Draw Me In by Megan Squires Page A

the outside, Sports
Illustrated underneath, huh? Had I known, I would have suggested something a
little different for our shoot. ”
    “ Whatever, Ian. ” I lifted a pillow from the head of
my bed and draped it over my sketchpad, another layer of protection from Ian. I
contemplated heaving the nightstand, dresser, and beanbag chair from the corner
of the room on top, too, but that would have been overkill. “ How ’ d it go anyway? ”
    “ Amazeballs, ” he replied, pushing off his knees to
stand. He collected our dinner from the dresser and continued talking as I
followed him out into our makeshift dining room, which really was just a card
table shoved against the kitchen wall with two mismatched chairs tucked
underneath. When you were a college student that lived in a 900 square foot
loft and ate off of an actual table rather than a cardboard box, you earned the
right to call it a dining room. “ That
man really is gorgeous, Jules. It ’ s
funny, because he obviously knows it, or at least he knows his body well. There
wasn ’ t
a single pose or angle where he looked anything but absolutely comfortable in
his own skin. If I hadn ’ t
known any better, I would have thought he had experience modeling. ”
    I
didn ’ t
doubt that. I was sure Leo knew how to use his good looks to his advantage. And
if these pictures were to be utilized for some spread that might help him find
a significant other, I bet he turned on the charm full scale. Put his best face
forward. He didn ’ t
strike me as a model necessarily, but definitely someone who deserved to have
their likeness grace the most famous business magazine in the country. Or a
life-size poster in my room. That too.
    For
a moment it felt silly to even think that I had the right to try to depict
someone as beautiful as him on paper. Looks like that couldn ’ t be recreated. A photograph would
probably come close, but not much could do him justice. My pictures probably
made him look more like Elmer Fudd than the literal Adonis he truly was.
    “ So that drawing. ” Ian extended an arm to full length
and pulled down three ceramic bowls from the top shelf of our kitchen cabinet. “ Is that all imaginative sketching, or
did you have something real to go off of? Because if you did... ” he said as he crisscrossed a fork
and a spoon to create tongs and heaped a generous portion of chicken chow mein
into my bowl, “ ...if
you actually saw that in real life, well,
I ’ m not sure how you ’ re alive and sitting here right now.
Because that is the definition of drop dead gorgeous. ”
    “ You don ’ t need to remind me. ” There was enough food here to feed
an army, so I didn ’ t
feel guilty as I stacked on more than could possibly fit into my stomach. It
all looked and smelled so good that I had to at least take one bite of each
entree offered.
    “ You ’ re right, I don ’ t need to remind you. You have that
very detailed drawing to do that. ”
    Three
swift knocks pulsed through our front door and Ian instantly dropped his bowl
onto the counter before racing to answer it, leaving his dish to wobble like a
spinning top, drunkenly slowing to a stop. Giddiness sprung from his feet in a
bounce like that of a skipping child. Or Tigger. Actually much more like Tigger,
and I thought for a second I heard him call out “ TTFN ” over his shoulder.
    Ian
really liked this Joshua guy, and I loved what it did to him.
    I
really liked what little I knew of Leo, and look what that had done to me.
There was no excitable lightheartedness here. There was just a two by three
foot borderline-stalkerish portrait tucked between the sheets of my bed. But in
all fairness, some people had blow up dolls in their beds. At least this was
art.
    It
was amazing how art could do that — take
something that would otherwise be labeled as creepy and twist it into something
absolutely appropriate. No one questioned art. Plastic inflatable people, yes.
But art? Not likely.
    Who
was I kidding?