“We’re here!” Rowena announced ahead of me.
I turned my attention from Chase and looked around, floored by what I saw. The area was open and airy. I could tell it had been a station once upon a time, as we stood on a platform of near-pristine marble. Although there were small piles of trash in random areas of the platform, the ceilings were arched and tiled with colorful mosaics. It almost felt like we were in a cathedral, but instead of stained-glass renditions of the Madonna and Child, there were splashes of graffiti on the walls.
“It’s fucking awesome,” Rowena said. “It’s like a hidden art show, but you can’t buy the art ’cause it’s not available for public consumption.”
As I squinted and looked across the way, I could see several other platforms, lined with Grecian columns and separated by recessed track beds. “It’s weirdly beautiful here,” I breathed. “Why don’t the other stations look like this?”
“This one’s old. Still, it’s pretty punk rock, huh?” Chase said.
The others looked around the dank and cavernous space, as if we were in a place of worship. I could see plenty of slogans that looked like they’d curled out of the spray-paint canisters of angry anarchists, but there were also a slew of beautiful yet incomplete murals, many of which looked vaguely apocalyptic in the blue light.
“It’s like a ghost town. I can actually imagine there were people standing right where I’m standing and that they were here not too long ago,” I said. “I kind of expected it to be a little more gone to seed down here.”
“The consistent temperatures down here keep it pretty well preserved,” Chase explained, removing some of his spray-paint cans from his backpack. As if on cue, Rowena, Entropy, Z, and Reynaldo all took out their supplies, too, and found a piece of wall to call their own. I watched intently as their visions emerged from their heads and onto the crumbling canvas of the moldering tiles. I grabbed Rowena’s flashlight so I could take a closer look. I gazed at each of their pieces—from Chase’s grand and ominous swirls of shadow and light to Rowena’s playful renditions of life-size sewer rats to the chaotic, geometric scratchings of the other three, who occasionally stopped to argue about who was copying whom.
At one point, Chase moved away from his piece and came over to stand next to me. “What do you think?” he whispered, surveying the space. The warmth of his body next to mine made me stop shivering for a moment. I looked up at him, and the blue light pouring out of some unseen vestibule shrouded him with an eerie pale halo, giving him the appearance of a dark angel. “It’s like being in another world, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” I said. “There . . . there are no words.”
He looked down at me. “Some people look for the infinite but are satisfied with the finite. We’re not those people, Goldilocks.”
I closed my eyes, enjoying the strangely reverent moment. I could have stood there for hours with Chase. So I was almost disappointed when he said, “Come on.” He returned to the others, and I followed as they began to put away their supplies.
“Are you ever going to come back here again?” I asked Rowena. “I mean, to finish what you started?”
She shrugged. “We don’t usually hit up the same places.” She looked over at Chase. “The LunaBomber forbids it,” she said wryly.
“If you wanna get busted by the po-po, be my guest,” Chase said, as he zipped up his backpack. “Besides, there are dozens of platforms just like this one. No fun playing favorites.”
As we headed back to where we’d come from, my head was pounding and my entire body was buzzing. Chase was right. The night had been thrilling, almost magically so. As I trudged along with the rest of them, careful to avoid gaping holes in the platform (courtesy of Rowena’s flashlight), I was almost sorry I hadn’t taken out my camera to snap a few pictures. I was sure Chase would have told me it was forbidden, but all the same, I longed for a testament of that night’s odyssey, something that would endure long past this moment.
As we moved through the tunnel, on a narrow ledge of platform, I could feel Chase’s hand on my shoulder. “You okay?” he asked. “You’ve been silent for the past few minutes.”
I smiled at him, although his face was shadowy in the darkness. “That was incredible. I still don’t know how you make your way through this maze. Do you follow a trail of bread crumbs or something?”
He chuckled. “Amazingly enough, between the five of us, we have a sense of direction that’s better than GPS.” He paused. “Nobody does this much anymore, but subway graffiti is part of a vital legacy. I’m glad you got to see it.”
