Fearless (The Story of Samantha Smith #1) (23 page)

I giggled.

“Tell me where you are, and don’t touch anything. I’d tell you to wear gloves, but I’m thinking of that scene in Fight Club where Brad Pitt opens the door naked except for yellow rubber dish gloves. You’re not wearing yellow gloves, are you?”

I sniffed. “Pink.”

“Pink gloves? You are such a girl, Sam. Well, I feel for the yak, but that’s not the reason I called.”

“Ok.”
 

“Kamiko and I were planning on going to a snazzy art gallery opening in La Jolla tonight. It’s not yak humping, but it’s a close second.”

I took a deep breath. Did I want to be around more art tonight?

“They have free booze at these things. So if you see another yak at the gallery, you can get him loaded and have your way with him.”

“I don’t know.”

“There should be girl yaks there too, if that’s your thing.”

I laughed. “Lesbian yak sex?”

“Hey, I don’t judge.”

I laughed again. I was so grateful to call Romeo a friend.

“Is that a yes?”

“Yeah.”

“Hells to the yeah! I’ll come by your place with Kamiko around seven. I hope you’re in the mood for burgers. Non-yak, of course. Beef. Kamiko insists on In-N-Out for dinner.”

“All right.” I wasn’t sure I’d have any appetite. I still had that pint rotting my gut. But at least I’d be out of the house.

At the next freeway offramp, I turned my car around. I drove home and took a shower. I attempted to scrub away my botched afternoon. It sort of worked, but my pain was tattooed beneath my skin. It was permanent, because it was written in blood.

Taylor.

I felt a surge of anxiety and emotion tighten my ribs. No. I pushed it down. I heard Romeo’s cheerful voice gong through my head. It told me to think about yak sex.

A rudimentary smile tugged at the corners of my mouth. Shielded by memories of Romeo’s zany enthusiasm, I set to putting on makeup and styling my hair down.
 

I dug through my closet for something appropriate for a gallery opening. I wasn’t sure what Romeo meant by “snazzy” but I had some cute dresses from my D.C. goth days that would double as a little black dress in a pinch.
Look out, yaks!

Goth. Suicide Watch.

I felt my lips quiver. I was going to cry again, and I already had my makeup on. I didn’t want raccoon eyes.

Did yaks get it on with raccoons? Maybe they did. I blurted out a laugh. I would have to thank Romeo later. He and yaks would be forever linked in my mind. I considered myself lucky. Or yacky.

When I added platform heels to my outfit, I spun in front of my mirrored closet doors. I looked pretty good.

Tease.

Fuck me, would I ever be free from my past?

There was a pounding on my front door. Thank god.

“Open up! Vice squad! We’re rounding up all the yak sodomites!” It was Romeo. More pounding.

“All right! I’m coming!” I yanked the door open. “Where’s the fire already?”

Romeo wore an all-black version of his normal steampunk attire. “Where are you hiding the yaks, ma’am?” he asked, totally serious, his monocle pinched into place by his cheek and brow.

I could only laugh.

He looked me up and down. “Nice outfit! I didn’t know you could doll yourself up like this!”

“Hey!”

“Down, girl. I was worried your beach-bum friend Madison had stolen all your fashion sensibility. You’ve become progressively more casual since I first met you.”

“What’s wrong with casual?”

“Style, darling. Style. Now let’s go before you turn into a pumpkin, Cinderella!”

We went downstairs and climbed into the car, were Kamiko waited. “Wow, Sam. You look hot!”

“Thanks, Kamiko. You look pretty good yourself. You’ve got the whole rocker chick thing down.”

“I’m supposed to be Marceline from Adventure Time.”

Romeo started the car and drove toward the freeway. “Did you have to go and ruin it by telling everyone you’re dressed as a cartoon character?”

“But Marceline is totally cool,” Kamiko protested.

“Yes, darling, but it’s cosplay.”

“Give her a break, Romeo,” I said. Their banter was infectious. I felt better already.

“Yeah, Romeo,” Kamiko said. “You’re dressed like a Jules Verne character.”

“How very droll of you, Walt Disney.”

“Hey,” Kamiko beamed, “Disney made a movie out of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. That’s Jules Verne.”

“Oh, snap! Sounds like cosplay to me!” I chided.

“Who’s the cosplayer now, Romeo?” Kamiko reached into the backseat and high fived me.

