So Damn Beautiful (A New Adult Romance)

  Praise for So Damn Beautiful

  "A love story that had me as riveted as The Notebook." – Lethal Glam

  "Honest, raw, emotional, edgy, and fun." – She Reads New Adult

  "Chase is one seriously hot bad boy...I was team Chase from the minute he was introduced." – One Girl Lost in Romance Books

  "A journey about beauty and coming of age...[that] is so well thought out...This story is sexy! It’s filled with scenes that are paint splattered with ugly and beautiful at the same time. It makes you want to look at things in a different light and isn’t that one of the best things a book can do for you!...Read this. It’s different and it’s fresh." – Up All Night Book Blog

  So Damn Beautiful

  A Novel

  L.J. Kennedy

  Copyright 2013 L.J. Kennedy

  Smashwords Edition

  Smashwords Edition License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  For Matt, who encourages me to believe in myself

  and dream bigger, when I’m dreaming too small

  Chapter One

  The sun filtered in through the stained-glass windows of my art classroom, the warmth hitting my skin as the colors danced. I could barely hear Professor Claremont’s words as my attention drifted to the pretty drizzle of September leaves falling from the trees on Stuyvesant Street.

  I was more accustomed to cooler, crisper, grayer autumn weather in the town where I grew up (Apple Creek, Ohio, to be exact), so I was in heaven as I gazed out the window and saw a gaggle of coeds walking by, hoodies covering their heads, backpacks in tow, trudging through the piles of leaves. It reminded me of all the movies about kids in New York that I’d eaten up like hotcakes when I was younger. And here I was, starting my first year at NYU, which I’d fantasized about ever since Felicity was taken off the air. I smiled and pinched myself under the desk, since the last two weeks had most definitely felt like a really good dream I could be jostled out of at any moment.

  There were no two ways about it, though. I, Annie Green, really was in New York, the most magical place on Earth and the epicenter of the art world. And I knew this was where all of my lifelong dreams were going to come true. I could just feel it. My career as a curator was right around the corner . . . and perhaps, finally, so was a relationship. A real relationship (the one with my high school boyfriend didn’t count).

  Granted, I was only eighteen years old, and, as my mom had reminded me (with her requisite combo of love and worry) before I’d left home, “Annie Bear, you have your whole life ahead of you. Stay focused and stay strong, and don’t make the mistake of getting hung up on some guy.”

  Of course, I could read between the lines, and I knew that what she really meant was, “Annie, whatever you do, finish your studies before you get knocked up, the way I did.” Well, she didn’t have to worry about that. Whoever my dream guy was, I knew he’d be smart, sophisticated, and, above all, chivalrous. He would have my best interests at heart and would never try to get me to do things I wasn’t 100 percent on board with.

  As if on cue with my daydreams, I gazed softly out the window and saw something that made me do a double take. A hot guy with a mop of dark hair, jeans that hugged his luscious ass, and a T-shirt that perfectly showed off his washboard abs strolled by. Scratch that. It was more of a swagger. I was so captivated that my eyes simply followed him down the street, until he became a speck in the distance. I’d always been an admirer of obvious beauty, but something about the combination of his face, his body, and his utterly unself-conscious demeanor momentarily lifted me into a totally different stratosphere.

  I shook my head, as if to shake myself from a trance. I knew that if I wanted to fulfill my dream of landing a prestigious internship at any one of the galleries or museums in the city, which many an art-history student at NYU would give their firstborn in exchange for, I’d have to focus. In this case, it meant acing all my first-semester classes, since internships were typically offered to upperclassmen, students who were at least in their third year. Which meant no cute boys on the brain . . . or in my bed.

  I frowned at the thought. Oh well.

  As Professor Claremont waxed poetic about Andy Warhol (who had apparently made his art right in the vicinity of my classroom, in NYU’s storied Barney Building), I felt my eyelids getting heavier and could sense the onset of an afternoon food coma. I inwardly groaned. I’d let my new friend Kendra Castro talk me into getting a rolled-oats smoothie and hemp pasta for lunch at the raw-food café that had just opened across from our dorm.