I could feel the heat of his body near mine. His hand snaked up to the nape of my neck, then made its way to the small of my back. I could feel him pulling me closer, which made my knees go weak. My tongue felt dry and lifeless in my mouth, even though everything in me was arching toward Chase—toward the warmth of his hand on me, the sweetness of his breath, the hardness of his body.
And that was when I heard it: a clacking rumble in the distance. Only it wasn’t in the very far distance, because a stream of golden light was tumbling in from around the corner and was beaming straight at us. The ground beneath our feet was wet and slick, and in my disorientation, I could feel myself slipping . . . right from the dark and narrow platform we were on and into the track bed.
I screamed as I heard and felt the train clattering toward us. My heart was in my throat, and if I hadn’t been completely petrified, I probably would have fainted.
“Annie, watch out!” Chase yelled.
I squeezed my eyes shut, but before the train could get to me, Chase grabbed my arm and pulled me up against the wall, pinioning me in place with his body as the train, which was probably just a foot away from us, rattled past. I could feel my teeth knocking around in my skull as I clung to the narrow lip of platform that separated us from the train.
“Whatever you do, don’t move!” Chase yelled.
I nodded and clung to him for what felt like an eternity. But after a couple minutes, the train was out of sight and earshot.
“What happened, yo? You guys get stuck in that?” Reynaldo yelled from ahead of us. He and the other three were peering out, concerned, from a passageway that forked off from the narrow platform Chase and I had been on.
“We’re all right, man!” Chase yelled, as we clambered up to the tunnel where his friends were. “I wasn’t expecting that train to come by for at least another twenty minutes.”
Entropy shrugged. “It’s the MTA, man. Public transportation doesn’t give a fuck about schedules!”
Luckily, we were just a few yards away from where we’d originally set out, and I could feel myself breathe a huge sigh of relief as we sidled off the walkway and onto the track bed of the lit-up subway station. There still wasn’t another soul in sight, thank goodness. I could practically feel the soot on my clothes from the dark and dusty passageways, and I certainly didn’t want to be scrutinized by confused strangers.
As Chase jumped back onto the platform and turned around to hoist me up, I could tell from his pale face that the train had shaken him, too. “Hey, if you wanna crash here tonight,” he offered awkwardly. “I mean, Rowena has a spare room and all. . . .”
I shook my head and tried to smile. “No, I think I’ll just get a cab home.”
He raised an eyebrow. “You sure? It’s been a long night.”
I nodded. “Yeah, I really need to get back for classes tomorrow.”
He looked at me, as if uncertain of whether or not to say what he was going to say next. “Annie, I . . .”
I looked at him expectantly. After that intense moment we’d had, prior to the train’s coming along to interrupt it, I had no idea what was going through his mind right now.
But he just gave me that heart-melting grin of his. “That was fucking insane, wasn’t it?” he said.
I could feel myself regaining my senses. “Yeah, you could say that again.” I smiled at him. “But mostly it was kind of epic. Thanks for letting me tag along
.” I smiled at my pun.
He groaned at the lame joke, but his eyes were dancing. “Anytime, Goldilocks.”
As we headed up to street level, I could feel my shakiness and disorientation subside. But when I pressed my head against a cab window minutes later, my mind couldn’t help but backtrack to those precious and all-too-brief moments of feeling Chase’s hands on my body, pulling me tighter and closer. I closed my eyes and drifted off into a half-awake, half-asleep state in which I had delicious visions of what might have come next had the train not happened along.
Chapter Seventeen
My head felt like someone had shot a cannon through it, even though I wouldn’t exactly say I was hungover, since I’d mainly pretended to drink from the giant red plastic cups Chase’s friends had continually placed into my hands over the course of last night. The pure rush of being with Chase, steeped in his world—which seemed so shadowy, dangerous, and romantic—had been almost too much for a reasonably prudent midwestern girl to handle.