We stopped at In-N-Out for burgers. Inside, Kamiko danced in line, clapping her hands and saying “Strawberry shake, strawberry shake,” over and over like it was Christmas.

When we finished eating our cheeseburgers with grilled onions and extra crispy twice-cooked fries, we drove to La Jolla. I’d never been before. It was very upscale. Lots of huge houses and a trendy downtown area. That’s where we found the gallery.

There was a big crowd spilling out of the gallery onto the sidewalk. Most of the people were dressed in casual evening attire. I was worried I might be over-dressed, but this wasn’t the SDU college crowd. This was an entirely different scene.

Romeo led us through the front doors and straight into the middle of the crowd inside, toward the back. There were so many people in the gallery, I couldn’t see any of the paintings on the walls. A string quartet played in one corner, but the noise from all the charged conversation in the room practically drowned them out.

“Who’s the artist, Romeo?”

“I don’t know. Some guy named Christos Manos. Kamiko says he’s awesome.”

WTF? How had I been snookered into this? I guess I should’ve told everyone Adonis was Christos when I had the chance. Now I had to deal.

Was he going to be pissed to see me here? After what I’d said? I didn’t want to ruin this for him.

“Professor Childress sent out an email to the class,” Kamiko said. “Didn’t you get it, Sam?”

“Oh, uh, I must have missed it.” How could I have missed it? And speaking of Professor Childress, he was standing right in front of us, admiring one of the paintings.

“I’m glad you three made it,” he said pleasantly.

Me, Kamiko, and Romeo said hello and shook his hand nervously. It was weird seeing your professor in the real world. But he didn’t seem to mind.

“I hate to say hello and goodbye,” the professor said, “but I have to meet my wife for a late dinner. She’s been to so many of these things, they all blur together for her.”

“Oh, no problem,” I said.

“But stay and enjoy the paintings. It’s not every day a master artist has a showing at a San Diego gallery.”

When he left, we worked our way to the back of the gallery to a bar that had a bartender serving drinks. Romeo got in line.

“I’m not twenty-one,” I hissed.

“Neither am I,” Romeo said. “Act older.”

“How am I suppose to do that?” I wasn’t used to actually ordering it, just five-fingering it.

“Act confident, like you’re getting food at In-N-Out.”

“What, like ask for a to-go cup?”

“No, silly. Like you do it every day.”

“Vodka tonic,” Romeo said to the bartender. The bartender made the drink and handed it to Romeo without a second thought.

I guess drinks were free?

“What would you like, miss?” The bartender asked.

I saw wine bottles. “I’ll have white wine, thanks.”

He poured me a huge glass.

“Next!”

Yup, drinks were free. Who knew? Art galleries were awesome.

Kamiko ordered while I stood next to Romeo and took several gulps of my wine. I needed to numb the confusion hammering my head. How could I possibly face Christos after what I’d said earlier? I wanted to hide.

Kamiko grabbed me and we walked around to look at the art, sipping our drinks.

Maybe we wouldn’t see Christos.

The paintings were obviously Christos’ work. Lots of beautiful women. But none of them were nudes. They were all clothed elegantly and posed in various impressive outdoor locations at various times of the day. Morning, sunset, night time. They all had cards on the wall next to them. The card had the name of the painting and a price. The prices ranged from $5,000 for the small ones to $25,000 for the larger ones. Many of them had red dots on the price tag.

“What do the red dots mean?” I asked.

“It means the painting has already been sold,” Kamiko said.

My accounting brain took over. We’d looked at over a dozen paintings already. I added up an estimate in my head, then multiplied it by the remaining paintings in the room. “That’s like five-hundred grand in paintings!” I whispered.

“The artist usually gets about half, sometimes higher, depending on how big of a name they are.”

“Oh, okay, so it’s only a quarter million dollars for the artist?”
 

Even Romeo seemed impressed. “Gosh, Kamiko, maybe you should delicately broach the subject of becoming a gallery painter to your parents. I know doctors make a lot of money, but…” He trailed off, chuckling.

“I’ve never done oil paintings,” she said. “Not seriously, anyway. I don’t know if I could do work this good.”

For once, I didn’t think Kamiko was being falsely modest. She was good, but Christos was on an entirely different level.

I suddenly wondered what Christos had been talking about, telling me how shitty his life was, when he told me he could only be my mentor. From everything I had seen about his life so far, he was blessed. Kissed by Lady Luck at every turn. What problems could he possibly have? It didn’t make any sense to me.