  Flipping her long, straight hair over her shoulder, she had told me, “Paleo might be making a big comeback, but let me tell you—I was in California when raw started popping up, and it is here to stay.”

  Kendra, who was California-born and bred, was equal parts hippie-dippy and high-maintenance. How could she not be high-maintenance, given that she was just about the most gorgeous girl I’d ever seen? With her dramatic waterfall of dark hair, perfect tan, full lips, and almond-brown eyes, Kendra was as devastatingly exotic as I was embarrassingly plain. Well, maybe not exactly plain, but definitely more all-American, given my shoulder-length, dirty-blond hair and blue eyes. I was definitely cute, but my style didn’t announce itself in neon lights; I was all twinsets and pearl strands, whereas Kendra preferred to rock midriff shirts, towering platform shoes, and bright-blue nail polish—with the occasional surfboard (there was one hanging on the wall of the dorm room we shared) and Valley-girl jargon thrown in just to remind you which coast she hailed from.

  We were something of a campus odd couple, but we’d become inseparable during Freshman Welcome Week, when we found out we’d be rooming together. While it was my dream to become a curator for a world-class art institution (which translated to straight A’s my whole life, a near-perfect SAT score, and a curriculum vitae that would probably have gotten me into almost any college of my choice, natch), Kendra admitted to me during the first week, as we scoped out boys in one of the campus mess halls, that she’d never really been into school.

  “It’s my dream to become a public-relations guru, and all you need is awesome networking skills for that. I mean, let’s face it—I’m only here because my mom and dad went to NYU, and I guess they need to keep the family pedigree clean,” she had told me while rolling her eyes.

  “Public-relations guru?” I had queried, trying my best not to sound judgmental as I bit into my turkey-and-avocado sandwich.

  “I want to be a hottie whisperer, specifically,” she told me as she twirled her hair, “the kind of person who can bring out any wallflower’s sex appeal. You know, turn a lame hipster into a brooding babe. If I could do that, Hollywood would be all over me. We don’t need any more Kardashians, and don’t get me started on the two younger ones—hoochies in the making! There are plenty of talented people out there who could just use a slight style tune-up.”

  At that point, Kendra began to talk my ear off about meeting Lady Gaga a few years ago and harmlessly offering her a few fashion tips. “Clearly, she was listening!” Kendra beamed triumphantly. I wasn’t really listening, but that didn’t matter. In the same way I knew that I was going to be an incredible curator, I was certain I’d made my first sterling college friend for life in Kendra.

  “Miss Green, what do y
ou think?”

  I was blasted back to the present moment and startled by the sudden question. I looked up, and there was Professor Claremont, poised over her MacBook Air PowerPoint presentation, pointing to the large white screen at the front of the classroom. Plastered on the screen was a hideous black-and-white image of eight Elvis Presley cinema stills, some slightly overlapping the others. Elvis was poised with a gun pointing at the viewer.

  “Um, I, uh, really don’t know that much about modern art,” I offered, “but it’s . . . kind of redundant, maybe even a bit gratuitous.”

  She looked at me for a moment, and I could’ve sworn she was going to praise my all-perceptive eye, but Professor Claremont simply moved on to the next image and didn’t respond to my comment.

  I glanced over at Kendra, who mouthed, “WTF?” to me, then shrugged and returned to her iPhone. Facebook, I presumed. Kendra was taking Art 101 only because it fit the school requirement for a fine-art class, but she was about as interested as I was, sad to say. Although I respected Professor Claremont’s expertise, her focus had been almost exclusively twentieth-century art (minus my favorites, like Picasso and Chagall), which wasn’t really up my alley.