My thoughts were racing with all the stimuli of last night, which felt like it was running amok in my body like a virus timed to a break beat. I was almost proud of myself as I remembered my escapade in the subway, immersed in the pitch black, the sounds of trains clattering by in uncomfortably close proximity, belly-down on the cold and slimy concrete, with only Chase’s hand pressed into the small of my back for guidance.
If he hadn’t been there, I wouldn’t be alive, I thought. Of course, had he not been there, I probably wouldn’t have had the guts to be so intrepid—and foolish. But all the same, my night in the Bronx had been eye-opening. The sounds, the smells, the music . . . I’d never have imagined feeling such an affinity for what I’d always considered the seedier and less refined elements of New York City, but there was an unmistakable soulfulness in the midst of all the grit. Even Chase’s friends, who had struck me as gruff and somewhat crude at first, had caught my interest. As rude and brash as they came off, their smoothness and grace in the midst of what had to have been the most terrifying encounter of my life spoke volumes about them. I could almost see them now, quiet and earnest as we made our mark in the bowels of the subway.
I felt like I had been privy to a mystical ritual. It was almost like when you turn off harsh overhead lights that bear down so brightly on something that they make it garish and frightening, and then, in the dim moonlight, you start to see it in its fullness and beauty. I wasn’t used to having my preconceptions so aggressively checked, but then again, I always enjoyed being surprised.
As Kendra and I ate lunch in Washington Square Park, I kept thinking back to specific moments and sensations. The reverberations of the train tracks sending shock waves through my body as Chase transformed the concrete wall into a scene as stunning as ancient cave drawings. The echoes of his friends’ voices in the darkness. The sound of water drip-drip-dripping down the walls, as if we were in some kind of subterranean cavern. I felt like I was part of a secret society, a band of urban renegades going fearlessly where very few people had the imagination to go. And all for the sake of art! Now, that was something to marvel at.
“But it’s not art, not really,” I said out loud, inadvertently.
Kendra had been speaking animatedly about Yannis—something about plans to visit his family in Athens over winter break. I was happy that things were progressing so well in her relationship, but my head felt like giant cockroaches were eating it from the inside out. I rubbed my temples.
Kendra took a giant bite out of her veggie burger and looked at me, her eyes slightly narrowed. “You haven’t been listening to a word I’ve been saying, have you, Green?”
I smiled apologetically. “Sorry, lady. I didn’t get enough sleep last night, so I’m totally not running on all cylinders right now.”
She shook her head. “This is what happens when my best friend gets a boyfriend. Guess I’ll have to start talking to brick walls from now on, eh? But enough of me—I want some details, woman! You didn’t come back to the room till five a.m.!”
“Seriously? I thought it was earlier,” I mumbled.
“Don’t worry, I won’t give you a lecture, but I do expect an account rated no less than PG-13. So what happened, Annie? Did you hit that?”
I paused. For a second, I thought about putting a dent in Kendra’s assumptions and telling her about my incredible night with Chase and his friends. But my intuition told me that she wouldn’t understand or approve. Kendra wasn’t my mom, so I wasn’t exactly afraid of her criticism. I knew that she approved of my commissioning Chase for the Quentin Pierce show (“Milk the bastard for what it’s worth—he’s hot right now, so might as well hop on that bandwagon and take advantage of his status,” she’d said matter-of-factly), but I highly doubted she’d approve of my hanging out with him until the wee hours of morning, squirreling around in subways and avoiding near misses with oncoming trains. Kendra came across as more worldly than I was, but I knew she had grown up in a similarly sheltered environment. The bad boy might have looked hot in a pair of snug jeans, but only from a safe distance.
The message I’d received, hands down, in my short time here was that certain ways of being in the world just didn’t mix. I was still Annie Green, aspiring curator and straight-A student. And as hot as Chase might have been on the art circuit, his reputation when interacting with the public wasn’t exactly sterling, and I knew Kendra was keenly aware of this. I wanted to avoid unnecessary drama, so it made sense to stay on the down-low about things that seemed uncharacteristic of me. There was no point in making my friends worry.