We moved to the next painting.

Oh no. Tiffany Kingston-Whitehouse-Presidential-Suite, Queen of the Delta Pi Deltas, stood in front of it. She frowned when she saw me. “Hello, um…what was your name again?”

“Sam.”

“That’s right,” she fake smiled, “I was just gonna say.”

Uh huh. Sure she was.

“How do you like my painting?”

I turned to Kamiko and Romeo, hoping for an explanation. How could this be Tiffany’s painting? They looked as confused as me.

I re-examined the painting. It was signed by Christos. The painting itself was of a huge deck behind a mansion. A blond woman in a bikini was stretched out elegantly on an expensive chaise, one knee up, staring out past an infinity pool into the distance.
 

“Adonis, I mean Christos, did a great job capturing Daddy’s pool, don’t you think?” Tiffany gloated.

Daddy’s pool? I think the confusion glowed like Las Vegas on my face.

“This is my backyard,” Tiffany clarified.

Oh. Great. Good to know. Could we leave now? Or would that be rude? I couldn’t decide whether I envied Tiffany more for her obvious wealth, or the fact that Christos had painted her twice. How much time did she spend with him? A lot more than I had, or probably would be in the future. I sighed internally.

“I swear I went through twenty swimsuits before Adon—I mean Christos, helped me pick out that one. Do you like it?” she prompted.

It wasn’t so much a question, but more of an order. How did Tiffany make it so easy to despise her? “It’s great, Tiffany.” It was, but she wasn’t. Total bitch.

Kamiko and Romeo nodded silently. Kamiko was examining her drink. Romeo glanced around, scouting for an escape route.

“I told Christos to make sure I didn’t look fat.”

I took a closer look at the painted image of Tiffany. It didn’t have the same honesty and demureness of the nude in Christos’ studio. “It makes you look great.” Like a bikini clad robot.

“Thanks,” Tiffany giggled uncertainly. I could tell she was worried about what I thought of the painting. She probably worried what everyone thought of it. “Daddy already bought it. He insisted on it.”

I glanced at the card next to the painting. The red dot was there. $25,000. Wow. Tiffany’s family wasn’t worried about money, that much was painfully obvious.

“My Dad wants Christos to sign the back of it to me. But I told Daddy that it should be made out to both of us, since he’s paying for it. It’s going to hang in our yacht.”

Who hung paintings in yachts? Oh how I wished she’d shut up. She was killing me. “That’s great, Tiffany.”

Kamiko pulled my arm. “We should see the other paintings, don’t you think?”

“Yeah. Sorry, Tiffany. We just got here and my friends really want to see everything. There’s so much to look at.”

“Oh, I know, right?”

I gave her a half-hearted pity wave and we soldiered onward. I felt like I’d just stepped out of a minefield. Why did every conversation I’d had with Tiffany seem so dangerous? I hoped I never found out. I wondered what her friends thought of her. I felt bad for them.

She started talking excitedly to the next group of people to stop in front of her painting. She acted like the painting’s private hostess. Gag.

Once we’d given Tiffany a wide berth, we stopped at another painting.

“Do you like what you see?”

I turned to face a man I didn’t recognize.
 

“Uh, yeah.” I stammered.

He was young, but slightly older than me, probably in his late twenties. He was tall, tan, very handsome, and wore an expensive-looking satiny button-down shirt with the cuffs rolled back, and slacks. He had a long, broad shouldered, slender swimmer’s body. He offered his hand. “My name is Brandon Charboneau. My father owns the gallery, but I’m overseeing the opening tonight.”

I shook his hand. His hazel eyes were rather amazing, and coordinated perfectly with his chestnut brown hair. Whew, someone turn up the AC! Otherwise I would be forced to stealth-swoon where I stood.

“Charmed. And you are?”

“Oh, Samantha Smith. People call me Sam.” I think my eyes sparkled, but I did my best to play it down.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Sam.” Damn, he was smooth. His voice reminded me of chocolate mousse, or some other kind of dessert, or maybe velvet. Oh boy. “Who are your friends?” He turned to Romeo and Kamiko.
 

Romeo was in love. I couldn’t blame him. Brandon was male-model hot. Romeo fawned and blushed while introducing himself. “Hi. Romeo Fabiano.” He blushed so hard, his ears turned red. Someone turn off the burner under Romeo! He was coming to a boil!