  “Who cares about Jeff Koons or Takashi Murakami? That’s all just media hype. I mean, what about all the stuff that really gets people excited and stands the test of time, like the Sistine Chapel or the Mona Lisa?” I had exclaimed to Kendra while reading over the syllabus in our dorm room after our first day of school.

  “So take Art 101 next semester—maybe they’ll do all the old stuff then,” Kendra, uninterested, said as she flipped through Vogue.

  But I couldn’t. If I wanted to be one of hundreds of art-history majors who’d land an internship that would change my life (which was the entire reason I’d even applied to NYU), I had to prove my chops—which meant breezing through all my requirements during my first semester.

  I heard a snicker from across the aisle and looked over to find Elsie Donegan, another girl I’d met during Freshman Welcome Week, whispering into the ear of the jock sitting next to her while pointing at me and laughing. Subtle much? I frowned and turned away. Elsie was clearly not going to be a BFF of mine anytime soon. I barely knew her, and it had been only two weeks since school had started, but apparently I’d found myself an arch nemesis.

  It had all started when I’d paid a visit to the College of the Arts a couple days after the beginning of the semester to ask my counselor, Ms. Blake, a funky Caribbean woman with a taste for Gauguin (which is how I knew I was going to like her), about available internships.

  “Annie, if you want to be a candidate for an internship, you have to be willing to educate yourself! That means no boys, no drinking, no social life! You need to scour the art galleries and museums in the city and prove to the panel that you have what it takes. Do you think you’re ready for that?” Arms akimbo, Ms. Blake almost looked like a stern parent—except for the plethora of floral tattoos running up her arms and legs, tons of visible piercings, and a killer accent.

  “Trust me, I’ve been working my entire life to get an internship. I know I have what it takes, Ms. Blake.”

  She flipped through my file, eyebrows raised. “Looks like you’ve done some curating of your own in the past. Good. But this is New York, not Apple Creek, Wisconsin. It’s a whole different ball game out here, baby.”

  “Ohio . . . Apple Creek, Ohio,” I sighed. Apparently, if you weren’t from a big city, nobody was going to give you the time of day.

  Ms. Blake smiled at me. “You know what I mean, Annie. I know how dedicated you are, but galleries and museums around here have an aversion to anything that reeks of provincial or middle America. So, as brilliant as you are, you have a lot of proving you’ll need to do.”

  At that moment, the door to Ms. Blake’s office flew open and a tall, pale girl with short black hair and legs that were about a mile long came bursting into the room. She was wearing a T-shirt sporting an illustration of a little girl being eaten by a dragon—one of those gory designs I’d seen scrawled across the walls of hipster clothing boutiques—and sequined hot pants that showed off her ballet-dancer figure. She looked like a model, except for the ugly grimace plastered across her pretty face.

  “Ms. Blake! I cannot fucking believe it! This is my second semester here, and I’m on a fucking wait list for that Art and Urban Theory seminar I’ve been dying to take. Seriously . . . who do I need to fuck around here to get into the classes I actually like?”

  Ms. Blake didn’t blink, though I could feel the heat in my cheeks rising. The girl was probably around my age, and there was no way I’d ever heard a student talk like that to an authority figure.

  “Calm down, Elsie. I’ve explained to you before that wait lists are in place to ensure that students who need the credits and are close to graduation get first priority. Go to the class on the first day; it’s likely that someone will drop out and you’ll get to take their place.”

  The girl groaned. “That’s what you tell me, but it didn’t go down like that last semester. My parents are not paying shitloads of money for me to get stuck in massive lecture-only courses with a bunch of jack-offs looking to cross the art requirement off their to-do list. If I want an internship, I fucking need to take this class—period!”

  Ms. Blake just smiled affably, but panic gripped my chest. “Internship?” I asked. My internship?

  Elsie turned to me like she was seeing me for the first time . . . and she definitely didn’t like what she saw. “Who the fuck was talking to you?”

