated figures of Modigliani, but let Easy see her however he wanted to. It was just so nice that he knew about art. Nate had posed for a series of portraits that she’d ultimately destroyed, but he’d just looked back at her vacantly with his blank stoner stare whenever she mentioned anything about art. If it didn’t involve a bong or boobs, he definitely wasn’t interested.
Jenny glanced around. It was a beautiful sunny day, the ground was dry, the sun was warm, leaves were rustling. Easy led her to a flat area of the pasture, and she spread out on her side, her sketchbook in front of her. Easy gave her his iPod, and she scanned through the songs. They both had Nirvana and a fair share of Bob Dylan, but he had more Lucinda Williams and Emmy Lou Harris where she had Weezer and the Lemonheads. She picked an artist she hadn’t heard before and took out her pastels. The sun beat down on her, warming her face and undoubtedly making her freckles spread, but she didn’t care. She closed her eyes and let the late-summer sunshine bleed through her eyelids, wondering if, years later, she would be telling her children about this moment, in the woods with Easy, how this was the start of it all. The way their parents met.
She felt a hand on her shoulder. “Hey, sleepy.” Easy shook her gently. Her eyes opened to see him kneeling beside her. He had a smear of yellow paint on his nose. Jenny laughed, hoping she hadn’t dozed off long enough to have nap breath.
“I can’t believe I fell asleep. I didn’t snore or anything, did I?” she asked, sitting up. He stood and reached out a hand to pull her to her feet. She tried to memorize the feel of his warm fingers wrapped around hers. Even standing, Easy towered over her. He made her feel tiny.
“No.” He grinned and pulled her toward the easel. “But you were talking in your sleep.”
She gasped, knowing that her brother, Dan, would often pound on her bedroom door at night because she’d been babbling in her sleep. “You’re joking! What’d I say?”
Easy scratched his head and pretended to look embarrassed. “You were kind of mumbling, so I couldn’t really be sure … but it sounded sort of like … ‘Easy Walsh, you’re my hero.’”
God, he was so cute. “Very funny. But I usually only talk about movie stars in my sleep.”
“Now that you mention it, you did say something about me reminding you of Jake Gyllenhaal.”
Jenny laughed, realizing they were still holding hands. The air smelled like turpentine and Ivory soap and flowers. He smiled at her and she looked at his ever-so-slightly, adorably crooked teeth. His face was so close to hers, if she just … leaned … in …
“Let’s see the painting.” Her voice was overly bright to drown out the noise of her pounding heart. She’d had a million fantasies about kissing Easy, but he’d just broken up with Callie yesterday. The amazing thing was that he seemed to understand. “It’s really just a basic sketch, so don’t be too disappointed or anything.”
When she looked at the canvas, she wouldn’t have recognized herself. It was a close-up of a girl, stretched out in the sunny grass with wildflowers surrounding her, exactly as she must have looked the past two
hours. A sketchbook open in front of her, the telltale white earphones of an iPod, the same white shirt and jeans and pink shoes, her head leaning on her arm, the cascading chestnut curls. But the face—it was the most finished part of the painting, but it couldn’t be her. Perfect porcelain skin, rosy cheekbones, slightly open mouth, sleepy eyes covered with thick, lush lashes—it was very dreamlike and surreal, as if Easy had known what Jenny wished she looked like. Was it possible that he actually saw her that way? The whole painting, even only half finished, seemed to capture what it had felt like, lying there and listening to Easy’s music, enjoying this secret, private space with him as if it were the only place on earth. Easy must have felt that way too.
“Wow,” she said finally.
“Just wait till it’s finished,” he said a little dreamily. They packed up their things slowly. Easy held the branches back for Jenny as they made their way through the woods. Once they emerged, they walked side by side down the path back toward the quad, their legs brushing against each other comfortably as Easy held up the large canvas by its wooden stretcher boards.
That’s when they saw Tinsley crossing the quad in front of them, dressed all in black and carrying a tiny red suede Marni handbag. Jenny immediately took a step away from Easy and felt like she was caught, even though Tinsley didn’t appear to notice them coming from the boathouse path.
“It’s okay,” Easy whispered. “She’s not going to bite. She didn’t even see us.”
But Jenny wasn’t so sure about either of those things.
To:
[email protected];
[email protected]