Blondie Wannabe: A Billy Hargrove Fanfic

The Painting

"Yeah." His nostrils flared as he half-smiled; it was an incongruous image. "I want you to see it."

Billy grabbed my wrist, pulling me up the stairs like the tide pulling me out to sea. I nearly fell twice on the steps, but he didn't let up; he'd rip my arm right out of its socket if it got me into his room. 

Once inside, he brought his school-issued easel to the center of the room and ripped off the fabric tarp. My jaw fell open as I examined the canvas, a hot, panicky feeling spreading through my chest, cutting straight through the opioid numbness. Instead of me in a plain sweater posing in the light of his bedroom, or some abstract interpretation of my countenance, I came face to face my own naked torso splayed across the canvas. He'd captured the shape of my breasts, the extra fullness at the top of the left one, making them slightly lopsided. The nipples were more red than pink, as though they'd been pinched or suckled at, the purplish hickeys peppered across the chest and neck corroborating this theory. All those days he'd spent painting my face, only to end up with the portrait of a girl with her eyes rolled back in ecstasy, mouth open, the overt implication of a moan staining her lips, cheeks flushed so severely, it looked like hay fever.

"What do you think?" he asked.

"Billy..." I began, dragging my fingers through my scalp, the beer mixed with Codeine making it harder to process what I was seeing. "Tell me this isn't what you're handing in to Mrs. Mueller."

"You hate it?" His face fell, eyes going shiny.

"No, I don't hate it." The light caught the blonde hair, giving the appearance of a glowing, golden halo, the pinks and reds and peachy tones all blending and streaming into one another. I'd seen glimpses of his ability in the sketches he did in class, but this was transcendent. "It's beautiful, and you're very talented but..."

"But what?!"

"You can't possibly be thinking of turning this is; I'll be fired!"

"I don't care about turning it in- I'll take an 'F'- just say you'll take me back."

I couldn't tolerate it anymore, sitting down on the floor to avoid vomiting. I should have gone home with Steve when I had the chance; we'd be eating peppermint bark and watching Cheers right now. "Billy, we can't get back together, we were hardly together in the first place."

He crouched onto the floor in front of me. "How can you say that? Look at how I see you; you're so beautiful, I love you."

There were a thousand things I could've said to attempt to get him to see reason, but I chose the worst possible option. "I'm seeing someone else." He didn't respond. "I'm sorry-"

"Get out."

"What?"

"You heard me, you stupid bitch, get the fuck out of my house." 

He picked me up, throwing me over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. After descending halfway down his staircase, he chucked me onto the ground. I tumbled down three steps before landing on the ground, the wind thoroughly knocked out of me, but I didn't feel any pain, still buzzing from my high.

"The hell is wrong with you?" Billy stomped down the rest of the steps, gripping me by the upper arms and dragging me to the door, flinging me out onto the porch, hurling my jacket and purse onto my limp body.

I rose hesitantly, putting on my coat with nearly comical slowness. The seventeen-year-old stood in his open doorway watching me with vengeful blue eyes. I thought about asking him not to bring that painting to class on Monday. I even considered begging him to take mercy on me. He'd probably get off on that, me on my knees sobbing for the clemency of my master. I'd probably get off on it too. 

What the fuck is wrong with you? I screamed at myself as I spun around without a word, the world lurching dangerously from side to side as I raced to my car.

I shouldn't drive in this condition- I was scarcely fit to walk- but I needed to get home. No way in hell was I about to ask to crash on his couch or ask to use his phone to call Sal. If I died on the car ride home, I'd deserve it. What more was there to my life really, other than a meaningless existence as Norman Harrington's daughter. His college drop-out, pill-popping, slut of a daughter.

The sound of my fender connecting with a stop sign brought me out of my self-loathing monologue. Jesus Christ, I literally almost killed myself.

I decided I wasn't ready to die. If my shitty parents and shitty ex-boyfriends didn't drive me to suicide, Billy fucking Hargrove certainly wasn't going to. 

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