Kendra was still staring at me, an impatient look on her face. I ran my fingers through my hair. “It was, um, nice.”
“OMG, you guys totally did it, didn’t you? So what the hell happened? Was it good? Did he have a big . . . you know?”
I rolled my eyes. “We didn’t do it. We just hung out and talked.”
“For eight hours?” She groaned. “Annie, I was positive you’d be knocking boots with Harrison. He’s soooo into you. What is he—some kind of Bible-thumping, abstinence-only guy?”
“No, we just . . . I want to take it slow,” I said, not really in the mood to justify my imaginary sex life while my head felt like a machete was chopping it apart.
Kendra frowned, and I could have sworn she was going to call me out on some detail I’d stupidly forgotten to leave out in my slightly dazed and hungover state. But the mood seemed to pass quickly. “Suit yourself,” she said, taking another hunk out of her beet-and-cashew patty. “You know I’m not all about getting freaky until you know you have something real. I’ve heard way too many stories about roofies and frat parties and gross hookups with nasty guys, so if you wanna be picky, more power to you!”
Soon enough, she was back to Yannis—how cute he was, how sexy his accent sounded even when she didn’t know exactly what he was saying, and how she felt like he could really be the one this time. I was relieved to be talking about her life, for once, even though I felt a little guilty about not disclosing what had really taken place last night.
As Kendra went on to describe her boyfriend’s endearing particularities, I felt my mind drifting again . . . from my friend’s words to the lulling splay of autumn leaves on the sidewalks around the quad . . . to the sensation of Chase’s hand pressing, almost insistently, into the small of my back, then into the hair at the nape of my neck, drawing me closer without even seeming to try, like I was a magnet sticking to metal.
I closed my eyes and imagined the dark and luscious possibilities, everything that could have happened had I given in to the pull, allowed myself to be sucked into the darkness of that subway, the darkness behind Chase’s clear green eyes—which felt like the promise of a tropical tempest on a perfectly sunny day. I shivered despite myself. Perhaps it had been for the best, after all, even if a startlingly strong part of me felt the sting of disappointment that nothing had transpired last night.
“Annie? Annie Green! Are you frickin’ falling asleep on me?�
��
Kendra’s voice brought me back to reality.
“Are you even listening to me? Or are you too busy thinking about Mr. Dreamy to help me figure out what I’m wearing next week in the Hamptons with Yannis? The Weather Channel says we might have a major storm, so what does that mean? You could, like, sport a sundress and a surfboard year-round where I grew up. It’s so complicated here.”
I frowned, still stuck on the “Mr. Dreamy” comment. “Why would I be thinking about Chase?” I snapped, balling up a paper napkin as snapshots from last night flashed through my head.
Kendra looked confused. “What the hell are you talking about? Chase Adams? Who said anything about Chase Adams? I was talking about your boyfriend, silly!” She paused for a second. “But . . . should I be talking about Chase? I mean . . . you weren’t . . . last night . . .” Her eyes widened in alarm. “Oh shit, Annie! Were you with Chase, not Harrison, last night?”
The contents of my stomach started to roll around and lurch in response. There was no way I could lie to Kendra, but I wasn’t about to tell her the truth, either, so I did the next-best thing—I deflected. I clutched my belly and moaned ever so slightly. Given the fact that I was as healthy as a horse, Kendra’s expression quickly changed from one of chastisement to one of concern.
“You okay, Annie?”
“It’s probably just really bad PMS, but I’m not feeling too hot, Ken, so I think I’ll head back to the dorm for a nap.”
“Don’t you have your medieval-art class in twenty minutes? Have you ever actually played hooky before?” She tsk-tsked. “Skipping class because of Harrison Waters is one thing, but I’m not going to lie—if this is about Chase Adams, you’re in deep shit.”
“Kendra, I’m really not in the mood right now,” I said as I grabbed my knapsack. “I think I need about twenty hours of sleep to figure out what the hell is happening in my life.”
So Damn Beautiful (A New Adult Romance) Page 15