He pulled the shirt from his backpack when he heard the doorknob in the bathroom jiggle. He shoved it back down and grabbed his pencil. Brennan came out of the bathroom in a black T-shirt and gray sweatpant shorts. Water sheened his skin and gave his face a clean glow. Even though his hair was damp, it had been combed into its regular waves, with a few strands falling into his face.
“All right. What do we have?” Brennan picked up the sketchpad. Cliff got a whiff of his fresh soapy scent, and then reminded himself that Brennan wasn’t a candle store. No free smells allowed. “Not bad.”
Cliff was relieved they didn’t outright suck.
“I’m already seeing improvement from the first rectangle to the last. Keep drawing these when you have time. If you’re bored in class, or a little bit before bed. The more you practice shading, the better you’ll get.”
“Like with my jump shot.”
“There you go.” He handed back the notebook. “Next.”
“The apple.”
“Yep. In our next lesson, we can talk more about drawing shapes, but for now, I want you to focus on the shading. Is this apple light or dark? How does the sunlight affect how it looks? Does it cast a shadow?”
Cliff flipped to a fresh page in his sketchpad. Even though shapes would come later Brennan said, he still wanted to give it his best shot and improve upon the blocky monstrosities of his first class assignment. He also didn’t want to faceplant artistically in front of his teacher -- er, professor. He kept referring to his rectangle to figure out shading.
Brennan sat across from him and opened up a textbook. “I have a distribution requirement myself. Science.” He flipped back to the cover. “Neuroscience.”
“Nice.” Cliff wanted to make a good joke here. It was ripe territory, but his brain was a jumbled mess around Brennan, scrambling to make him sound cool. Cliff had funny retorts and searing monologues inside him, hiding somewhere, refusing to show their faces.
“If the whole art thing doesn’t work out, I can fall back on doing brain surgery, y’know?”
“You could do both. Michelangelo was very interested in science and painted images of the brain in his work. The one with God and Adam has God in a shell shaped like the brain.”
That was not the fun retort he wanted to say. He sounded like a Wikipedia article. How very uncool.
“Huh.” Brennan stared at him with an amused grin. “Clifford with the random trivia. How do you know that?”
“We went on a family trip to Italy a few years ago.”
“Right. I remember. Alex greeted me saying bongiorno every day for a damn month.”
“And he would say buonasera to me every night before I went to bed. After two weeks, I finally had to break it to him that buonasera meantgood afternoon.”
Brennan snorted. “I feel like you have this secretly savage sense of humor.”
Cliff shrugged his shoulders nonchalantly, but inside, he was chalanting in his damn pants. He’d never been called funny.
“I guess it’s one of the benefits of being the‘strong, silent type.’”
“What’s with the air quotes?”
“That’s what Alex called me. He really wants me to come out of my shell at Browerton.” Cliff felt a comfort with Brennan, which made it easy to share. He didn’t want their conversation to end. “I got kinda drunk at a party a few nights ago.”
“You don’t need to do that.” Brennan cocked a skeptical eyebrow at him, but there was gravity in his eyes. “You don’t need to be one of those people who parties and gets trashed to fit in. I think there’s great power in being the strong, silent type. It means you know how to listen.”
His words flipped around and chopped up every thought Cliff had about himself.
“I don’t think you need to change. I think you’re cool already.” Brennan shrugged. Facts were facts to him.
“Thanks.” Cliff felt seen in a whole new way, seen by someone he didn’t know was paying any attention to him.
“Shall we get to it?” Brennan pointed to his textbook.
Cliff wanted to wow him. He wanted to upend expectations and make a genuine look of shock come over him at his apple. His eyes kept looking up at Brennan, who thought he was cool and interesting. He wanted to know if Brennan was watching him, if he was somebody worth watching. Here and there, their eyes would meet, like they both were caught and they made a silent pact not to do it again.
“You’re not drawing me,” Brennan said and smiled at his book.