  At that point, I didn’t have to say anything. Ms. Blake took Elsie by her elbow and guided her to the door. “Unlike you, Miss Green made an appointment. I’m sure your parents can buy your way into the classes of your choice, for the most part, but they cannot buy their way into my office. Talk to my assistant when you want to pay me a proper visit. Thank you!”

  Ms. Blake all but shoved Elsie out the door. I could hear clipped swear words before Ms. Blake shut the door.

  I just looked at her, my mouth and eyes agape. “Whoa . . . who was that?”

  “That, my dear, was Elsie Donegan. She has the mouth of a sailor, the face of an angel, and the wealth of the Queen of England,” Ms. Blake said archly. “Both of her parents are very well-known art collectors, and New York City has been her playground and personal gallery since she was a baby sucking a solid-gold pacifier. I’m sure you’ll run into her. She’s only a semester ahead of you.”

  “She’s an art-history major, too?”

  “Yes, and she’s one of the very highly qualified, although not particularly gracious, students you’ll be up against for this internship.”

  I felt my heart sink. Although she’d been in the room for only a minute, I could tell from her designer clothes and bad attitude that such a girl could flame me out of the running faster than a New York minute. How could I possibly have thought that my midwestern enthusiasm and academic excellence might contend with that? Elsie clearly had the kind of edginess that most gallery snobs seemed to respect, if not emulate. Would the Metropolitan Museum of Art or the Guggenheim agree?

  Ms. Blake seemed to sense my sinking spirits, because she looked closely at me and said, “Elsie isn’t the thing you should be worrying about. Annie, you have the kind of passion and drive that I see in my students about once a decade. You have what it takes to get any internship you want. Your biggest obstacle isn’t someone else—it’s you.”

  I was brought back to reality, and the sound of Elsie’s derisive laughter. At some point, she’d found out I wanted an internship, too, and had taken every opportunity to shit on my comments in class. I looked over at Kendra, who rolled her eyes but continued to covertly text all the same.

  “Miss Donegan, is there something you want to share with the rest of the class?” Professor Claremont was looking in Elsie’s direction with a smile of wry anticipation.

  Elsie shrugged and offered, “Not really, Professor. It’s just that I’m remembering storie
s my parents’ friends have told me about Andy and his oeuvre. Apparently, he asked a lot of people for suggestions of what he should paint. Then he asked my godmother, and her response was, ‘Well, what do you love most?’ And that’s how he started painting money and doing silk screens to mass-produce his work. There’s this weird, narcissistic, performative aspect in what he did that elevated it beyond moneymaking, though. Andy was always upping the ante on what he could get away with when he called something art.”

  Elsie then glanced over at me. “As to the comment that his painting is redundant, I think Andy said it best: ‘Isn’t life a series of images that change as they repeat themselves?’” She smiled triumphantly. Her jock boyfriend lovingly rubbed her thigh.

  At that point, I felt my phone vibrate in my pocket. I took it out and saw that I’d received a text from Kendra. “Since when did Gothic Terror start boning Mass Comm major meatheads? CANNOT COMPUTE. Gag me with a spoon!”

  Professor Claremont replied, “Thanks for the assessment, Miss Donegan, but the additional personal anecdote brings to mind a word that Miss Green just used: ‘gratuitous.’ Okay, now let’s move on to neo-Expressionists.”

  I was just as astonished as poor Elsie, whose previous smirk had become a crestfallen pout. She glanced over at me again and paused for a moment, as if to say, What are you looking at, bitch?

  My phone vibrated again. It was another text from Kendra. “EPIC FAIL!!!!! LOLOLOLOL.”

  I smiled slightly, although I had to admit I felt bad for Elsie.

  “Okay, class, that’s all for now. Don’t forget to pick up your graded response papers up front!” Professor Claremont exclaimed, as students began shuffling out of the room.

  As I made my way to the front, Elsie came up next to me and either intentionally or accidentally pushed me out of the way as she proceeded down the aisle.